From "A Legacy of Madness:" How 9-11 Was A Turning Point In Our Lives

This excerpt from A Legacy of Madness: Recovering My Family From Generations Of Mental Illness, my book that is being released Oct. 3, talks about how the Sept. 11 attacks played a pivotal role in my mother's care. This passage is from chapter 11, pages 248-250.

We pulled her out of Ancora [Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey] after a month. Then we put her in Rose Mountain, the nursing home ten minutes from my house. During the summer of 2001, I visited her twice a week. My wife visited her once a week. Whenever I went there, I listened to her rattle on about how she wanted to go home, the same way she always had before. She did it so much, and for so long, that I grew numb to it. I had stock answers for everything.

"I understand," I told her. "I know. It's not the best situation."

I'd often bring Tommy with me and he'd play under my chair. I'd stay for nearly an hour. Then as I got up, she'd always say something to stop me.

"So how are you, my dear?" Then I'd stay for another hour, talking about myself, before we'd start talking about her again.

Occasionally, I took her on little trips, usually over to Fuddruckers restaurant in New Brunswick, where she'd get a cheeseburger. She and Tommy, who was then three, would sit next to each other and eat the same thing. Both of them would eat it quickly. At the end of the meal, they'd both look up to me, their eyes sweet and puppy-like, and say the same thing.

"Can I have a cookie?"

For the first time in years, my mother was calm. The whole time she was at Rose Mountain, she didn't have a drop of medicine. The best medicine, we came to see, was the visits. I even had her come to the condo we had bought in Metuchen to stay and talk. She'd climb the steps, hanging onto the railing that my wife had installed for her. Then she'd sit in the living room and follow the same routine: complain for nearly an hour, notice when I got antsy, show some interest in me and stay for another hour.

My father noticed the difference, too. At the end of August, he decided to take her back. I questioned it at first. But this time, he seemed deeply committed. My wife and I had sought to remove the stress my mother had lived with for three years, ever since she came out of the hospital and felt the stitches from her bladder operation. Now my father wanted to give it a try.

* * *

At first, the arrangement looked like it wasn't going to last. Once again, my father complained that my mother was being aggravating and irritating. He even hinted that he may have to call 911 again, because it was just getting to be too much. She was still repeating, thought not as severely. She was still worried about her bladder, though not as badly.

But when the September 11 attacks happened, just two weeks after my mother left Rose Mountain, my father no longer complained. Perhaps he realized there were people worse off than him. She stayed there, at home in Point Pleasant, until January 18, 2003, living relatively peacefully, and as time passed, she never said much of anything anymore.

She repeated, but she seemed too tired to continue very long. She stayed in her chair all day, watching the television, often with the sound way down. When we saw her, there was no more of the pleading. There was no more of the helplessness. She was a mother again.

She even let us kiss her again, usually behind the ear, but it was still a kiss.

9/11, kids and why I may be lucky

The thought seemed so absurd that I was afraid to bring it up.

It went like this: I saw the roster of kids playing on my son's 8-year-old baseball tournament team, and I noticed that Jon was the youngest. By far. By three months. No other child was born after October 2001.

No November. No December. Just Jon in January.

Four of the 12 were in second grade. The Little League age cutoff was April 30, so every single child - except for Jon - was born within that short time frame, between May 1 and Oct. 31, 2001.

That's six months, the latter two being the months that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

I've wondered for a while if there was a connection. I witnessed first-hand the trauma people went through at the time, and in the moments and days and weeks that followed the attacks. I remember smelling the odor of ash, burnt rubble and flesh and thinking, God, this can't be good for me, or anybody.

Frankly, when I've raised the issue, I've gotten stares and some polite acknowledgments. "Oh, that's interesting, Tom....anyway, what else is new?"

But I still think about it, from time-to-time: What kind of impact did 9/11 have on pregnancies? Did it lead to more miscarriages? Did the trauma suffered by so many cause the premature birth rate to go up?

How was it that Jon was the only one born in 2002 who was able to play on that team?

Recent studies have shown that, perhaps, the idea isn't so ridiculous and, in fact, the impact on pregnancies could be a microcosm for the stress felt by the nation as a whole.

