It's Forever Personal: A Widow Remembers 911

"Like" the Patheos Progressive Christian Page on Facebook to receive today's best commentary on Progressive Christian issues. For a New Yorker, to tell a 9/11 story is to tell a personal one.

I was born here.

I live here.

I was at work here on that beautiful Tuesday morning ten years ago. I was in the middle of engineering Doug Limerick's 9 a.m. ABC NEWS network radio newscast when the second plane roared into the World Trade Center, forever changing our lives.

During these ensuing years, the nation has paused in solidarity with us here in New York, at the Pentagon, and in rural Pennsylvania.

With hearts and hands joined, we have honored the nearly 3,000 people who showed up for a normal day's work only to perish in the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center or the fireball at the Pentagon.

We salute the passengers of United Flight 93, whose selfless act of courage—tail-spinning their hijacked airplane into a farmer's field—introduced the world to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and heroically averted a tragedy at the White House.

Our 9/11 remembrances include those first responders who ran into the chaos at Ground Zero, losing their own lives while answering the call for help. We also honor those first responders who survived their grim tasks to be rewarded with health issues.

Perhaps most importantly, 9/11 stories come from the surviving family members, such as my friend, Monica Iken Murphy, the courageous widow whose inner strength and hard-fought efforts helped make the 9/11 Memorial a reality.

Ten years ago, she was just Monica Iken, newlywed.

On September 11, 2001, she and Michael Patrick Iken had been married less than eleven months. That particular Tuesday morning began as had dozens of others: a good morning kiss for Michael in that half-awake state in which many a spouse sends off their other half to work.

"You said, 'I love you, have a good day.'"

The words are from Monica's eulogy for Michael, his memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral, his mourners still numb from the events of the previous week.

" . . . those words soothed me back to sleep."

The couple had met by sheer accident (or was it divine intervention?) during Labor Day weekend, 1999, at a neighborhood restaurant called Park Place. He was celebrating his upcoming September 8 birthday with his best friend. She and her best friend were out for a Saturday night on the town. He invited the ladies to join them for a drink, but they had other plans and declined.

Later, Monica would learn that after they left, Michael turned to one of his friends and said, "That's the girl I'm going to marry."

The following Saturday—September 11, 1999—Monica and Jen were again headed out. Already behind schedule, it was around 11 p.m. when they had to turn back: Monica had forgotten her ID.

This delay put a kink in their dinner plans, so the pair stopped in at Park Place. Monica noticed a lone man at the bar and sat down near him. While her friend ate, Monica struck up a conversation. The gentleman turned out to be the same guy—Michael Iken—whose offer of a birthday beverage had been politely declined by the ladies the previous weekend.

Iken had had a hunch Monica might stop in that evening; he had been sitting there since about 6 p.m., waiting.

"He began telling me his life story, and the next thing we knew it was 3 a.m.," she recalls.

They exchanged phone numbers. Within three months, he proposed. They moved in together that February and married on October 27, 2000, each for the second time.

A warm smile crosses her face. "Everybody thought we were crazy."

Today, even though she remarried—happily, to "a great guy" with two lovely young daughters—Monica is not shy about telling anyone and everyone that Michael, a trader at Euro Brokers, was/is her soul mate.

"Not long afterward," her eulogy continues, "the phone rung and I was startled to hear your voice. You said you were all right, not to worry and turn on the news. I said 'Okay' and turned on the news, in horror. You called again to assure me that you were safe and to call the family. I wished I could have told you to run from the building. To get out. But I didn't, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. You told me you were safe and I wanted to believe you. I never dreamt those would be the last words I would hear from you."

Within a few moments Michael, in his office on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower, would become a cherished memory. Days later, co-workers would tell her he probably could have escaped but that he had gone back to help a co-worker who, scared out of her wits, had taken refuge under a desk.

Along with a brother and a sister, Monica was raised in the Yorkville section of Manhattan's Upper East Side by a single mother. Monica would grow up to become a New York City schoolteacher and marry her college sweetheart, but for whatever reasons two people can't stay married, she was single again within five years.

