Interview - "More Years Without Her Than We Had With Her": Remembering 9/11 Victims 25 Years Later

0:00Welcome to this edition of the Mo News podcast. Part of our special coverage of the 25th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th. 2,753 people died at the World Trade Center site on September 11th 2001. That includes 343 members of the FDNY. 23 NYPD officers, 37 poor authority police officers and hundreds of people working in the towers or visiting that day and the crew and passengers of the two hijacked planes that struck the buildings. But these are not just numbers. These are real people with family and friends and loved ones. Some who left behind children or spouses who were pregnant, others whose lives were just beginning. So as we mark 25 years since the terror attack, there is now an entire generation that was either too young to

1:00remember the day or not even born yet and learning about it as facts and figures in school. So we wanted to remember the real people whose lives were cut short. And for that, I want to welcome Aaron Jackman, whose sister Brooke Jackman had just turned 23 when she was killed on September 11th. She was working on the 104th floor of the North Tower at Canterfetch Gerald. A job she had only started two months earlier. Aaron, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. And anyone who has listened to this podcast for a while might recognize Brooke's name because I do mention her every year on September 11th. So full disclosure, Aaron, you and I know each other. Your family grew up with my husband's family on Long Island. My husband and Brooke were extremely close friends from when they were toddlers. And my daughter was actually named in part for Brooke. But you and I have never really talked about this. So I do appreciate you doing this. All right, Aaron, when I

2:00asked you if you wanted to come on to talk about Brooke, you said yes. But it did take you a few days to think about it and get back to me. So I just want to kind of get in your head. Why was that all of these years later? Is it just still so difficult? It is still so painful and so difficult. And it's a lot as much as I wanted to do it. I just had to take a minute and just think like ultimately I knew I would do it. You are, as you said, a friend. Your family is like family to me. And most important, I like I do like to talk about Brooke and just it's 25 years. It's a multitude of emotions. It was such a painful day that day. Still talking about it, I feel the building in my chest even as you and I are just sitting here and I'm getting ready to talk about it. It's just, it's a lot physically, emotionally. It's a lot.

3:03So tell us about Brooke. She was everything. My best friend. She's the youngest of three. And was my brother and I a year apart and Brooke was five years after him. She was a little girl that she's after us. The little wait for me always wanting to be with us. I was always sort of pushing her away and then letting her come. Then she grew up and she was our best friend. And I can't believe I've lived 25 years without her in my life. I told myself that wasn't going to cry. She was my best friend. It was more than losing like your arm, a body part. It was everything. She was the first call of the day,

4:03the last call of the night. She was the call about everything. She was the call about nothing. She was the person I looked across the room and I just saw the eye. I knew what the eye meant. She knew what my eye meant. We had that sister relationship. I think sisters all over know about it. You either have it or you wish you had it and we had it. I mean, I can remember the day bringing her home from the hospital. I got my sister. You know, before car seats in all, I remember just she was being in my mother's arms in the car and holding my finger. I was just reaching over just the whole house. From that day, she was just my person. I just last year on the 24th anniversary, it was just shocking that we had now lived more years without her than we had with her. It's just that's a whole new set of her. A whole new set of

5:07I can't believe this. Now I didn't really tell you very much about her. All I told you about was my trauma. Let me tell you more about her. This should be about her. She was the friend everyone went to. She was the friend that was there for everyone. The stories and the letters we got how she would just if a friend was in need, she'd jump on a train and get to them. Like in the middle of the night, I can't, I mean to a friend in Trenton, to a friend in college, in Boston, they needed her and she got there to them. She was the one everyone called. She was the secret keeper. She was the best memory. She was like having, like she had a photographic memory so she could recall every date, every place, every outfit worn to anywhere, to anything she went to or did. She was always reading her books.