Indeed, the studies provide what may be the most stirring and profound evidence so far that so many, and perhaps the nation as a whole, suffered from a form of Post-Traumatic Syndrome when they learned of friends and family who died in the attacks, or watched people suffer on T.V.

Pregnant women were vulnerable because of the stress they felt that was conscious and unconscious. A study released in May said the stress felt by women after the terrorist attacks may have contributed to an increase in miscarriages of male fetuses in the United States.

The BMC Public Health journal said the male fetal death rate also increased in September 2001. Miscarriages jumped 12 percent that same month.

My wife felt the stress, too, but others seemed to feel it more. I remember people going up to my wife at the time and saying, "How do you feel about having a baby in a world like this?"

I remember thinking, please, don't say that to her. We plan on seeing this pregnancy through.

PTSD certainly can also take years to develop. We may never really know what kind of long-term impact 9/11 really has had on the nation for decades, after more studies researching the same or different things come out.

But these studies, at least, provide a start.

The authors of the BMC report, for instance, suggested that communal bereavement may have prompted an increase in miscarriages of boys, because male fetuses are believed to be more sensitive than females to stress hormones.

Just the other day, I heard Annie Murphy Paul talk about it on T.V., and I felt a little more validated.

She addressed it in her recently published book: Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, where she talks about how "many our individual characteristics - our health, our intelligence, our temperaments - are influenced by the conditions we encountered before birth."

She looks at how people "gestated" during the Nazi siege of Holland in World War II and how people are still feeling its consequences decades later; how household chemicals can harm a developing fetus; and how pregnant women who experienced the 9/11 attacks "passed their trauma on to their offspring in the womb."

This isn't about me, of course. I don't care if I feel validated. I just hope there are people out there who don't forget what happened, and try to ignore the long-lasting impact that that day has had on this country.

I said in a previous article that I feel as though this nation has been in a collective funk since Sept. 11, 2001. My hope is that the more research that's done to look at how we think feel and act, the better we can handle ourselves in the future.

The studies also make me look at my son, and seeing him excel in school, sports and just about everything, and say, geez, I'm a lucky guy.

Coping with the greatest tragedy

As I wind down to my last day at The Bergen Record, I think there's something fitting about the fact that my last assignments have all dealt with Sept. 11, the World Trade Center and the news event that may never go away.

Two days ago, I watched a memorial service in Demarest, N.J., watching men and women, young and old, cry at the thought of this tragedy. I saw police and firefighters in full uniform, saluting as "Taps" was played on a trumpet.

I listened to the mayor, a man around 60 years old, barely able to voice his prepared remarks. He was a big man, the size of a linebacker who could have crushed Walter Payton in his day. But he rushed away from the lectern just after he finished, covering his face so no one could see his red eyes and the tears running down his cheeks.

Several weeks ago, I toured the site where the memorial and One World World Trade Center are going up, and I saw it again - emotion, raw emotion coming by people who never would have displayed it before the attacks. They were hardcore construction workers who were proud, and even tearful, as they helped make Ground Zero alive again.

Every time I go there, and after every annual memorial service, and after every controversy regarding Muslims and mosques and what have you, I think: How are we going to get over this? Are we going to get over this? How are we going to heal ourselves?

I think about what a friend mine, Michelle Parisi, said the other day, and she nailed it, because it speaks to the genesis of this website, as well as the "Coping" column I did for The Bergen Record from 2003 to 2008.

"I think when you are faced with a great tragedy, you are forced to deal with it, and you find ways to cope," she wrote on my Facebook page. "The best case is you find healthy ways to cope."

I started writing about mental health because of my family, but I also felt an obligation as a journalist to talk about "coping" with all forms of stress and tragedy after the terrorist attacks. Sept. 11 was not just a physical loss, but also a mental disaster for so many people.

It's so easy to say, "We just need to cope." But how? And how do you do it so it's "healthy," which is an important distinction to make?

That's what we need to figure out, as Michelle said, and I think the nation is, though slowly.

I hope someday we get past the anger I see on cable news channels. I hope we can someday forget about political parties and labels, and keep doing what we've been doing: saluting, playing, remembering, crying and rebuilding.

We just need to cope, as Michelle said, and find a healthy way of doing it.

