When Where Who Frank Corley
T
he first time I ever went to New York City I was forty-three years old. Maybe that doesn’t seem that late in life to you, but when I was in college a lot of people were from the east coast, and my closest friends were from New Jersey, so I felt like everyone had been to New York but me. It was a Sunday afternoon; we drove in through the Lincoln Tunnel because the Holland Tunnel was closed. There were six of us in the car, college friends. Most of us had not seen each other for about twenty years. One of my friends had chartered a jet that flew four of us out from the Midwest. I can still remember the drive into the tunnel. The highway slows to a crawl through the little town of Weehawken, NJ. Just before the toll booths at the entrance to the tunnel under the Hudson River is a great 360° arc, dropping down and around. Tucked inside that cloverleaf was a small baseball field, apparently the home field of the Weehawken High School Indians. On the right field wall was painted an American flag, which of course on that day held special meaning. It looked like a set from the music video for “Glory Days” off Born in the USA. The field actually sat directly above the toll booths as the road slipped under the river. I had never seen anything like it, and I stared out the window at this scene from another culture. We entered the tunnel and crept into New York City. I did not know what to expect from this huge, strange place, so often the victor, but now a victim. It was late September, 2001, and we were coming to New York for the funeral of a college friend who’d been killed in the World Trade Center collapse after the attacks a few weeks before. Joe McDonald was the older
brother of my best friend Paul. Joe was a senior when we were sophomores in college, and he was the oldest member of a family which that year actually had someone in every class of the small college we attended. Joe was a senior; his cousin Bob—the guy who chartered the jet—a junior; Paul, my best friend, a sophomore, and his younger sister Nancy was in her first year. We were all good friends, ran in the same social circles. Paul and Nan were close enough to my wife and me that they were both in our wedding. Joe was very much the older brother to all of us: he treated us respectfully, like peers, but also taught us the ways of the world. He recruited Paul and me and several others to play on the rugby team. He had a great smile, an easy laugh that covered what a thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent man he was. Joe had been a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage firm which occupied many floors of the World Trade Center and which lost many, many people on September 11th. Joe worked there with another cousin, Jimmy, who had actually invited Joe to go golfing that morning. Joe had declined. I say we were there for Joe’s funeral, but it was really only a memorial service. There were no remains recovered yet, so there wouldn’t be a funeral for another five years. Joe was the oldest of seven children, a good Irish Catholic family: his father was a cardiologist, all the kids went to excellent colleges and are now very successful. Joe was a wonderful husband, the father of two girls who were just little kids at that time. We drove into the city the day after the memorial service, to see the city, have lunch, and get as close to Ground Zero as we could. It was a damp, misty day, and the smell and feel
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