Remembering the desperate search for the missing on 9/11

0:00Earn your Farm D in as little as 33 months with West Coast University's hybrid program no bachelor's degree required. Eligible transfer credits may be accepted. West Coast University, as real as it gets, visit westcoastuniversity.edu. WCU cannot guarantee employment. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. At Bellevue Hospital in the heart of New York City, Dr. Danielle O'Frey and her colleagues were watching on TV as the disaster unfolded. That's where I first saw one of the towers fall and I remember it was I almost sang to my knees. I watched it go down and it was, I didn't see anything like that happened before. Dr. O'Frey was bracing for an influx of hurt and wounded people. Meanwhile, not far away, Canadian steward English was at his work in his graphic design studio and when he heard what happened, he grabbed his camera gear and headed downtown only to watch the south tower collapse.

1:00It went down in front of me and then the smoke came up the street. People were screaming and running away from it and my adrenaline kicked in and I just ran right into that smoke knowing that people needed help. As the day wore on, it became clear that many, many people were missing and unaccounted for. Here are Dr. Danielle O'Frey and steward English with the story of how so many New Yorkers tried to find their loved ones. There was a rumor that there were people in hospitals unconscious and so this sparked the hope of loved ones that they may actually find their loved one. Tell me about who this is in the picture. This is my mother. She worked for Aeon Risk Service and she was on the 100th floor. We've all want to find out who are you looking for. Hi, I'm looking for one of my best friends, Yvonne Bonombo. She's missing. She was a world trace onto one floor 94. She's missing with 11 people. Bridget.

2:00Bridget, our sister. I walked outside and it was surreal. At the time, Bellevue was under construction. So there was a construction wall that let the structure in the entire city block and it had already become papered over. People were putting up posters of the missing. Two blocks down the road from us is the VA hospital. They were plastered there and two blocks up the road and while you're hospital and they were plastered there, Bellevue had the biggest open space. My studio was at 28th and the Lex. And about two blocks away, it was a makeshift headquarters to report a missing person. Whole neighborhood was covered in missing posters. A lot of these posters were homemade and handmade and that actually gives it one of its moving characteristics. You can feel the love and the grief coming off the paper. It's really quite something. I just remember everyone was so happy in the photos and the contrast of the joy and of all ages and all nationalities and those personal details are tattoos, the earrings

3:03they were wearing. People were so desperate to have anything possibly could identify their loved ones. I just went out and I just wanted to document it very neutrally. I didn't want to put my interpretation or anything. So I just photographed it. It was about three feet away straight on and I just went click all the way along all these posters and ended up with about 300 shots. Tonya McDate employed at Marsh Technologies located building one 97th floor. She started work at 7.30 a.m. She's African American 25 years old, date of birth, missing firemen, NYFD Squad 1. His name is Thomas. Each 37 height 6 feet, weight 200 pounds, eyes blue tattooed. Please find our daddy written in like a child's handwriting. Picture of a man who's probably in his 30s and he's with his three children, young children. And they're at a birthday party and it looks like the little ones is about to blow out the candles. And so everyone's smiling and it was a happy time.

4:04I remember at the one year anniversary, I guess somebody saves the posters. I remember looking through those posters a year later and all those families just have so enrenched out of your life like that. And of course, I know that happens every day, everywhere in the world is always happening, but it's like they've evaporated. And you know, how do you stitch that hole in your heart? I mean, it obviously never goes away, but somehow you've got to stitch some of the edges together. Otherwise, you couldn't face another day. This makes a remembrance of a person who was loved. New York collectively grieved with the missing posters. You could go to these places and they were kind of sacred. It allowed someone's private grief and it allowed the rest of the city to share in that. Stuart English now lives in Toronto and is preparing to publish a book called Missing, a photographic document of the Missing posters of September 11, 2001. Dr. Daniel Ofre is a primary care internist at Bellevue Hospital and is also the editor

5:08and chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30am at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.