Philly.com

Sunday, October 28, 2001

At ground zero, a widow comes to terms with her rage

Suzanne Berger of Bucks says she felt the presence of evil at the site.

By Jennifer Lin INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

"I'm ready," Suzanne Berger thought as the ferry thrummed up the Hudson River toward ground zero. As it approached the oddly vacant skyline, she tightened the strap on a yellow hard hat she'd been told to wear. She decided against the goggles and face mask.

She carried a new journal, the blank pages waiting for the words of remembrance and renewal that she hoped would come.

This would be peaceful, Berger had imagined when she set out last week from her home in Lower Makefield Township, Bucks County. She would stand at the disaster site. She would feel the presence of her husband, Jim. And she would pause to write or to genuflect.

An armed soldier met the ferry at the dock and escorted Berger and 50 relatives of other victims to a viewing platform a few blocks away. Berger, 38, a mother of three sons, climbed to the top for a fuller view of the wreckage.

Her knees buckled. She almost doubled over the railing.

"I just saw evil. I felt it," she said. "It surrounded me. It was so enormous, the hate. I felt the pain of every family. It was like nothing else."

And she felt something she hadn't fully experienced in the six weeks since her husband's death: anger, hot and raging.

Today, thousands of relatives will gather at ground zero for a memorial service. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will present each family with an urn filled with ashes from the site.

For all of them, this is the next step in a journey without guideposts.

In making the pilgrimage, many will retrace the commutes of their lost relatives. Amid the rubble, they will see the depth of destruction without the safe distance of television or photographs.

They may flinch at the stench. And they will surely grieve all over again.

Suzanne Berger wanted to see ground zero by herself before attending the larger memorial service. A federal agent assigned to keep in touch with her family as well as some others in the Philadelphia region made that suggestion.

On Wednesday morning, the agent picked up Berger, her sister, and her former parish priest.

Berger didn't tell her three sons – Nicholas, 8; Alexander, 6; and Christian, 2 - where she was going. They had already seen their father make a routine trip to the World Trade Center and not return. Berger didn't want the older ones to worry.

She took a teddy bear from each of the boys to place at ground zero. She also had a family photo from last Christmas, a portrait of her husband, a letter she had written, and the lyrics of a song that his younger brother had composed in his honor.

Nicholas also wrote to his father. "You will always be our hero, Dad. We know you didn't know the second plane was coming."

Jim Berger, solid, tall and commanding, was lauded by his coworkers for forcing them to evacuate their offices on the 101st floor of the South Tower. He was a senior vice president in the New York office of Aon Corp., an insurance company.

When the North Tower was struck, Jim Berger directed his people to leave immediately. By the time the second plane smashed through the South Tower, most of Aon's workers had escaped.

Suzanne Berger said the older boys couldn't understand why their father did so much to save his coworkers but not himself. She said they asked her, "Why didn't he come home for us?"

Berger is a strong woman, vivacious and articulate, a former pediatric nurse. She said she deals with her loss by staying focused on good thoughts. Daddy, she tells her sons, is in Heaven.

When she arrived in Manhattan late in the morning, she went directly to the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 in Midtown.

She joined other relatives of victims and took the ferry to the financial district, avoiding traffic and police barricades. They missed the morning ferry by minutes and had to wait for the next one at 2:30 p.m.

In the cavernous center at Pier 94, police officers immediately greeted her, steering her from post to post. State and federal agencies, as well as relief groups, had set up tables offering help, advice and information.

At the Social Security post, Berger filled out forms for collecting benefits. Elsewhere, volunteers explained workers' compensation, even how to write a will.

A half-hour before the ferry arrived, police ushered the group of about 50 into a room. A female officer briefed the visitors on what they would see. She handed out hard hats, goggles and masks and gave each person a sticker with World Trade Center written on it.

Two women who had lost relatives in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 explained that they would accompany the group.

On the ferry, some of the people introduced themselves. "My husband was a firefighter." "My son worked at Cantor Fitzgerald."

After the 15-minute trip, they disembarked at Battery Park, walked a few blocks, turned left, and approached the viewing platform. Berger looked up at the office buildings near ground zero and noticed faces inside peering down at them.

"Do you know what you're looking at?" Berger recalled a police officer asking her as she ascended the viewing platform.

She did not.

"You couldn't tell what went where," she said. "I looked to my right and I just crumbled. There was nothing left, just pieces of rubble all over the place.

"I thought I would find peace. As much as I believe Jim is in Heaven, I thought I'd feel some presence of Jim and God. I was so wrong. Any anger I had suppressed was coming out.

"I let myself go and I let that pain come in. Maybe for the past six weeks I hadn't been doing that. I was trying to be strong for my sons. I've been trying to see the good in this evil."

She stayed less than five minutes. It seemed much longer.

"You just felt frozen," she said.

Next to the viewing platform was a chain-link fence. There, she hung the family photos and letters amid the thousands of mementos of other victims. She set down a bouquet of flowers and the teddy bears from her boys.

On the return ferry ride, she stood on the deck and felt the wind on her bare arms. It felt good. The sky was still a brilliant blue, the late afternoon still warm. Then it hit her: She would not let the terrorists defeat her.

"I felt the evilness of what they did," she said. "I don't hate them. But they tried to rip everything from us and make us think goodness was gone.

"It was walking away from the site that was cathartic. I thought: 'You didn't get us. You didn't win.' "

On the way home, as the car crossed the Delaware River from Trenton to Bucks County, she looked toward the west. The scene was pink and blue and yellow, with huge clouds framing the sun.

And finally, she felt the presence of Jim.

"He was so talking to us," she said.

-- Anonymous, October 28, 2001