Over the past 20 years, ABC has periodically gathered a group of women who were pregnant when they lost their partners in the Sept. 11th attacks. This summer, the group reunited with DianeSawyer to share their perspectives on loss, grief and resilience.
On the eve of the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, the powerful new event special from DianeThe last memory Scott Larsen has of his late father is eating breakfast together on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.firefighter, left home for what would be the last time.
Our most recent gathering took place in late June of this year, where this group shared their perspectives on loss, grief and resilience.Joshua PowellPowell was 5 years old when is father, New York City firefighter Shawn Powell, was killed in the terror attacks. Now grown up, Powell said he wants to become a doctor.
“Being a doctor, for me, or even being a surgeon, would be that same thing: running into the burning building. Running toward something that people are running away from,” he said. “Like when this pandemic happened, a lot of people were running away, but there were many people who ran toward it. I think that's what I want to do.”NYPD Officer Ramon Suarez died after rescuing at least two people at the World Trade Center.
“When he passed away, I told myself, I was like, ‘I'm going to be where my dad was. I'm going to follow his footsteps,’ and I wasn't going to let anything get in my way. And I made sure of it,” she told ABC News. “I made sure nothing was getting in my way, I made sure I did whatever I can to get to where I am right now, and I made sure that I had his shield on me to make sure that name and that shield keeps going.”“It feels good.
He wrote and recorded a song about his father called"Thinkin’ About You" when he was just 12 years old, and said he sees his dad “as a hero.” “She looks just like him, physically -- her face, her hair texture. She looks just like him,” Ursula Andrus told ABC News. She said she’s envious that her older sister, Lexi Szurkowski, was able to know their father and still has memories of him, even though Lexi was only 3 years old when her father died.
His now 19-year-old daughter Leah Quigley was never able to meet her father. She said she has felt the reverberating pain of his death throughout her life. “Grieving is so circular,” she said. “It's hard to tell somebody that when they're going through it, or starting to go through it, because it really changes your whole life... But there's so much happiness that can be had, even though it seems like you can't get there.”
For years, the couple tried to conceive and had three miscarriages. In 2001, Paulina became pregnant with their son, Joshua Cardona. “In a way I do feel like we are a little stronger because we lost someone from our family,” he added. “But I think my mom is stronger than me because she lived it, she lived the trauma.”For 15 years, Joseph Reina, Jr. went to work at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center.“It feels like it was just yesterday that it happened. And then when I look back and I look at pictures, I feel like it was so long ago.
“[Tim] does live on in Danny's eyes, in his smile, in his humor, and it's really fun to see. When he does it, I want to tell him. You're doing it again, there's your dad again,” said Katy Soulas. “[My husband] was excited for both boys,” Kimberly Statkevicus told ABC News. “It just makes me grateful for the years that we had.”“[In] the early days, you wake up every morning and for a split second you forget that you're living this nightmare and you think it was a dream, and then you realize it wasn't and that you're in the middle of this,” she added.
“I asked him questions, he said he was proud of me and that I was doing great and all the stuff like that. I woke up just like, ‘Whoa … Mom, I swear I just talked to him,’” she told ABC News.“[My husband and I] were in a room. It was all white and we were both in white. There was no furniture and he was just hugging me from behind,” she said. “We were sitting on the floor and it just felt very peaceful and like he was saying, ‘It will be OK, you got this.’ ...
“So it's not something that you can just forget about, it always lives in you. But you just have to learn how to live every blessed day,” she added. “I want to remember him as the Victor that I knew.”Connor Gavagan pictured with his mother Jacqueline Gavagan in 2021.“[Connor] is the spitting clone of my husband,” Jacqueline Gavagan told ABC News. “His personality and his hair and his eyes are my husband and his personality and everything. The whole package.
At the time, Elaine Lyons was pregnant with Mary -- she was born two months later. Their oldest daughter, Caitlyn Lyons, was just 15 months old. Sara Casimes said she couldn’t have done it alone, and took some comfort in the fact that after the attacks, the country seemed to come together. “I had to change diapers, they were crying. They needed to be fed. I had babies on each breast. I didn't have a choice. It was the best and worst of everything because … everything relied upon me getting up so I got up.”Steven Russin pictured alongside a 2021 photo of his daughters.
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