I hope we can become one again, just as we did on Sept. 11, and in the months after, and as we do every Sept. 11, when people of every race and political stripe forget about labels.

We all cry, but we can all feel a sense of goodness, too, because we are finding ways to deal with families without fathers and mothers. We're dealing with people who lost their jobs, and lost their livelihoods, but somehow managed to keep going, nine years later.

We have come so far. I was nine months into my tenure at The Record when I saw the North Tower fall from my car window while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. The next day, I was there, taking a PATH train to midtown because they didn't go any farther south.

I took a subway as far downtown as I could go and walked about 10 or so blocks. I had to write about something that dealt with transportation, but I never did write it.

The paper didn't need it, which was good, because it gave me time - time to look at something I never saw before, and may never see again. I saw and smelled a pile of burning, twisted metal, with a smoldering fire that gave it a glow.

I saw people wearing surgical masks, and somebody gave me an extra one so I wouldn't have to breathe it all in, too.

The wind blew slightly, and the air was stuffed with clouds of dust that made it all still hard to see.

A man saw me looking a little lost. He pulled down his surgical mask and said to me, "Smell that?"

"Yeah....it's bad."

"What do you think that smell is?" he said, hunkering down a bit as the smog filled the streets, like it was a snowstorm.

"That ain't metal," I said, just as I wrapped the mask around my mouth.

That was about as close as I ever got to it, and it was one of the most intense feelings I've ever had. I've always felt like I had some connection to it, even if I did live in New Jersey and I wasn't there on the day, running away as the skyscrapers crumbled.

Michelle is from Delaware, and she noted feeling a connection but also a sense of distance. I felt a distance, too, but we all seemed to know somebody who was in there. You still feel a connection and a sense of loss.

When I saw the North Tower fall, and I thought a friend of mine was in there, and I nearly drove off the road, thinking, that's it. He's gone. When I found out he was alive, I was relieved.

But he wasn't the same afterward, so I still feel a sense of loss.

In many ways, I think we all felt powerless, and I think we still do, in a lot ways. We never caught the people who really masterminded this, and the ones who executed it died. I feel like much of this country has been in a collective funk since then because we still don't know what to do.

We shouldn't take for granted, however, what we've accomplished.

Every year, we have our memorial services, we cry and we remember. Every day, construction workers are working to add one more level to One World Trade, and working to get the water pools that will mark the footprints of the Twin Towers finished.

Every year, as we move farther away from that day, we can feel a sense of relief that many of us are still healthy, getting up every day and battling against a bad economy. We're still working hard to earn a paycheck.

We move on, because that's what people do whenever tragedy strikes. It happened after the Vietnam War, though slowly; it can happen now.

Every day, we find new, better ways to cope.

9/11, mental health and infamy

Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. But the mind was one of the most significant, and lingering casualties.

On the ninth anniversary of the attacks, it's important to remember that there are resources for people still suffering.

From Columbia University and it's book, "9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks:"

Does terrorism have a unique and significant emotional and behavioral impact among adults and children? In what way does the impact of terrorism exceed the individual level and affect communities and specific professional groups as well as test different leadership styles?

How were professional communities of mental health clinicians, policy makers and researchers mobilized to respond to the emerging needs post-disaster? What are the lessons learned from the work conducted after 9/11 and the implications for future disaster mental health work and preparedness efforts?

Yuval Neria and his team are uniquely placed to answer these questions having been involved in modifying ongoing trials and setting up new ones in New York to address these issues straight after the attacks.

No psychiatrist, mental health professional or policy maker should be without this book.

Nine years later, there's still a place to turn

Even nine years later, there are still places to go if you're a casualty of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

And they're not just places that care for those who suffer physically. There are still thousands of people still suffering from the aftershocks of the event, and deal with lingering depression and fatigue.

There are still people who live alone, and suffer from the effects of losing a loved one. There are some who were there, and suffer from post-traumatic stress.

Anne Marie Baumann is the senior vice president of the FealGood Foundation, and she's been receiving many calls from people who are becoming ill - mentally and physically.

Baumann is still shocked herself by the lack of services provided to survivors of the attacks.

"They are looking for much needed help with not much available," she said. "It really is a shame and a discgrace!!!"

