A Touching Memorial to a Wonderful Life

Beverly Eckert touched many lives. And especially in this first holiday season without her, I'm struck by how she was able to bring so much to so many.

First and last, she was an eternally devoted wife to Sean Rooney. To the members of her family, she was loving and joyful and constant. Outside of this close family circle, the luckiest ones were invited into the warmth of her friendship, the generosity of her soul, the kindness of her heart. Those who worked at her side -- feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, improving her neighborhood, tutoring children, making the country safer -- were impressed by her talent, diligence and determination. If Beverly joined in the effort, things got done. Others only knew of her, that she had lost the love of her life on 9/11, worked through her grief to make the country safer, and then died herself in a plane that plummeted from icy skies near the places in Buffalo where, during the course of her wonderful life, she had played, learned, fallen in love and reunited regularly with her loved ones for such occasions as holidays, weddings, births and deaths.

One person who was touched by Beverly is Anne Goslin, who was one of the principal organizers of a modest and touching event October 31st during which Beverly's memory was celebrated and set into stone. Anne had at first known Beverly only casually as a neighbor in the Glenbrook section of Stamford. But at one meeting of the neighborhood association Beverly spoke about her work for Habitat for Humanity, and encouraged Anne and others to join her on a project in Slidell, Louisiana. During their brief days hammering and sawing and raising the walls and roof of a fine wooden shed, warm bonds were established among the neighbors who were now part of a construction team. "We had such a good time together," Anne recalled recently. Beverly and Anne kept in closer contact thereafter, and on one occasion Anne was touched when Beverly had invited her and her husband for dinner, and she prepared everything from scratch.

After the shock and pain of Beverly's death last February gave way to warm memories of her life, many people whose lives she touched decided there should be some fitting ways to remember her. Employees of the City of Stamford and local businessmen with whom Beverly worked on a number of neighborhood projects came together and created a memorial plaque set into a block of granite. The plaque matched the one Beverly had erected to remember Sean at the Glenbrook train station where he used to depart for his job in the city.

On a cool but pleasant October morning, then, relatives, friends, neighbors and others gathered at the station as part of a city-wide "Make a Difference Day," of cleaning up, recycling, beautifying. They also came to remember a woman who lived a wonderful life and in some way touched them all.

Anne spoke first, recalling those qualities of Beverly's that would be on display if she were taking part in this "Make a Difference Day." She would have been involved in organizing things, Anne said, setting the course, guiding the effort. But Beverly was never one to sit back and let others do the heavy lifting. As Anne had seen firsthand in the hot Louisiana sun, Beverly was more than willing to get her hands dirty. She would have been there, picking up trash, spreading mulch, planting daffodil bulbs. Recalling the way she had met Beverly, and the ease with which Beverly gathered others to herself, Anne said that Beverly would also have made some sort of meaningful personal connection with someone at the event. Finally, after all the work was done, Anne said Beverly would probably suggest a convivial and memorable gathering, perhaps at Monster B's, a lively watering hole hard by the Glenbrook station.

That was Beverly: the organizer, the worker bee, the easy friend, the center of a celebration.

The city's mayor, Dannel P. Malloy recalled Beverly as well, and recounted her legacy of service and selflessness. State Representative Carlo Leone was there. Beverly's family of course helped with the ceremony, as did other members of the neighborhood association. Karen Eckert said the family had set up memorial benches in the town, in places that were special to Beverly. Some 4o lives that Beverly had touched, in large and small ways, gathered, celebrated a life lived well, and dedicated a plaque that now sits like a bookend opposite the station's first memorial plaque. They all sang "On the Street Where You Live," because it was a special song to Beverly and Sean. They planted dozens of daffodil bulbs, which would bloom early in spring and bring color and joy and perhaps touch the lives of those who passed by and saw them in the sun, saw their yellow faces look up to the sky, surrounding the bookend plaques commemorating bookend lives.

Some airline safety measures sought by Flight 3407 families win passage in House

Beverly Eckert often said that she was working hard for 9/11 reform measures because her husband, Sean, did not make it home on September 11th, but she wanted to make sure "someone else's 'Sean' gets to go home" because America would be safer. After Beverly was killed in the crash of Flight 3407, family members of those lost, including Beverly's sisters Karen Eckert and Susan Bourque, vowed to find out why the plane fell so suddenly out of the sky, and how future crashes could be prevented. Karen and Susan have been working hard so that someone's "Beverly" lands safely.