6:08From the time she was that little girl with her books, she was never without them. I remember my brother and I kind of being like horrified. Like she's such a bookworm. She brings them to seep over. She brings them to parties. She would read on her way to school, home from school, on the bus. She read everywhere. She read even the first job she had on the city streets walking I should share her backpack on and she would be going on the subway to get to work wherever she was going and she'd be reading her books. So she was never without her books. That's why when we decided to create this foundation, we knew it had to do. It was going to have something to do with reading. Her first job was at Canterfitt's Gerald on the bond agency desk, but she did want to become a social worker and she wanted to help children. After she was killed on September 11, we decided to do what she never got the chance to do.

7:10And that's how the foundation started. So we'll get to the foundation a little bit later, but I do want to talk about how you said that she wanted to be a social worker. So let's fast forward to right before the attacks. I know that she had just graduated from Columbia University. She was working at Canterfitt's Gerald, but after just a couple of months, she had decided that she wanted to go back to school to get her masters degree in social work, right? Correct. Yes. She was researching the social work schools and she wanted to go to Berkeley in California because they had an excellent social work school. She started to get the paperwork and the transcripts ready for Berkeley. The night before the attacks and she did have this long conversation with my mother. Because I think she was enjoying working on the agency desk at Canter, but I think ultimately she knew where her passions were and what she really wanted to do and that was to help others. And so she did have

8:11that whole talk with my mother that there was more to life than making money. So I know this is difficult, but could you bring us back to that day, the morning of September 11th? Where were you? How did you learn about what was happening? So I was a second grade teacher teaching him in Hatton on the west side. Just started my third year of teaching, second grade. And back then there were no phones in the classroom. There weren't even, there were some sort of phone system where the office could call to you, but you did not use that for anything. And that morning was a sunny, bright, beautiful September morning. And I was in the second grade classroom. One of my friends, a kindergarten teacher, had come running to the door of my class to tell me what had happened. She came running and asking where was my father? Where did he work? And I, he worked

9:11in Midtown. Nobody knew about my sister. She asked about where is my brother, where is my father? But was so new to the Wall Street job. Nobody even knew she was there. We went across the hall from my classroom to see what had happened. There was a TV in the library. And that was right across the hall from my classroom. And we turned on the news just as the towers collapsed, the South Tower, which I didn't know which was North or South. At the time, it was so traumatic to see. I didn't know if she was still inside or not. And there was a phone in the library. So we called my father. I called my father in his office. And he was crying. And he said, um, she's on her way up. She's on her way down. I spoke

10:13to them. I got up. He got a call in one of the last calls. I believe to the 104th floor. He did not speak to her, but he had many, many friends in that department. And one of them said, I got your baby. We're going down. And that's where they were trying. Obviously now we know that there was no way to go down. It was above the impact floor, but we didn't know anything then. And we were hopeful. We were hopeful. My father told me, and Ross is coming to me. That is my brother. And he said, come to me. So my brother was working a credential. I believe across the street from where my sister was. And he was one of the hundreds or thousands of people that were silently walking uptown. And I looked at my friend. I have a whole class of kids. What so we went to my

11:16principal and my principal told me to go and they would cover my class. By this point, tons of parents were coming to get their children. It was a bit of chaos there as well. And nobody really knew yet exactly what had happened. Or I certainly didn't. I walked. It was silent. I walked from 53rd and 10th Avenue to my father's office on 46th and Park. It was silent. I just, and I was in shock. And I got to his office and they let me up. People started to cheer on his floor because they probably called and said, your daughters on the way up. My father knew. He knew which daughter. He knew. But you know. And so for those that don't know, trading floors are open. Lots of desks and computers. And his whole office was

12:17still there because people were just there. And we were just in shock. My brother was already there. And with the three of us were clinging to each other. And we went into my father's. He also had an office off the trading floor, but it was all glass. So we could see them and make it see us. And we were in shock. And we didn't really know what to do. There were obviously no more phone calls by then. My father filled me in on what I had missed as I was walking across town. We decided the three of us would walk back downtown that she was going to meet us. So we had to get to her. And we started with every hospital first. And so this is 2001. There are cell phones.