Giver her a call at 631-724-3320.

The Man from Glad, Part II

Below is a video that shows where my journalism career essentially began, but also the moment I took my very first big career risk.

The 1985 interview is with the former governor of New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean, who later became the chairman of the 9/11 Commission. I did it with my friend, Bill Borden, whom I just profiled in this space (see The Man From Glad, which was posted on Dec. 30).

We served as co-editors of the Point Pleasant, N.J. High School newspaper, The Panther Print. Everything went well when Bill and I worked together - even though I was struggling to hide a perpetual giggle throughout the taping.

Just before the taping, I took the daring step of asking the governor to endorse my National Honor Society application. I had been rejected twice before, and I felt I deserved the recognition. Back then, I was a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and I was convinced that certain teachers who didn't like my opinionated ways were working against me.

I was told that anyone could sign the application - which I kept folded in my pocket - as a way of showing support for the candidate. En route to the taping in Asbury Park, N.J., I thought, "Why not Kean?"

I remember the strange look on Kean's face when I asked for it, and handed him the crumpled piece of paper. Bill broke out into full-scale laughter, especially when Kean unfolded the paper and looked very puzzled.

Kean looked at it, showing the same scrutiny he later had when he studied documents from the Bush administration during 9/11 Commission meetings. Then he smiled, and signed it. "As long as I don't get anything in the mail," Kean joked.

After that, the producers of the local cable show had to retake the beginning part of the show three times. Bill and I couldn't stop laughing.

Later, I'll never forget the surprised look on the faces of the teachers who were on the committee that chose honor society members. "Do you want to save a copy?" they asked me. "Nah," I said. That was, perhaps, my earliest attempt to show independence and objectivity as a reporter.

I later got into the National Honor Society, but I credit Bill. I don't think I would have taken that step of getting Kean to sign a crumpled piece of paper if Bill had not encouraged me to take risks, and move out of my shell of shyness.

Shorter youtube version:



Longer blip.tv version:

A tough time in a tough decade

Few memories in my life could remain so vivid: Stepping off the PATH train, and walking what seemed like 20 blocks to the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers, and breathing in the burning smell of God-knows-what.

It was Sept. 12, 2001, the day after. I was supposed to write a story on the PATH service, and how commuters were coping with the worst tragedy of their lives. Then I was to head south, and perhaps help with the news coverage down there.

But I had little interest in working. I just wanted to see Ground Zero, otherwise known as "the pile;" the day before, I saw Tower One fall, and crumble into a pile of beams and ash, as I drove north on the New Jersey Turnpike. I saw people with video cameras parked along the road, trying to squeeze some glimpse of history in between videos of their family memories.

But, on Sept. 12, as I walked down there, and I got closer, I saw images that seemed to stand out more than "the pile" ever did. I saw people walking around with posters, saying, "Please help me! Have you seen her? Please, can you help me?" They were like the people I used to see at airports who handed out brochures, saying there was "no tomorrow," and "God will be there to save us...believe in him."

To say it was surreal would be cliche. Simply, it was the most depressing thing I ever saw.

I tried to walk past the people, and get to the pile; instead, I just stood there, and saw the people walk around like zombies, holding the pictures close to their chests, or high over their heads, looking so helpless and hapless.

I somehow knew that they would never find those people; what I didn't know was that, eight years later, many of them still seem to be looking for the loved ones they lost, and they're still struggling with the idea that they'll never come back, and that their lives will never be the same.

Back then, I thought I was in another country. This was the United States, I thought, a country with bravado. This was a country that pushed the Germans back on D-Day, and eventually all the way back to Berlin. This was not a country where people look for someone to constantly reassure them, and tell them, "It's OK. Everything is OK. We'll get the bad guys. It's OK."

It's a memory I'll never lose, even as we, as a country, seem to be so detached from it now. Even last week's near-terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound jet didn't seem to ignite the feelings of vengeance that drives people's anger when they've been attacked.

But, in other ways, we're a nation that's still hurting. When we hear about talk of the economy, and we see the poll numbers showing a falling level of confidence in government, I wonder if it has more to do with nation's soul that was wounded eight years ago, and never really recovered from it.

