Ten Years Later, a Widow Wants Hoboken to Remember

Ten years after she lost her husband Keith on 9/11, Sandra O'Connor Carey wants her adopted home of Hoboken to remember, grieve and heal together.

In the months after the terrorist attack O'Connor Carey helped form a support group at All Saints Episcopal Church for survivors of 9/11 victims and later joined the City of Hoboken's committee to develop a permanent memorial.

Now, in conjunction with All Saints, the Hoboken Historical Museum, the Hoboken Public Library and the 9/11 Hoboken Remembers Organizing Committee she is also helping to stage a panel discussion to take place on Wednesday, September 14, that will feature community leaders sharing their perspective on the events of that tragic day.

”We all have our stories here in Hoboken, and you didn't need to lose somebody to be changed and affected by what happened,” she said. “Ten years later it's really time to make the space to hear the bigger picture of what went on.”

For O'Connor Carey, part of creating that space also means coming full circle with the void she's felt since losing her husband.

She and Keith had been college sweethearts at Pace University in New York. They eventually married and had a daughter.

“We were best friends,” she said. "He was funny, tall, everybody describes him as a gentle giant. He was patriotic, loved being a dad, loved his family.”

On that September morning she had been home with their then two-year old daughter at the apartment the family rented in Hoboken. Keith, a financial trader, called her from his office on the 89th floor of the south World Trade Center tower. She didn't yet know that a plane had crashed into the north tower.

Keith wanted to tell her that he was alright and to ask her to call his mother with the news.

She remembered when the World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993. “My mind was stuck on, 'I hope you're leaving',” she recalls.

That phone call with Keith ended abruptly. She remembers him saying, “Oh my god, I gotta go, people are jumping.”

O'Connor Carey called Keith's mother and turned on the television news. Minutes later she watched the second plane crash into her husband's building.

“That's the moment that changed my life,” she said.

She tried to call Keith repeatedly, but the phone line was busy. She never heard from him again.

O'Connor Carey says she was shocked and stunned. “There was so much happening that you couldn't notice the emotions, you didn't know what would happen next,” she said.

She didn't know what had happened to her husband for several days, a period she refers to as “a very awful limbo.”

For days she called hospitals and every other number she could think of to try to find Keith. She watched the clock and waited by the telephone, second guessing herself that she had checked everywhere.

After two weeks the authorities announced a shift from rescue efforts to a recovery of remains.

“That moment was horrible,” she said. “That's when you're told it's time to stop hoping.”

O'Connor Carey was left to cope. She had to overcome her emotions. She had to file paper work. She also had to tell a two-year old girl that her father would never come home.

“I felt a lot of anger, most of it for the sake of my daughter,” she said. “To break a two-year old's heart, to see her in agony and so confused, not understanding why daddy wasn't home.”

O'Connor Carey wasn't quite alone. Although she didn't know many people in Hoboken, that soon changed. Neighbors who had been strangers became new friends. Other mothers invited her and her daughter to play dates. Dry cleaners refused to take her money when she went to pick up Keith's dress shirts.

“I was in the best place I could be for the worst thing that could have happened,” she said. “I was in a community that wanted me to get back on my feet. I had the help that I needed.”

For the time being she decided to stay in her apartment, if for nothing else than for continuity. But having been so welcomed into the community O'Connor Carey chose to stay permanently. She has since remarried to John Carey, and together they are raising her daughter.

“Going through the 9/11 experience here in Hoboken," she said, "is what made Hoboken go from being where I lived to being my home."

Now, ten years later, O'Connor Carey hopes the panel discussion she is organizing will help Hoboken document and preserve its 9/11 history, and show how the community came together.

“This town changes constantly, and the story is going to get lost,” she said. “It's too important a story to let that happen.”

The panel will feature diverse cross-section of the city, including former Mayor David Roberts, who was mayor during the attack, Rick Evans, the incident commander at the then St. Mary's Hospital, Reverend Laurie Wurm, who had been All Saints' parish missioner, Ann Wycherley, a bartender at Duffy's Tavern and others. New York Times reporter and Hoboken resident Diana Henriques will moderate.

With the museum and library involved, the discussion will be recorded for posterity.

O'Connor Carey said she has no expectations for where the discussion will lead, but that she hopes it helps Hoboken to come “full circle.”

“Whether it's a tough topic or not, it's real, it happened and there are people living with it,” she said. “There's something to be learned by talking about it.”

While she says she will never forget or find closure, O'Connor Carey says she is ready for a new chapter, and let the community own the facts and the story of 9/11.

“I'm ready to have 9/11 to be less prominent in my life, but not my late husband. I need the focus to be on how he lived and what he was about, and less about how he died.”

The 9/11 Hoboken Remembers Organizing Committee invites residents to the 9/11 Hoboken Remembers panel discussion at All Saints Episcopal Church, Wednesday, September 14 at 7pm.