But in 1983, Monica was a tall, skinny, energetic 13-year-old go-getter.

My wife would often sit on our stoop holding our 6-month-old son, taking in the afternoon sun while waiting for me to come home from work. And there would be Monica, stopping by with at least one friend in tow, "oohing" and "ahhing" at our son while getting in her pitch to babysit.

Eventually, but cautiously, Holly invited "Moni" to come on board, first as a "mother's helper," then graduating to babysitter, continuing when our daughter came along. As Monica grew older, Holly invited her to participate in childcare at Central Presbyterian Church . She ultimately stepped up to also teach Sunday School.

Through the years, the bond between Holly and Monica grew extremely strong. Both readily explain their relationship as mother/daughter close. Thus, it was no surprise that, on the morning after the attacks, when my wife answered the phone to the excited voice of a friend telling her that Monica was on TV outside a New York hospital holding a picture of her missing husband, Holly knew the only place to be that day was by her friend's side.

Monica's heartbreak and anguish were captured in a photograph that became the September 13, 2001, front page for Newsday , the Long Island newspaper.

She vowed that Michael—and everyone else who perished that day—would always be remembered, her gut instincts crying out to her that a memorial must be built on the 16-acre World Trade Center site.

"That site is very powerful. That's where he was—I'm drawn to it for that reason," she says. "For the group of us who don't have remains, not having a final resting place for our loved ones was so important in the beginning. My biggest thing was not being able to take Michael home, and I know that he would have wanted me to take him home."

A memorial project on the footprints of the downed towers became her mission. She established September's Mission , a not-for-profit organization that, according to its mission statement, works to ". . . support the development of a memorial park on the former World Trade Center site that ties into the overall redevelopment of Lower Manhattan" and is committed to ". . . working with the families, Manhattan residents, businesses and public officials to ensure that the future of the World Trade Center site not only honors the lives that were lost on September 11, but serves all New Yorkers for generations to come."

The foundation's efforts to bring about a bricks-and-mortar memorial began with a virtual one on its website, which allowed family and friends to post remembrances of their lost loved ones.

September's Mission also hosted and supported events such as Christmas and Halloween parties where 9/11 families—especially the children—could strengthen personal connections within this unique community, creating a positive, nurturing forum for healing.

Appointed to a seat on the board of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation with such luminaries as David Rockefeller, Robert De Niro, and NY Jets owner Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, Monica weathered the frequent storms and uphill battles of the early stages of this process.

With simple and clear reasoning—"That site is powerful to me because that's where he was. I want to be able to go there and honor him in that place where he was, not some foreign place"—she was especially effective in turning around those who sought to redevelop the World Trade Center site while erecting a token memorial in another part of the city.

September's Mission ultimately partnered with other 9/11 family groups, such as Voices of 9/11 , but Monica Iken's vision and voice remain clear and eloquent. Her efforts continue to be fueled by the same dedication, enthusiasm, and old-fashioned New York City chutzpah that helped her land those early babysitting jobs.

While others may rush to claim ownership of the physical memorial, it is Monica's mission and vision that gave the project a life and a soul.

"Michael is there. I have no remains," she says. "If it had taken 20 years, I would have taken 20 years. It's worth every minute, every second that I've spent on it. I wouldn't change a thing. I would do it all over again the same way. The memorial and museum gives us a place to go to pay our respects and lets the world do that as well.

"There's nothing more powerful than now being able to go there and actually see it to fruition . . . wow! The World Trade Center is hallowed ground," she continues. "Souls are resting in a peaceful, reverent, reflective space now.

"I was blessed in my life with an angel, and God gave me the strength to do this thing and He told me, 'You're gonna do it' and I said 'OK, whatever You say I'm supposed to do, I'll do,' and I just did it, and He led the way.

"I'm so pleased that we accomplished it—it's a great feeling to know we did it . . . we did it for them."

This article is excerpted from the Presbyterian News Service of the PC(USA) and is reprinted with permission.

It's Forever Personal: A Widow Remembers 9/11