13:18It's not iPhones, but we do have cell phones that we're not working. And everybody in the office gave us quarters. And we filled the pockets with quarters because there were still pay phones. I don't know who we need to call exactly. I don't know what we needed, but that this is what we did. And we started with the uptown hospitals. And all just like you see on TV when when like Grey's Anatomy, when they're waiting for an emergency, they're all outside waiting. All the whole staff, the nurses and the doctors are outside and they were. But nobody was there yet. If at all, I guess it's a bit of a haze. I'm trying to remember it as accurately as I can. But we did go by foot and we walked to every single hospital. And then we would walk down. And some of these hospitals are not even there anymore.

14:18But like NYU was there and still there. And like we went in there and we would just keep going in the the emergency looking for her. Because I guess there were a few John and Jane Does. It's all I can remember. And we, but it was not my sister. So then we walked back down and people are still silently walking uptown. And there's it's quiet. It's eerie. And there's the burning and the smells at the bottom. And you could see it as you're walking down and all the people are covered in ash. In fact, my brother was covered. And I was cleaning him off as we were walking. My father's feet were bleeding. We were just walking. We had another childhood friend of mine who was a New York police officer. We were stopping at p-phones to try and call his family to see if they knew anything to tell him about Brooke to to find Brooke.

15:20Um, the worst phone calls were the check-in calls with my mother who was now at our house. The house I grew up in with our family, with our cousins, with the Long Island cousins, my aunt. And she was waiting for news and she was trying to get in and you could not get in. And to have to report that we hadn't found her yet. There's feeling no ways to describe that. Um, I wasn't a parent then. I became a parent arch-later in life. I can't. It hits you all over again. The whole journey I'm trying to get out and just I know my loss. I know my sibling loss. I know, I know my brother's loss. I feel like it was, you know, a similar loss, can I? But to then become the parent and imagine their loss,

16:25even though I lived with them, there's just no words. So now we are headed down and apparently and I don't know how we knew about it. We're still going to the downtown hospitals and nobody is there. Then we are somehow told and I don't know who tells us this, that the Canter families, there's a, they're placed to meet. And somewhere downtown we are now. Where they are and there's lists. There's lists typed up names and lists of employee lists I'll assume. And we are looking for information. And that is what we're doing with other family members that were local, that were there. We also have cousins on bicycle that lived in the city at the time and friends on bicycle, Brooks friend. Also searching by bicycle to look for her. There is no news and no information. And yet we are have hope.

17:33We do not accept that she has gone yet. We are hearing rumors and stories that people are being found under the rubble. And we do not know if she is one of the Jane Does at the hospital. We do not know if she was taken out of the city to a hospital in New Jersey. We do. We are trying. We are trying to get information. And that is what we were trying to do. And is crazy now, is that sound or as like diluted, I guess, because we're intelligent people, my family. I am just, I think your body cannot let you accept it. I think are, I think somehow we were, we had hope. And somehow we were not ready for the news yet. So I know that over the next few weeks, there were people. We saw, I saw anyway pictures of people waiting at ground zero with photos of their loved ones holding signs. Were you part of that? Or did you know already that that Brook did not make it?

18:39So we were part of that. I don't understand how we didn't know by then, but we were searching for her for a very long time. One of our cousins made the posters, Brooks picture, just exactly like what you're describing, like missing, missing with her picture and her date of birth and her information. And my brother's phone number on it. And we put them up all over. And we brought them to the TV stations. My parents were, they had a place on the upper side at the time. And I remember I couldn't, I never went home that night to my own apartment. I stayed with them for a very long time. And a few days after this, whenever the posters were ready, I remember walking them over to the local TV stations. And they were being shown on TVs and we were hanging them downtown. And

19:45there was a whole walkway down there where everybody's posters were of everybody missing of such things. It sounds so unbelievable. It was such a hard to live through. It was, I don't know, but we were so supported and people were trying to help us. It wasn't, it was like almost overnight, the whole world became New Yorkers to stand with us, to help us. And I always do say that day. We experienced the worst of humanity in that terrorist attack. We've also since then experienced some of the best of that humanity as well. I do try to acknowledge that because it was very hard to even have your wits about you to be thanking people back then. It was just, I mean, even just the act of breathing or walking was physically painful back then, the shock, all of it. I mean,

