Riding the Rails of Memory and Loss

On September 11, 2001, Vic DeLuca was Mayor of Maplewood — just as he is today.

DeLuca — then as now — shares a bond with many other Maplewoodians: His life is wound around his daily commutes to work in New York City. Each morning, DeLuca heads for the Maplewood Train Station to take the train into Manhattan where he is president of the Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation.

On Sept. 11, DeLuca boarded the train early as usual. "I think the thing I'll always remember was how beautiful a day it was," said DeLuca. "It was one of those early fall crisp blue sky days — even though it was still summer."

He had been at his Midtown office for more than an hour when the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. "I was at my desk. My wife called." Like so many people DeLuca thought the initial crash was a small plane. "The last thing we thought was that it was a terrorist attack."

But after word of the second plane, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, the thought became, "What next?" DeLuca's office is just five blocks from the Empire State Building and near to Grand Central Terminal. "Paranoia started," said DeLuca.

DeLuca and staff dug out an old TV and found one station that worked. Later they went to the roof of their 12-story office building. "We watched the second building fall." After that, DeLuca's first concern was "getting people in my office home." His next concern was Maplewood.

DeLuca was in constant contact with Michelle Meade, then the Township Administrator. Meade's major initial concern was the fact that schools were letting out and many parents were at work.

Phones were largely out but email and the internet were working, so DeLuca began using MaplewoodOnline to communicate with residents. He remained in contact with Meade through intermittent phone calls and constant email.

DeLuca got home around 4 p.m. — after authorities determined that the tunnel was safe and resumed train traffic out of Penn Station. First DeLuca went home to see his wife Janey then he went to a local emergency meeting at Maplewood Middle School with Fire, Police, Public Works, school and health officials.

DeLuca participated in two meetings that day. The rest of the day he spent at the train station. "There were firefighters at the train station decontaminating people. People on the train were full of soot."

DeLuca was accompanied at the train station by Rev. Boyer of Prospect Presbyterian Church. The two greeted people as they came off the train. The Township was running jitneys and arranging car pickups for commuters. "A lot of people just wanted to be picked up." Jitneys were taking people home — including one driven by Eric Burbank who is now Public Works Director — but also offering to take people to the DeHart Center where the town had set up counseling.

DeLuca said that many families were at the train station waiting for loved ones to disembark. "It was incredible," said DeLuca. "It was a crowd of people. The embraces and the crying."

DeLuca and Boyer stayed until there were no more trains — until about 10:30 p.m.

As the day wore into evening, said DeLuca, "The whole thing at the station was eerie. As it was getting darker — there was no train schedule — you'd know a train was coming only because you could see the light through the trees, the glimmer of light around the bend."

The next day, DeLuca attended an early emergency planning meeting and an afternoon meeting. "You do these table top drills and hope never to have to put it into practice. It's rewarding when it works," said DeLuca. Town leaders also began planning for a "Community Connection" event to take place that following Sunday at Town Hall.

The event was a silent march from the library to the steps of Town Hall where there were readings and music. Approximately 3,000 people attended.

"It was incredible," said DeLuca, "when you looked out and saw all those people."

Recently, DeLuca has been looking at a copy of the speech he gave that day. His goal that Sunday was to recognize "what we had gone through," said DeLuca. His other goal was to ask "for us to be calm and recognize that the actions of a few doesn't mean we have to accuse their religion or belief system."

DeLuca said that this Sunday, his goals will be the same, but that there will not be much in the way of speeches at the Maplewood 9/11 remembrance at 2 p.m. at the Hilton Branch of the Library.

There will be no ceremony at the 9/11 memorial at the train station for Douglas Cherry and Kirsten Christophe, the two Maplewood victims of the World Trade Center attacks. But the memorial is very near and dear to DeLuca: He worked with mayors up and down the Morris & Essex train line to create a series of coordinated memorials in the towns at their train stations. All of them share the same text, which DeLuca wrote. They read, in part:

We shall never forget our friends and neighbors
who rode the rails with us that morning
but did not return that night.