In Memoriam: Of Love and Honor

Muriel Siskopoulos: 1941-09-11-01

"Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf." Toni Morrison

For Muriel Siskopoulos, the birth side of that leaf presented itself on a fall afternoon in 1972. With an eight year old son and a five year old daughter already in tow, Muriel welcomed her twin daughters into the world. Born on September 11, 1972, the girls were named Laura and Terri. Every year on their birthday, Muriel would call the girls, in the order they were born, to wish them a happy birthday.

But on the girls' 29th birthday, September 11, 2001, the phone call never came.

Muriel Siskopoulos was probably like so many women we know. She was a mother and a grandma, 60 years old. She was working as a secretary just a few years from retirement. She didn't have to work, but she liked to earn a little more money so she could splurge on family members.

"She took shopping to a new level," said Mark Siskopoulos, her husband of 11 years. And by all accounts, her children and grandchildren were regular recipients of Muriel's beneficence. When she wasn't buying something for them, she was knitting something for them.

On the morning of 9/11, Muriel was at her desk in the offices of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, located between the 85th and 88th floors of the World Trade Center's south tower. At 8:46am, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower. Many in the south tower began to evacuate the building. Muriel was last seen boarding an elevator to leave. But she never made it out, because at 9:03am, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower between the 78th and 84th floors. In addition to the twins and husband Mark, Muriel was survived by son Thomas, 37, daughter Donna, 34.

To read the memorials to Muriel Siskopoulos is to glimpse devastating loss.

"It has been 2 years since I have last spoken to you and I am still unsure as to how I should feel." wrote daughter Laura, the older of the twins, on September 11, 2003. "Like Terri, how ironic it is that you were taken away from us on the same day you gave us life. I was waiting for you to call me last night to be the first person to wish me happy birthday, but that never happened...."

No one is ever prepare for sudden loss. And no one can accept when loved ones are wrongfully stolen from them. As much as the life of Muriel Siskopoulos reminds us of love, family, and a life fully lived, so too her death reminds us of the pain that loved ones endure when tragedy emerges. But Longfellow reminded us that the soul is enduring.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

So as we remember those lost on that awful Tuesday five years ago, let us remember Muriel Siskopoulos. And if you should light a candle today for those victims, light one for Muriel. And if you should say a prayer, say one for her family and friends who struggle on. And remember the plaintive call of those for whom lives were shattered, but whose hope ventures on.

Who else am I going to call when I am sick? Who else can you hang up on and still laugh about it? Who else can make you smile when you really don't want to? Only your mommy can get away with these things because she knows how to make everything all better.

No matter how old I get, I will always be your little baby (even if it is by 4 minutes).

I Love You and I can't wait to see you again. (Someone needs to make sure I am all ironed and my ponytails have little curls in them)

Forever your baby -
Laura

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Colonel Cyril Richard “Rick” Rescorla (May 27, 1939 — September 11, 2001)

Born in Hayle, Cornwall, May 27, 1939, to a working-class family, Rescorla joined the British Army in 1957, serving three years in Cypress. Still eager for adventure, after army service, Rescorla enlisted in the Northern Rhodesia Police.

Ultimately finding few prospects for advancement in Britain or her few remaining colonies, Rescorla moved to the United States, and joined the US Army in 1963. After graduating from Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1964, he was assigned as a platoon leader to Bravo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, Third Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Rescorla’s serious approach to training and his commitment to excellence led to his men to apply to him the nickname “Hard Corps.”

The 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry was sent to Vietnam in 1965, where it soon engaged in the first major battle between American forces and the North Vietnamese Army at Ia Drang.

The photograph above was used on the cover of Colonel Harold Moore’s 1992 memoir We Were Soldiers Once… and Young, made into a film starring Mel Gibson in 2002. Rescorla was omitted from the cast of characters in the film, which nonetheless made prominent use of his actual exploits, including the capture of the French bugle and the elimination of a North Vietnamese machine gun using a grenade.

For his actions in Vietnam, Rescorla was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star (twice), the Purple Heart, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. After Vietnam, he continued to serve in the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of Colonel by the time of his retirement in 1990.

Rick Rescorla became a US citizen in 1967. He subsequently earned bachelor’s, master’s, and law degrees from the University of Oklahoma, and proceeded to teach criminal law at the University of South Carolina from 1972-1976, before he moved to Chicago to become Director of Security for Continental Illinois Bank and Trust.
In 1985, Rescorla moved to New York to become Director of Security for Dean Witter, supervising a staff of 200 protecting 40 floors in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. (Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter merged in 1997.) Rescorla produced a report addressed to New York’s Port Authority identifying the vulnerability of the Tower’s central load-bearing columns to attacks from the complex’s insecure underground levels, used for parking and deliveries. It was ignored.

On February 26, 1993, Islamic terrorists detonated a car bomb in the underground garage located below the North Tower. Six people were killed, and over a thousand injured. Rescorla took personal charge of the evacuation, and got everyone out of the building. After a final sweep to make certain that no one was left behind, Rick Rescorla was the last to step outside.

Rescorla was 62 years old, and suffering from prostate cancer on September 11, 2001. Nonetheless, he successfully evacuated all but 6 of Morgan Stanley’s 2800 employees. (Four of the six lost included Rescorla himself and three members of his own security staff, including both the two security guards who appear in the above photo and Vice President of Corporate Security Wesley Mercer, Rescorla’s deputy.) Rescorla travelled personally, bullhorn in hand, as low as the 10th floor and as high as the 78th floor, encouraging people to stay calm and make their way down the stairs in an orderly fashion. He is reported by many witnesses to have sung “God Bless America,” “Men of Harlech, ” and favorites from Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. “Today is a day to be proud to be an American,” he told evacuees.

A substantial portion of the South Tower’s workforce had already gotten out, thanks to Rescorla’s efforts, by the time the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the South Tower at 9:02:59 AM. Just under an hour later, as the stream of evacuees came to an end, Rescorla called his best friend Daniel Hill on his cell phone, and told him that he was going to make a final sweep. Then the South Tower collapsed.

Rescorla had observed a few months earlier to Hill, “Men like us shouldn’t go out like this.” (Referring to his cancer.) “We’re supposed to die in some desperate battle performing great deeds.” And he did.

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Muriel, I will call Donna and Mikey. Love, Tim

Addendum: Several things. First, I took these memoriams from websites I do not frequent but chose to use them because they expressed some powerful themes. I was originally going to put the New York Times obituaries in the posting but when I looked at the copywrite text, I saw that I would have to pay for their use, and that seemed just too terrible to consider. Their lives, especially in the manner of their last moments, well, it's just obscene to think that any would have to pay for that usage.

Second, I did not personally know Rick Rescorla, as much as I would have liked to. When I finished my sitting ritual this morning, the idea for this post came to me "in a gush" and both names came to me to be included.

I learned of Colonel Rescola through a good friend of mine, Dr. Carolyn Smith. She is a trustee of Oberlin College and during one of their trustee meetings, she was talking to the person next to her and it came up that she has done extensive work with survivors of trauma and 9-11 came up. It turns out that the person next to her was a pulitzer prize recipient, James Stewart. He took the opportunity to give her an autographed copy of his book about Rick Rescorla: The Heart of a Soldier.

I like to think the reason why both of these names came together in my mind this morning was that one of the reasons why he chose to re-enter the South Tower on that fateful morning was to try and bring Muriel out.