20:47that night we had to then walk all the way back uptown. And the air also, right? Like you, there's that plume of toxic air. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, but we didn't know it. But yes, there was thick and gray and the burning down there. And all we could think was to get to her that she needed us. She needed us. She left a voicemail looking for my mother. And so my mother was sitting in the house that I grew up in on the answering machine tape, a cassette and listening to it and playing it. And we were just trying to get to her. She had opened that voicemail. She was scared. But she was giving coordinates on where she was on the 104th floor. So that she could be saved so that they could all be saved.

21:48She was the baby of the family, our immediate family of all the cousins. I just, everybody, everybody was trying to just get to her to save her. So was that voicemail that she left for your mom? Was that the last contact that you have? Yes. It's in the museum now, but yes. And it's just like, it's, you hear it all in the background. For my mother, I think the worst part was knowing her child needed her. Was looking for her, but she wasn't home. It took me on the phone for her. So that's a lot. And it's a lot as the sister or anybody who loved her, hear it, and hear her.

22:53In what we know now, we've heard and seen enough on the TVs, there were definitely those towers falling and crashing over. We're on the news. Like for a lot of days, every time you turn the news on, it was, there are no words to describe when you know your loved one is inside and you see it. And then it was mostly like, I was not me personally not reading everything, because for those first few days and hours, and I don't know for how long exactly, we were still trying to find her and get to her. And I guess it was rumors, but there were stories coming out of people being found alive. And then we were down at, on the west side, higher, like where the armor is over there. I can't think, but that's where they had set up for families to come to. Not just Canada for everybody.

23:58And I just, we would go there. My mother eventually got into the city the next day. We drove to the train. Like there were very few trains running. I don't know how she got in. She was trying to get in by boat from Long Island. She did get in on a train and we went and picked her up. And my father got out of the car to go get her and we watched from the car. They hugged each other and collapsed. These things stay with you. It all stays with you. It's just things that you never let yourself think about ever. You know, each day at the beginning, you put one foot in front of the other because you have to, you have no choice. Not going to let those terrorists win. They're not going to take her and then take what you have left. They're just not going to. It's not easy.

25:02So after we picked her up that day, we went back again looking in hospitals thinking maybe now today there'd be more news and there wasn't. And then that's when we were directed to these stations that were set up. I believe I was off the Westside Highway. So basically there are these spots that are set up for families and this is what you're doing every day. You're just going to these locations hoping for some type of information about Brooke and just keeping the hope alive that somehow she survived. Correct. And at some point, Giuliani was there who was the then mayor of New York City at the time and walks by my family and says it's now changed from a rescue mission to a recovery and my mother co-opses. So we know this now at some point but I don't know. I don't know what day that was when it happened.

26:12All of it is a big terrible traumatic blur I guess. And we are now somehow brought to some private room to start sending boxes around looking for her. I don't I don't. Facts is this is what I'm pulling up 25 years though. I don't know what we're looking for. I mean, I know who we're looking for but I don't know what the facts is or what we're trying to do. And I do know we do at some point bring her hairbrush over to give her DNA and and her toothbrush her hairbrush and I guess our DNA. So they could make a match. I remember she was 23 at the time. My brother and I running into her apartment like to go through it before my parents should see it just to make sure that wasn't I don't even know what we thought they might find. I mean, she could legally drink if that was there. There was nothing. She was the kid they got right. She was you know.

