Still haunted, rabbi remembers his family on 9/11

Rabbi David Cohen’s brother-in-law, Andrew Alameno, died on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Five years later, Cohen is less preoccupied with his memories of that day than he was in years past but, he said in an interview this week, “when the media’s attention turns back to it, it’s difficult not to be haunted and think about the experience of my brother-in-law on that day.”

Next week marks the fifth anniversary of that day, during which some 3,000 people were killed during the airplane hijackings and terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Though his feelings of grief have not changed, the intervals between feeling them has lengthened, said Cohen, a Fox Point resident and spiritual leader of Congregation Sinai.

For the first three anniversaries, Cohen said, his younger sister Sally, Alameno’s widow, and their children, Nina, almost 8, and Joe, 10, attended a memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.

Since then, their town of Westfield, N.J., has built a memorial to the 11 residents who died in the attacks. “Now Sally takes her kids there, especially on that day,” Cohen said.

While his sister is very much caught up in the day-to-day details of the lives of her children, the historical import of the events of that day are often on the back burner. Nevertheless, the absence of their father always has an impact on them, Cohen said.

“The intervening years have allowed them to more fully understand who their father was,” Cohen said. For Nina, then aged 2, getting to know her father has mostly been through stories, and for Joe it’s harder to distinguish what he remembers and what he has learned from stories.

“My sister has made sure that Andy is always part of [their children’s] lives,” Cohen said. Andy was an avid golfer and the New York Times wrote a profile of him, which was picked up by the Golf Channel, Cohen said.

His sister cooperated with the Golf Channel’s making of a program about her late husband so that her children would have a professionally produced television show about their dad.

One highlight of the newspaper article and the television show was that Alameno made a set of golf clubs for his son by hand. Cohen noticed that Joe had brought those clubs to the extended family’s summer vacation home in Maine this summer, he said.

Cohen’s sister Sally has spent considerable time working with local support groups helping the surviving spouses and children. “She has been recognized for that work,” he said.

Judaism has definitely played a role in Cohen’s response to the mass terror attack. “My faith and sense of God’s role in the universe was not shaken by the events of 9/11. Again and again it was confirmed in witnessing the power of the people reaching out to comfort others. It’s a choice but I’d rather see that than the evil.”

“Still, there isn’t a lot of outside wisdom that can soften the all-compassing sadness surrounding that tragic day.”

The stress of living in a world that was changed that day, that became darker and more insecure, has become a “constituent element of our collective psyche,” Cohen said.

“Some people dwell on those issues for 50 percent of their waking hours and some for 5 percent, but you would have to be pretty disconnected not to be affected at all.”