I think that were less detached than we think from the zombie-like atmosphere that I saw in lower Manhattan eight years ago, and we're still looking for some hero to tell us, "It's OK. America will do fine. It's OK."

I've written a lot in this space about the services available for people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly people who were victims of 9-11. But, in a way, I feel like we're all suffering from nationwide PTSD, and we're still looking for some something to heal ourselves, and give us a chance to move on.

I think we're still looking for some ticker-tape parade, something that will declare that not only are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over, but it's OK to shop again, and it's OK to buy things again, because we're no longer spending money to fight wars against terrorists we can't see.

We're looking for some finality to the worst moment of our lives. But it never came, or it hasn't come yet; indeed, it's only escalated now that President Obama has sent in another 30,000 troops to fight the terrorist war in Afghanistan. It's only continuing when someone somehow finds a way to get the components of a bomb aboard a plane, and comes within minutes of creating our worst tragedy since Sept. 11.

In my personal life, it's continuing because I lost a friend. He's not dead, but he had a business in the World Trade Center that was obliterated when Tower One fell. Rich Kelly, another old Point Pleasant Borough high school buddy of mine, was a hero that day because he ordered people to run to Battery Park, and avoid getting buried under the crush of steel and ash.

The problem, however, was that no one was there to save Rich. Afterward, he tried to recover, buying himself a Porsche and taking me on a ride through Colts Neck, N.J., speeding up to 90 mph on some of the old, two-lane roads that run through one of the state's wealthiest communities. But he ran into trouble as he tried rescue his business life.

I tried to help, but he resisted, to the point that he virtually shut off contact with me. Rich always thought he'd be a millionaire by the time he was 30. Last I heard, he was working around the clock, selling phone systems to businesses and still trying to recover that dream. Leaving him a phone message, or sending him an email is pointless. He won't return any of them.

A lot of people blame President Obama for doing little to turn the nation's confidence around. I don't fall into that category. Mostly, however, I look forward to this new year and new decade. I've heard people talk about the 1960s and 1970s, and how they looked forward to the end of those troubled times just by looking at the clock.

Perhaps time is our only ally here, and we can hope that a new decade will inspire hope. We can hope that people will find a way to get through their trauma, and that they'll find a way to move on as we move farther and farther away from 9-11. We can hope that someone can provide more services, or better services that people can use to help themselves. Or, maybe people find a way to have better access to those services, wherever they may exist.

We can hope that people like Rich can dream of being millionaires again. But if they can't, then maybe they can come to grips with who they are, and perhaps play a role that can inspire people, the same way Rich inspired people to run away from the falling tower.

9/11 and mental health: A link that will live in infamy

Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. But the mind was one of the most significant, and lingering casualties.

On the seventh anniversary of the attacks, it's important to remember that there are resources for people still suffering.

From Columbia University and it's book, "9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks:"

Does terrorism have a unique and significant emotional and behavioral impact among adults and children? In what way does the impact of terrorism exceed the individual level and affect communities and specific professional groups as well as test different leadership styles?

How were professional communities of mental health clinicians, policy makers and researchers mobilized to respond to the emerging needs post-disaster? What are the lessons learned from the work conducted after 9/11 and the implications for future disaster mental health work and preparedness efforts?

Yuval Neria and his team are uniquely placed to answer these questions having been involved in modifying ongoing trials and setting up new ones in New York to address these issues straight after the attacks.

No psychiatrist, mental health professional or policy maker should be without this book.

Six years later, there's still a place to go for those suffering from Sept. 11

Even six years later, there are still places to go if you're a casualty of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

And they're not just places that care for those who suffer physically. There are still thousands of people still suffering from the aftershocks of the event, and deal with lingering depression and fatigue.

There are still people who live alone, and suffer from the effects of losing a loved one. There are some who were there, and suffer from post-traumatic stress.

Anne Marie Baumann is the senior vice president of the FealGood Foundation, and she's been receiving many calls from people who are becoming ill - mentally and physically.

Baumann is still shocked herself by the lack of services provided to survivors of the attacks.

"They are looking for much needed help with not much available," she said. "It really is a shame and a discgrace!!!"

Giver her a call at 631-724-3320.