That hope came a step closer to reality on Oct. 14, when the House passed by a wide margin HR 3371, a bill aimed at fixing some of the problems that led not only to the crash of Flight 3407, but of other regional airline disasters. The bill includes provisions to improve pilot training, reduce pilot fatigue, and improve pilot training and licensing records.

Beverly's sisters and other Flight 3407 family members were surprised when the announcement came that the bill was coming up for a vote, and a bit worried that some pilot-training provisions had been altered due to pressure from flight schools. According to an article by Jerry Zremski in the Buffalo News:

But the behind-the-scenes addition of that new language — included at the request of a powerful Florida lawmaker whose district includes a prominent flight school — didn't exactly thrill those who lost loved ones in the February crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 in Clarence Center.

"This is kind of out of the blue," said Susan Bourque, whose sister, Beverly Eckert, was among the 50 people who died in the crash.

When Karen Eckert learned of the impending House vote, she rushed to Washington so that she could witness it along with other Flight 3407 family members. As she sat in the gallery high above the House chamber and watched the votes in favor mount, she let a photo of her sister Beverly dangle over the railing, so that Beverly could see the legislative victory, and so that the lawmakers could see Beverly.

"...death has no power over our hearts..."

On this solemn day of remembrance, only Beverly's words will suffice.

One year before she was killed, Beverly was back in Buffalo, celebrating the life of Sean Rooney, and her love for him, surrounded by family and friends, on his birthday, Feb. 15, 2008. A few weeks later, she put together the simple and moving account of that day that appears below. (Beverly posted it in Sean Rooney's Guest Book at Legacy.com.) She also described how she and Sean's loved ones remembered him on the sixth anniversary of the attacks, in September 2007.

On this September 11th, we remember them both, and all the others. And her simple words are eloquent testament to a remarkable women, who, even with her passing, is able to shine a bright light on the fleeting nature of life, and the powerful permanence of love.

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March 09, 2008

Hi Sean, it’s me.

I know it was a while ago, but I thought I’d tell you all about what we did on your birthday this year.

We actually had three celebrations. The first one was on your actual birthday, the 15th. Susan, Bill and I went to dinner at the Roycroft Inn. It was cold and snowy, just like that winter you worked there, but it was warm inside by the fireplace, and we had a great meal. They had live jazz in the lounge, so after dinner we stayed to listen. All evening we talked, laughed, and most of all, we remembered. It felt like there were four of us there that evening, not just three.

The next day Karen, Mike and I we went to the Neumann Center at UB because the 4:30 Mass there was dedicated to you. The priest, Father Pat, greeted us when we walked in and asked a few questions about you. A couple of times during the mass, he mentioned how you died, but he also mentioned your love of wine and food and how our families often gathered to cook in your memory. So right in the middle of mass, I invited him to join us over at Karen and Mike’s after mass. He brought a bottle of Brunnello. By the way, I made your ‘Chicken Alfredo’ that night and it turned out great. Yes, hon, I’ve learned to cook a little…

The next day, we were back at the Procknals. This time both of our families gathered, and we made ravioli - tray after tray, with three pots of water boiling on the stove to cook it all. We had three banquet tables pushed together to accommodate us all. And we thought we had the head count right, but when we all sat down, we discovered there was one extra place setting, just to my right. So I went and got a photo of you, propped it up there, and poured you some wine. All through dinner, I couldn’t stop smiling - the food, the wine, everyone sitting around the table talking and laughing, and you next to me where you belong.

It was a birthday we’ll all remember. It was a lot like this past 9/11 anniversary, a rollercoaster mix of happy and sad. The commemoration started with a ceremony at the Red Cross Headquarters. Your mom and Cynthia did readings. It seemed only fitting that it was pouring rain through the whole ceremony. For one of the musical selections, they played “Only Time” by Enya. I guess I dropped something while we were standing there listening. My sister told me she touched my arm to hand it back, but I never saw nor felt her. I must have been wherever you are.

The next day, your mom and I went to lunch. Afterward we drove over to your old house on Dorchester Avenue. The basketball hoop is still there, over the garage door. We laughed about the time you backed the car into the chimney, and the way you dismantled your ‘51 MG all over the driveway one year and then rebuilt it. Your mom pointed out the window on the third floor that was your bedroom. Then we just sat there in the car, quietly looking at the house, remembering.

