Nine Eleven memories linger for Irish in New York

Even now, a decade on, Honor Molloy won't look at pictures or films
about the 9/11 attacks.

"I just don't," she says, "I want my own memories of it."

The Dublin-born playwright, who moved to the US in 1969, was living in
the shadows of the Twin Towers in 2001 - just three blocks north on
Greenwich Street.

She can recall going for a jog that morning, passing the flow of people
coming off ferries and out of subways on their way to work in the World
Trade Centre.

Many of them would never go home.

She was in the elevator of her building when the first plane struck, but
was out in the street with her partner and neighbours as the second
tower was hit.

"It was an explosion of orange. It was insane." she recalls.

"There was no frame to this experience. This was not a TV show. Time
compressed and expanded. There was no end. There was no narrative. I
remember the fear."

An overheard conversation sticks out in her mind - between a young
mother and her five year old child.

The boy pointed up and said: 'Somebody jumped'.

The mother said, 'No they didn't. It's just glass'.

Then, later when people were jumping, the boy said: 'Those buildings
could fall'.

The mother looked at her son, and reassured him: 'No they couldn't."

Like everyone else in Lower Manhattan that day, Honor was evacuated from
her home.

She remembers returning to the street where she lived the next day.

"It was like Dinosaur World. I mean, the cars were all burnt. There were
grey carcasses of cars, hundreds of them, lining Church St with ash all
over them."

Soon it became clear that they had lost people in their neighborhood,
and she noticed the loss in peculiar ways.

The normally-busy gym on her street was emptier, for example.

She plans to leave New York for the anniversary - she's going to
Pennsylvania for the weekend.

"It just hurts too much still," she says, "I can't stand sentiment."

"I don't talk about this with people. This is not something that I open
up about."

Maurice Landers, director of Failte 32, which helps new Irish immigrants
to the US, was working in Midtown when the Towers collapsed.

His first instinct, like many others, was to make his way downtown to
see if he could help.

"They were organizing volunteers, next to the courthouses, to go on
buses into the site to tend to the wounded," says Landers.

"They gave us cloths to wrap around any wounds, gave us face masks and
gloves.

"I went on one of the buses which drove through the plume of smoke that
covered the area but by the time we arrived near the site, the Army
Reserves were directing everyone away from the area.

"They knew the third building was going to fall, and were not going to
put untrained volunteers in amongst the rubble."

By then it was clear there would be few survivors.

"It was ominous to see one medical centre that had prepared for the
arrival of the wounded by erecting a canopy outside the main entrance,
housing empty stretchers and other medical equipment.

"Staff were just waiting in hope to treat people but probably realized
that no one was coming at that stage. A sad day."
Prominent Irish-American radio host Adrian Flannelly had just finished a
broadcast when news broke that the terrorists had struck.

His thoughts immediately turned to his two daughters who worked in Lower
Manhattan.

One, Eileen, had phoned him moments earlier.

She had been on a bus, about four blocks from the Twin Towers, when the
impact of the first plane knocked the vehicle on its side.

At the time, Flannelly was unaware of how serious the attacks were, and
thought his daughter was just being a drama queen.

Now, he realized the enormity of what was unfolding.

It would be 36 hours before he heard from Eileen again, and a full three
days before he made contact with his other daughter Kathleen who worked
in the area to confirm she was safe.

"It was horrific. It was awful," he says, "The uncertainty of it all."

"Take the scene: no subway, no buses, the city in lockdown. No
communications. Cellphones down. There were people who didn't hear from
their kids for ten days. This was not unusual."

Flannelly was working as an Irish community liaison officer for New
York's mayor Rudy Giuliani at the time.

In the days the followed, it soon emerged that the cops, fireman and
other first responders who died were predominantly Irish-American.

"It seemed as each day went by that it was a woefully lob-sided
percentage of the fatalities," he said.

"We still know many people who were injured, some of them quite
severely. I don't think history will even record it. Those that were
merely hurt didn't even count."
Flannelly has been in the US since 1959, and says Nine Eleven has
changed the country.

Americans feel less safe.

"That's never coming back," he says.

The Truth about Bloomberg’s ‘Drunken Irish’ joke

If anybody had a problem with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech to the American Irish Historical Society last Wednesday, they certainly didn’t make it clear on the night.