27:14So this goes on now for however long. And then is there a point where you say, okay, you know, we need to get back to some sort of normalcy or you know like at what point does it change where you just move forward in a different way? Takes a long time to move forward. My mother is having panic attacks. She can't breathe. Um, I'm having PTSD trying to get back to my teaching job. I mean, I don't go back for quite some time actually. How old are you at this point? It was 29. I feel like my cousins were trying to drive me there. I just I was getting shh. It was just terrible trauma all around in every way. It takes a very long time. We start seeing a trauma therapist as a family to try and like help us to function or breathe or

28:21come back to the world of the living. But this is actually, I guess I maybe I jumped ahead. Because I don't know how long it takes to get to that point. But we are now, we first start going, people had memorials because there were stories at the time and in the New York Times and in Newsday about Brooke and about all of all of the victims of September 11. But it comes out the shoes of Bookworm in the best possible sense of the word. And her favorite bookstore was near her first department. It was Borders Bookstore, which isn't obviously, I don't think it exists anymore, but and that was certainly not in existence. But it was right by the movie theater in Marie Hill over there and there's these vigils and there's candles. And pictures of Brooke and people are just coming to light a candle, run flowers. And these are

29:24all over the city. It probably for lots and lots of people who lost their lives that day. But so this is what we're doing. We're going there every day and tending to this memorial. And making sure the candles are lit and the flowers are good and brokse pictures are up. And the book store is amazing. They put this huge sign in about their best, their favorite customer. And these are people that are tending to this and doing this with us that we had never met before. That didn't not necessarily even knew my sister. Well, you mentioned the worst of humanity on that day, but also the best of humanity that came out. So are these, is this what you mean? These types of people who didn't even know Brooke, who did this. And I want to say over, we decide one night, oh, I guess at this point, we're understanding we accept, we begin to accept. She's not coming back

30:26we have a memorial vigil for her. And it's about a thousand people that show up and light the candles and stand with us. And they are there for us. And it is terrible and painful. And I don't know, I'm a measure of comfort. I don't know. It's something. We're doing something for her. That's what it is. It's giving us a purpose, a something to do. Well, we're still waiting because there's so much rubble and it will take years for them to get people recovered. However, they do. And so we have not happened. And I, from there, I guess my parents plan a memorial, the following month for my sister in a washer bay, well, my land where we are from at our temple. And it is overflowing and people are outside and their speakers set up

31:29as they all come to mourn for my sister. And it's, I guess at some point after that, where we are trying to function. And we decide they took everything from us. They took her life. And she was, we don't know where she would have ended up, which should be become that social worker, which she loved Wall Street. We don't know. We only know her intent. And the intent wants to become that social worker to help children. And that's where we decide to start this foundation. So tell me about the foundation. It's called the Brooke Jackman foundation. What exactly do you do? How does it work? We're a children's literacy nonprofit organization and it is started from her love of reading, her passion, and her desire to help children

32:35and her wanting to become a social worker. We combine this and decide at this point, our friends and family decide to do it for her, to do it she never got the chance to do. So that first year, we tour homeless shelters in New York City. And we realize so many children don't have the necessary tools they need to succeed in school. And the Brooke Pack is born. That year we gave out 100 Brooke Packs to children living in this homeless shelter that we visited. Today, we've given out hundreds and thousands of them. But they are filled with school supplies and brand new books. They are given on alongside our literacy programs. They are given out for special events in all different ways. They are given out as holiday presents. And for each way that we give them out, we don't necessarily give them the same way. So the starter school ones have the school supplies in the brand

33:39new box. The holiday gift ones have knitted hats and scarves and gloves alongside brand new books so that it's more and probably like a little present that we'll try and put in. So it's more like holiday festive for them. It's given out alongside our programs as they complete, complete family literacy or there are after school literacy programs so that we're always wanting to make sure that the children we serve have the necessary tools that they need to succeed in school. From the Brooke Pack, we realized so many children in underserved communities needed literacy support. And we created the Brooke Jackman literacy programs as after school literacy support where there is homework help fund literacy programs, there is arts and music and however is incorporated

34:42so that children we're not necessarily teaching of how to read but that they have the same things that their peers that are in wealthier communities have access to. So could be art programs music it could be all combined all that goes into living literate lives. From there we met the families and they wanted to help their children succeed in school but they didn't know how. The Brooke Jackman family literacy programs were born where we supported families and their children at the same time in evenings and we tried to remove every obstacle so that the families could come and bond with their children and learn how to help them and live more literate lives as a family. We provide dinner there's childcare for your other children. There are field trips to get library cards and to go to bookstores. There's all these things that were organically born from talking to families to see