After I dropped Rosemary off, I went to the Amherst 9/11 Memorial Grove with Carol and Kamil. One of the three trees dedicated to you there has lost a lot of its branches. But there are trees in other places in Stamford and Buffalo that are still doing OK. People leave flowers and notes at them. Still.

The next day there was a ceremony in the morning at the waterfront downtown. They asked a family member to speak, so I said a few words. Then, we held a car-wash fund-raiser at your old grammar school, to raise money for your memorial scholarship. It was raining and there were kids with hoses, so needless to say we all got soaked, but we had a great time. The kids worked hard, and our families pitched in and helped, too. All together, we raised over $800 dollars. By the way, one of your old eighth-grade classmates is a teacher there now, and she told me you were the cutest guy in the class and all the girls had a crush on you. Then Sister Gail, the current principal, located a copy of your school transcript. We had to laugh - you had high grades, but you didn’t do too well in the deportment categories.

After the car wash, our families went to Cole’s on Elmwood to get something to eat. There was a TV in the bar, and the local evening news was on. They were broadcasting segments about the 9/11 events of the day. We could see that they were showing footage of us, so we were yelling and pointing. On one segment, they showed a photo of you, so we all cheered. I can’t imagine what the other bar patrons were thinking of our raucous reaction to the 9/11 news stories.

At the end of the broadcast, we raised our voices and our glasses: “To Sean!”

It was a good day.

Something I’ve come to realize over the past six and a half years, Sean, is that death has no power over our hearts - neither yours, nor ours. I want you to know how much you are loved, and remembered.

You are with us, still.

All my love, all my life.
Beverly

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[Photo of the view out of Beverly and Sean's kitchen window by Anthony Toth]

Voices of September 11th honors the efforts Beverly Eckert with its Building Bridges Award

The influential 9/11 advocacy and support group that Beverly Eckert co-founded honored her memory with its annual Building Bridges award in a presentation in New York City today. Two of Beverly's sisters, Karen Eckert and Sue Bourque, accepted the award on her behalf.

Just weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Beverly and Mary Fetchet, another Connecticut resident, who lost her son Brad in the attacks, established Voices of September 11th. The fledgling organization was run on a shoestring by Beverly, Mary and a few others mainly to providing family members and others affected by the attacks with information about such things as the recovery of remains, financial and medical assistance, the victims compensation fund and counseling. As the needs of the 9/11 community expanded, so did the staff, membership and services of FOS11. It now has about 7,000 members and a wide-ranging agenda which includes the 9/11 Living Memorial project, reaching out to victims of terrorism at home and abroad, advocating for government reform, and providing a number of services to its members.

Beverly's effective advocacy lives on in the efforts of her sisters

Intelligent, capable, energetic and determined -- some of the words used to describe the Eckert sisters and explain their successes, and reason enough to not stand in their way once they decide on a course of action. Beverly, Susan, Margaret and Karen individually and working together have done impressive things, and a recent Associated Press article by Carolyn Thompson weaves together the story of Beverly's activism for 9/11 reform and the work done by Sue Bourque and Karen Eckert in the cause of airline safety.

Sue and Karen noted that the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 on Feb. 12 that took Beverly from them did not "silence Beverly's voice or spirit," according to Thompson.

"If anything, she would want us to have her voice ... I want her voice to resonate," Karen Eckert said.

It already has in the way it has opened doors of senators and representatives to 3407 families. Many knew Beverly, or knew of her.

Her voice resonates in the minds of her sisters, too: whenever they present their fact- and solution-driven case for better pilot training and hiring practices, fatigue management and closer government oversight of the airline industry.

"We have an agenda. The one thing we knew is we can't just go there and say `please help us because we lost our loved ones,'" Karen Eckert said.

"We knew we had to be organized," Bourque said, recalling Beverly's ability to boil down issues to talking points which she could take to lawmakers.

Recently, Sue sent a message to a number of Beverly's friends, providing more details the the work she and Karen and others have been doing to promote better airline safety:

Beverly’s own courage and determination showed us the way. After the loss of Sean, she made a commitment to work for changes that would keep a horror such as the events of 9/11 from ever happening again. Because of her efforts and those of other 9/11 Family members, our country is a safer place.