Board members of the American Irish Historical Society and St Patrick’s Day Parade organizers happily posed for photographs with Mayor Bloomberg in the minutes after his speech, according to a number of people who attended the event.

“If some-one was ticked off with the joke, they didn’t show it and there are photographs to prove it,” said radio host Adrian Flannelly who was master of ceremonies at the event. He says once Mr Bloomberg had concluded his comments, he was surrounded by people wishing to have their photographs taken with him, or have their books signed for about thirty minutes.

“There was no reference whatsoever by anybody to the joke,” said Flanelly, “I can tell you first hand: nobody said it. Not a single person. There couldn’t have been anyone who took offence because if they did, they would have said something, instead of pushing each other out of the way to get photos taken with the mayor.”

Yet, the mayor’s ill-judged joke sparked a major controversy, covered by all the main news media here in the US, and in Ireland and the UK. Mr Bloomberg was attending the launch of a book celebrating the 250^th anniversary of the St Patrick’s Day Parade, written by historian John Ridge and Lynn Bushnell.  Adrian Flannelly, as MC, had been exchanging jokes with each of the speakers and when Mr Bloomberg was about to be introduced, he was informed that the Mayor had just bought a book with cash from his own pocket downstairs.

Adrian Flannelly

Flannelly joked that it was unusual to see “people in this neighbourhood putting their hands in their pockets” and asked if the Mayor had paid his sales tax. It was in the context of this back-and-forth joking that the Mayor made his ill-judged remarks. “I live in the neighborhood here, right around the corner,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “Normally when I walk by this building there are a bunch of people that are totally inebriated hanging out the window.”

The remarks drew mixture of laughs and groans from the crowd of around 100. “I know that’s a stereotype of the Irish,” he continued, “but nevertheless, we Jews from around the corner, think this.”

“It has been taken totally out of context,” says Adrian Flannelly, “It was a crappy joke, but no worse than others the politicians usually make in these type of situations when they are trying to be one of the lads, one of us. He was spurred on by the slagging and joviality that was going on at the time.”

Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg’s speech continued with his attempts at humor, saying that he was glad St Patrick’s Day was on a fixed date, not like Columbus Day, and a joke about the Metropolitan Museum of Art – something like “I don’t know who lives in the house across the street. They have a lot of art but not a lot of furniture”

The remarks went largely un-noticed at first, because the event was not widely covered by the media. But an opinion piece by Irish Voice publisher Niall O’Dowd on his Irish Central website described the remarks as bizarre, and said they had outraged some of those he spoke to at the event. New York news media began to take notice.

“We don’t get offended that easily, believe me,” Niall O’Dowd told Fox 5 television news, “But last night was particularly exceptional, I thought. It was way too far over the top.” Mayor Bloomberg apologized for any offence his remarks had caused. “I apologize,” he said, “I certainly did not mean to offend anybody.” But that did not stop the story from going global.

It was the lead story on the front page of both of New York City’s tabloid newspapers on Friday morning.

“Irish Stew” was the headline on the New York Post, “Bloomy’s Blarney” read the New York Daily News.

Chairman of the St Patrick’s Day parade John Dunleavy weighed into the controversy. “In this day and age for the mayor of the city of New York to make comments like that is outrageous and totally uncalled for,” he told the newspapers.

The story was covered by among others the BBC, and Daily Telegraph in London, CNN, the New York Times and others. Some who had attended the launch on Wednesday night told me Friday they were shocked that the remarks had ballooned into such a controversy.

Michael Bloomberg has been a strong ally of Irish Americans. He has travelled to Ireland on several occasions, and has been a strong advocate for immigrants’ rights, Northern Irish investment and other issues.

For Adrian Flannelly, who may have inadvertently sparked it all with his jokey introduction of Mr Bloomberg on the night, the reaction has been “unfortunate and way over-the-top”. “There is a good news story here that’s being lost in this,” he said, “The St Patrick’s Day parade is the longest running parade in the world bar none. In 1762, 14 years before the Declaration of Independence, someone thought this would be a good idea. And we are still doing it 250 years later. That’s what we should be talking about and instead we have this unnecessary controversy.”