A Heart Moved by Lost Friends, Neighbors September 23, 2001 LATE MORNING, the day these paragraphs were due, I was rereading e-mails when I heard an unusual noise outside my work den. I figured, "Bird. Maybe squirrel," and ignored it. I was struggling with a personal challenge- trying to avoid writing about tragedy while immersed in it, surrounded by it. But the newspaper stories and the e-mails kept vacuuming up my attention and spirit. The first e-mail was from Brian Farrell of Wantagh, whom I've known about 20 years and with whom, in 1989, I traveled through Ireland, meeting members of his family and searching for my own. I know his brothers, Dennis, Tim, Kieran and Terrence. I'd written about Terrance, of Huntington, when he was a New York City transit cop, before he switched to the fire department. Brian's e-mail was typed in uppercase letters, as if he were wailing, or keening. "My family lost a real hero this week, my brother Terry. You have written about him in the past, have met him several times. He was the first man into a septic tank to try and save a father and son in Dix Hills who had died from fumes while working on the tank. All the newspapers and networks made a big thing out of his donation of bone marrow after his donation actually saved a little girl on the West Coast. But the best part was that we, his family, found out with the rest of the public because he just never bragged about stuff like that. The donation process for giving bone marrow is very painful and the discomfort lasts up to a week, but he never said a word. "Tales of his bravery with the city fire department could fill volumes as many of his fellow firefighters from Rescue 4 will tell you. Even now with so much horror, a fire department officer visited the house for the normal 'comfort to the family call' but told us that there is now only one of five FDNY fire rescue trucks left working. It seems Terry moved the truck out of harm's way just before he entered Tower Two of the WTC. We wish he would have moved himself. I'm just writing to you because I really don't know what else to do. My heart is broken. I miss him so much." The next e-mail I re-read was from Heather O'Neill, daughter of Tom O'Neill, of Huntington Bay, with whom I played ball in Amityville around 40 or 45 years ago. A casual acquaintance of his but a friend of the family, I had seen Tom most recently at the gathering following his mother's funeral, the day after Labor Day. "My grandma was truly a free-thinker," Heather's e-mail read. "She was artistic, open-minded and gentle." Mary Alice O'Neill, retired chairwoman of the English department of Amityville Memorial High School, had died on Aug. 30. She was survived by her husband, Thomas, also a retired teacher, and seven adult children, most of whom I know, some well. Peter, for instance, is married to the former Jeannie Kretz, one of the 10 Kretz children whom I have known almost fraternally since around 1950, when at the age of 4 or 5 I struck up my first-ever friendship with the oldest sibling, Steve. Steve lives around the corner from me to the west, next door to his sister, Mary McLoughlin. Their uncle, Billy Kretz, lives on the corner to the south; Uncle Billy's son, Bill, lives on the corner to my east; Peter and Jeannie O'Neill live three houses north of me, and Peter's sister, Peggy Gonser, lives next door to me. Peter and Jeannie have three children, Peter, Bridie and Tom. My son, Dan, plays soccer with Tom, and with Matt Gonser, Peggy's son. A story appeared in Monday's Newsday about the Tom O'Neill of my generation, telling how he and five partners had left Bear Stearns in 1988 to start an investment banking firm, Sandler O'Neill & Partners, which was located on the 104th floor of Two World Trade Center. During the firm's early years, Tom's nephew, young Peter, attended grammar school and then Holy Trinity High School. I used to wave to him, school mornings, at the bus stop. He might have been the most responsible and self-directed kid I ever met. The son of strict parents, he nonetheless was allowed to ferry other kids across the bay to the ocean beaches in a small boat when he was about 11 years old. I didn't let mine go alone until they were 13. Peter and Jeannie managed to send young Peter to the exclusive Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass., because he wanted to major in business and work downtown. After graduation in June, he joined Sandler O'Neill. I last saw young Peter the night of his grandmother's funeral, at the nearby Bulldog Grille, in Amityville. He sat at a table with his sister and his cousin, Jessie O'Neill. He wore round, rimless glasses and looked older than his contemporaries. A fellow Long Island Rail Road commuter saw me shake hands with him and later told me, "You should see him on the train in the mornings, folding The Wall Street Journal into quarter-pages, devouring it like an old pro, like he's been at it for years." Peter is among the missing. The unusual noise outside my den turned into a human face at the bottom of my screen door, and when the face said, "Hi," I feared I would suffer a coronary. "I thought you might need a little of this," said my daughter, T.C. Marino. I opened the door, and she handed me her daughter, Jessica, who will be 1 year old on Dec. 18. Jessica fit into my neck and clavicle like a missing part. She looked at me and said, "Mmmba." So I said, "Mmmba." She said, "Baaahaah." So, I said, "Baaahaah." We chatted that way for a long while, reminiscing together about T.C. as a baby, and then about my kids Colleen and Jed and Dan, whom I called "Mmmmmbaaahah." In the living room, Jessica found the guitar case and fingered the latches until I opened them and took out the 38-year-old instrument. "I used to sleep in this," her mother said, placing Jessica into the opened case. I sang, "Red Light Green Light" to her, and she honored me with a transfixed stare. It was the best visit; the best, the best. Later, in the driveway, as T.C. fastened Jessica's child safety seat, I watched as a white van pulled up to the house next door. A man carrying red and white roses knocked on John and Peggy Gonser's door, and, getting no response, he looked toward me. I said, "Yes," signed for the flowers and promised to deliver them. He thanked me. He was sweating profusely. "We're just so busy," he said. I nodded and took the flowers inside.

Return to Terrence Farrell Home Page