We mirror her commitment today in another critical area: to improve airline safety for all. We are working to bring about changes in the airline industry that will prevent fatigued, undertrained and underpaid pilots from entering the cockpit. Accomplishing that is our commitment to our sister and her legacy.

Beverly's hope for justice gradually coming to fruition

The debate about the terrorism detainees at Guantanamo these days is not about whether they will be brought to justice, but when and where. Beverly Eckert would have relished this progress. As noted in an earlier blog entry, her final trip to Washington, DC, was to urge President Obama to close the detention facility and to bring suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to trial in the US. With a new president, there was optimism that new policies would bring justice at long last. Under the Bush administration, the handling of the detainees was marred by incompetence, incoherence, and illegality, delaying or destroying any chance for justice, and blackening the reputation of America, whose leaders in earlier times took pride in adhering to the rule of law.

Political opponents of President Obama have seized upon his swift detainee justice initiative by successfully whipping up grassroots hysteria opposing the plan. The detainee issue, as noted in the previous blog entry, has been made one of those which divides 9/11 family members rather than unite them. Just as among the general population, for the large part it pits 9/11 family members who support of the president against those who oppose him. In many respects, then, this is a debate not about security or justice but about politics. There is no question that if President Bush had proposed the same plan, the debate would flip to the opposite political pole, with Republicans touting "swift justice" and Democrats engaging in "terrorists in our backyard" fear-mongering. However, to be fair, even now there are many Democrats who have been swept up by the visceral but unfounded fear that putting people who plotted attacks or gave material support into high-security prisons is more dangerous than, say keeping mass murderers there, which is already the case. Just the vague term "foreign terrorist" expectedly inspires greater fear than even "mass murderer." To gauge how politically motivated the feverish opposition to Obama's plan for bringing terrorists to justice, notice how those who most loudly denounce the plan raised not a whimper of dissent against the location of Timothy McVeigh's incarceration.

According to yesterday's Associated Press article by Devlin Barrett, the current range of possible venues for trial and incarceration include facilities in New York, Alexandria, VA, and federal facilities in the Midwest, including Fort Leavenworth, KN. Even if Beverly were still alive to join the debate and urge those wavering to try the suspects here and now, it is clear that some detainees will never be brought to justice because of the grave errors of the Bush administration. In her letter to President Obama, Beverly wrote this would be the biggest injustice.

9/11 family members united on some issues, divided on others

After Sept. 11, 2001, you would have been hard-pressed to find someone who had lost a family member that day, of any political persuasion, who did not want to find out how and why the attacks took place and why their loved ones died. In the same way, there was and is widespread support among this diverse community, bound by the pain and loss of that day, for remembering the victims.

But once other questions began to arise, such as how to prevent terrorist attacks, and what to do with those accused of terrorism, the views of the 9/11 family members diverged -- widely. Beverly Eckert had fought for a number of causes after she lost her beloved husband, Sean. Perhaps she was best known for her role as a member of the Family Steering Committee, which was instrumental in establishing the 9/11 Commission and implementing some of the commission's most important recommendations. But Beverly was also strong supporter of other causes, including the creation of the National 9/11 Memorial, skyscraper safety, and airline security. These causes had wide support among the 9/11 community.

Beverly also supported closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and putting the terrorism detainees held there on trial in the US. Other 9/11 family members disagreed, and an article in today's Washington Post highlights the diversity of these views. One of the family members put it well, in this nutshell:

"There is a diverse set of opinions about closing Guantanamo, about having the military tribunals versus having federal trials in the United States, about the death penalty versus life if convicted," said Adele Welty, whose son, Timothy, was a New York firefighter killed on Sept. 11. "If you would take any group in the population who were not family members, you would have an equally diverse set of opinions."

Someone Beverly had met through the group September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Valerie Lucznikowska, said President Obama's efforts to bring the terrorism suspects to justice in the US was a good idea. On the other hand, Kristen Breitweiser, another member of the Family Steering Committee, had become disillusioned with the president's approach, according to the article. She said Obama's failure to include family members in the deliberations on Guantanamo "translates to me like they really don't care."

The 9/11 family members achieved the peak of their political influence when their unity coincided with support from powerful allies in Washington, among the media, and from average Americans from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. But as the issues at hand divide rather than unite; as the memory of 9/11 begins to fade from public consciousness; and as powerful constituencies and players are facing off against each other rather than standing should-to-shoulder, it is difficult to see how the 9/11 family members will ever be as effective as they once were.