35:49what they needed that they wanted out their children and they didn't necessarily know how. If they didn't have success in school if they were born to families with parents that didn't have access to education and didn't know how to help them we aim to break that cycle with family literacy. So do you tell them about Brooke when you do all of this outreach are they understanding who Brooke is and why you're doing this? Some do and some don't. We never created this to get a thank you or a pat on the back from them and I feel like it's a hard line to navigate because just really want to provide programs to help children and their families not necessarily to tell them an uproar. Inevitably it usually comes up particularly in our readathon or our book fairs or in some special events that most of the program directors I find if I come and sit in on a class

36:56or if I'm attending tell them I'm Aaron Jackman I'm Brooke's sister and you know what had happened. But for my family it's never we're not really looking for the thank you I am happy to tell them about Brooke usually on the readathon which is where we would bring in families and children from the programs it used to be at a Barnes & Noble downtown and that was our day to remember Brooke and all those who lost their lives on September 11th and we would bring New Yorkers some actors Broadway actors and firemen and police New Yorkers from All walks of Life to be to children and to celebrate literacy in Brooke's memory so that would be a natural way for it to come up and I always told them from the time she learned to read she was never without her books and we hope each child that we serve loves their books as much as our Brooke loved hers.

37:58So all of these years later I don't need to tell you that everything is so political now you know 9-11 itself has become so politicized even recently you mentioned earlier in this conversation that Brooke had left your mom that voicemail from the tower there was a social media post that used the voicemail without you knowing about it and I know you were just scrolling on Instagram and heard it so what is that like for you that this event that changed the course of your life that took your sister that was so traumatic that it's just being used in this way. It's hard it's not even a good description that night when I was just scrolling Instagram before that looking at like happy photos of like my friends and their kids I heard her voice on her worst day from there the phone call I described earlier it was so traumatic and debilitating to hear

39:04and I guess I don't think about it all the time that because it was such was so public when this happened and it wasn't just a specifically about Brooke that I forget that you know the whole world makes reference to it. So I think for me it is not about politics it's not about anything it's about losing my sister it's about us losing the baby of our family it's my parents losing your daughter to her friends losing their best friend it's their her cousins losing her cousins it's my child never knowing her only from pictures and stories that you know my nieces from not growing up without her it's there's no way to describe that I think

40:07every September 11th we go down because we will listen for her name my mother likes to make sure that if Brooke is being remembered we are there to hear it and for us it is just about Brooke and the other people that lost their lives that day and we stand for them and we are there to hear their names I just the political stuff I can't I can't that's not where I put myself I just this is my sister. So any lasting message for somebody who is listening to this who maybe doesn't have a personal connection to to 9-11 any last thing that you want to say or anything you want everyone to know about Brooke. I realize there's a whole generation of people that don't know what

41:09happened 25 years ago not just in New York but it was in the United States was an act of terrorism on in our city in our country nearly 3,000 people lost their lives that day and they were all special and loved and they were all a whole world to all of us who they belong to. I think every person should go to the museum and choose one any of them and go listen to some stories there's a kiosk you walk through there and you will see what happened that day and you will learn some schools I believe teach about it I'm sure not all I'm sure not enough it isn't about politics that are going on 25 years later today it has nothing to do with it I think go to the museum and go hear those stories. Well Aaron thank you for doing this I know it is difficult but as we were saying I

42:16think it's just incredibly important especially for young people listening who were young when it happened or weren't born yet to remember that these are real people who lost their lives and if you don't go to the museum and you don't feel like you have a connection to it think of Brooke let her be your person that you think about every September 11th and realize just how much was lost that day so Aaron thank you so much for for doing this I know it wasn't easy thank you thank you for having me and if you'd like to learn more about the Brooke Jackman Foundation the foundation website is Brooke Jackman Foundation dot org we've also linked to it in the show notes for this episode thank you everyone for listening