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The events of September 11, 2001 are well known to any sentient human being with access to a news source. In the three years that have passed since this horrific act millions of words and hundreds of thousands of images and sound clips have sought to capture the causes and effects of the events of this one tragic day.
Thomas Ashton | Thomas H. Bowden Jr.
Thomas M. Brennan | Tom Burke
Thomas Butler | Thomas Cahill
Thomas A.Casoria | Thomas Celic
Thomas R. Clark | Thomas Collins
Before showing 'cause and effect', before answering the questions of who to blame and what went wrong, perhaps a more difficult task is placing a personal perspective on the tragic events of that day. Do you 'know' someone who died on that day, or the days following, due to injuries? Can you picture one face, one story, one surviving widow or son or daughter?
Rather than trying to comprehend a number too large to imagine even today, perhaps placing a face and a brief story with each of these individual lives might help us understand the pain that each single loss of life brought to their loved ones.
Perhaps in beginning to understand the depth of each tragic loss we might also begin to appreciate the full scale and scope of this national tragedy.
Thomas G. Crotty | Thomas Cullen
Thomas Damaskinos | Thomas P. DeAngelis
Thomas Farino | Thomas J. Fisher
Thomas Fitzpatrick | Thomas Foley
Thomas Galvin | Thomas Glasser
Within hours of the collapse of the twin towers the staff of The New York Times began their efforts to identify, document, and record each of the thousands of lives snuffed out that day. In the days immediately following 9/11 this information helped in the necessary task of listing, numbering, and identifying the casualties.
Soon this effort evolved into the Pulitzer Prize-winning series Portraits of Grief. Each day, from September 15 through December 31, 2001, biographical shorts of perhaps 15 to 20 victims appeared each day in the Portraits of Grief section of the newspaper. In the words of The New York Times, this section soon became almost a "national shrine".
This book, Portraits: 9/11/01 The Collected Portraits of Grief from the New York Times collects 1,910 of these entries, those published through February 3, 2002. These 'biographical shorts' continued to be published through September 10, 2002.
Thomas E. Gorman | Thomas Hannafin
Thomas Haskell | Thomas Warren Hohlweck Jr.
Tom P. Holohan | Thomas F. Hughes Jr.
Thomas E. Hynes | Thomas E. Jurgens
Thomas R. Kelly | Thomas J. Kennedy
Rather than traditional 'obits', the editors of Portraits of Grief wanted these short items to be 'snapshots' of the individuals rather than formal obituaries. Some 140-plus reporters eventually contributed to the series. Some wrote only one. Others worked for months, writing many. Most considered it a privilege and an honor to write even one.
From interviews of family, co-workers, and friends the writers crafted 'snapshots' that tried to capture individual moments of each person and their life.
Here is a family watching old videotapes the evening of September 10th. Here is a brother, remembered as 'my go-to guy . . .he would be there for me", his wedding scheduled in less than a month. Here is a worker whose only scheduled day in the office was that day. Here is a brother, his body carried from the ruins with the help of his brother.
Each newspaper entry, each one reprinted in this book, is accompanied by a small postage-stamp-sized black and white picture. Some (no . . .many) are official FDNY photographs, others apparently snipped from family pictures. Some blurry, some sharp. All are head-shots, some with smiling faces and broad smiles, others serious, formal; all looking out from the pages. So many futures spreading out before them. So many futures snuffed out that day.
Thomas Langone | Thomas V. Linehan
Thomas Mahon | Thomas H. McGinnis
Thomas McHale | Thomas G. O'Hagan
Thomas Palazzo | Thomas Pedicini
Thomas Reinig | Thomas Sabella
Portraits: 9/11/01 The Collected Portraits of Grief from the New York Times documents the individual loss of life, the people, the personalities, behind the numbers. In an easy, conversational manner—not unlike the 'remember when' conversations heard at any family reunion—this mother, this father, sons, daughters, firemen, pilots, businessmen and businesswomen, the lofty and the ordinary . . .all are remembered and each made a real person. That is no small feat accomplished by this touching collection of lives and memories and the loss left behind.
Thomas Joseph Sgroi | Thomas E. Sinton III
Thomas S. Strada | Thomas G. Sullivan
Thomas F. Swift | Thomas Theurkauf Jr.
The Bottom Line
As I began to read this book I was struck by how many of these individuals shared my given name, Thomas. As I sought to capture the enormity of this collection, of the number of lives encapsulated here, I decided to simply list those who shared that name, hoping to begin to demonstrate that point.
It is amazing to me that, among just those included in this book, there are 46 individuals named Tom or Thomas. There names are interspersed throughout this review. Just a few of their 'portraits' are sampled above. Perhaps they shared much more than simply a name. Perhaps a little, perhaps a lot.
But I do know that we as Americans, as human beings, share the loss of each of these individual lives included in this book (or not) and the future we all might have shared.
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Please 'click' the link below to find my other Epinions reviews of 9-11 books and movies and other direct links to 'non-Epinions' websites relating to 9-11.
Related September 11, 2001, reviews by sleeper54
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"Just the facts, ma'am"
Title: Portraits: 9/11/01 The Collected Portraits of Grief
from the New York Times
Author: The New York Times
Publisher: Times Books | Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Copyright: 2002 by The New York Times Co.
Pages: 688
ISBN #: 0-80507-222-5
Ages recommended: Teen / Adult
[Note]
An updated edition has been published that includes all portraits published through the conclusion of the Portraits of Grief series.
Recommended:
