Task ahead: the kids

The many thousands of children left behind shows the staggering impact of the attacks

By AMY WALDMAN, New York Times First published: Sunday, September 23, 2001

NEW YORK -- From the Cantor Fitzgerald bond trading firm alone, the estimate is staggering: 1,500. Not the number of victims.

The children they left behind.

No list has been compiled of children who lost a father or mother at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, or on the four planes that terrorists took to fiery ends. But the number of bereft youngsters will probably stretch well into the thousands.

As families finally lay hope aside, accepting that those missing are gone, communities face an unprecedented challenge: how to comfort, and raise, all the children who lost a parent -- in some cases their only parent -- in an event of epic dimension.

The task is complicated by postwar social trends -- from high divorce rates to single motherhood -- that mean many of the families were already fragmented. And it is colored by the demographics of those lost. Thousands were in their 20s, 30s or 40s. While many had not yet started families, many others had already brought a new generation into the world.

It is a generation in its infancy, with possibly thousands of children under 12. Many are so young they will have no memory of their mothers or fathers, let alone how they died.

The death notices in New York newspapers hint at the scale of loss. "Loving father of Brian, Claire and Elizabeth.'' "Devoted father of Meryl, Kara, Alex and Jason.'' "Beloved father of Kevin, Kaitlyn, Brian, Brendan and Terence.''

Many of the hundreds of lost bond traders and firefighters had already produced large families. That now means large broods left fatherless. Some of the almost 350 firefighters who died left behind five or more children apiece. Two brothers in Westchester County who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald left seven children, from seven months to 14 years in age, between them.

As if their husbands had gone off to war, not work, vast numbers of young widows are faced with raising children alone. For some fathers left behind, it will mean reaching for female relatives to handle a daughter's first menstrual period, or first date. And if the attacks have created thousands of newly single parents, they also took many single mothers, leaving some children essentially orphaned.

Even seasoned grief counselors say they have no sense of how these children will cope with their loss and their upended lives. While the AIDS epidemic, for example, stole thousands of parents prematurely, it took years to do it, as did wars. This time, in one day, often in one neighborhood, scores of children are suddenly missing parents.

"We've never been faced with anything of this magnitude simultaneously,'' said Ruth Kreitzman, a social worker who counsels bereaved children with the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, the country's largest mental health agency.

"Even people who have dealt with bereaved kids a lot are struggling to understand now how this will be interpreted by children.''

Already, families are refiguring care-taking, and in some cases undertaking delicate custody negotiations. At the same time, relatives are struggling with how, and when, to explain to children their parents are no longer missing, but dead. And they are trying to tell them what death means.

Father Jim Cunningham was at Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn when Tara Stackpole told her five children that the body of their father, Fire Capt. Timothy Stackpole, had been found. "They look at that as a gift,'' he said, "because so many people don't have that.''

Luis Espinoza, whose wife, Fanny, is missing, said his 11-year-old son is still hoping. The boy tells his father that he is trying to concentrate in school but cannot stop thinking about the twin towers. He asks Espinoza questions like, "Why didn't those buildings have parachutes?'' Or: "Why didn't you tell her to quit? She wanted to quit before.''

"I said I didn't know this was going to happen,'' said Espinoza, who lives in Teaneck, N.J.

Espinoza says his children -- he also has a 9-year-old daughter -- are the only thing that keep him holding on. "Sometimes you want to commit suicide,'' he said. "The reason I'm not doing it is my kids.''

It appears that many more men than women were lost in the attacks. New widows like Minerva Mentor-Portillo are just beginning to grapple with how they will raise children alone. Mentor-Portillo has two sons, 5 and 7, and has been working toward a graduate degree in social psychology. She must now figure out on her own everything from the family's financial future to child care.

Single mothers were also lost.

Among them was Rosa Julia Gonzalez, 32, who used her last phone call from the World Trade Center to ask her sister to care for her 12-year-old daughter. Elizabeth Darling's 2-year-old son will go live with his father, according to Earl Darling, Ms. Darling's father.

Hector Tirado Jr., a firefighter, left five children, ranging in age from 6 to 11.

"Their sense of loss is palpable,'' said Tirado's uncle, Robert Tirado. "You can just be with them and they're all sad. We try to make them play with each other and other kids, like normal kids, but you can't avoid it.'' Hector Tirado had separated from his wife three years ago. With his death, "that's losing their father twice,'' his uncle said.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2001

Answers

a tragedy within a tragedy.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2001

But I grew up with a whole generation who lost one or both parents in the bombings and military actions of World War II and our generation was pretty damn good. Maybe they should find out from the Brits and other war-torn nations how they nurtured those kids. (Bear in mind we had no financial help.)

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2001