Stories about the Attack

Byline: John Woestendiek
Source: SUN STAFF

CROFTON - Buzz was watching television in an auto repair shop. George
had walked his poodles and was cleaning house. Bob was on the golf course.
Kathleen was teaching her fourth-grade class.
It was another Tuesday in Crofton - one that started out as safe, snug
and serene as any other day in this planned suburban Maryland community, its
entrance marked by brick walls, white iron gates and a duck pond.
But, just as if you were to drop a rock into that pond, the attacks on
the World Trade Center and Pentagon would send ripples through Crofton, as in
towns across America, with ever-widening circles of people realizing that,
if they didn't personally know any victims, they weren't many steps removed
from someone who did.
In Crofton, like everywhere else, connections - close and distant -
would surface; some immediately, some gradually. Some may still lay ahead.
Buzz Zinn would learn that a friend, Ann Judge, travel office manager
for the National Geographic Society, was a passenger on the flight that struck
the Pentagon.
George Laboissonniere would find out that his third cousin, television
producer David Angell, was a passenger on the first airliner to strike the
World Trade Center.
Bob Torene would hear that his wife, attending a business conference in
the World Trade Center complex, escaped unharmed.
And Kathleen Depman, awaiting word from her husband, at work in the
Pentagon, would try to stay focused on her class at Crofton Woods
Elementary School.
"It seems like everybody you talk to knows of somebody who has some
connection," said Laurie Torene, who ran from the Marriott at the World
Trade Center when the first plane hit, eventually making her way home via ferry
boat and U-Haul truck. "It's like `six degrees of separation.' "
Actually, it's even less.
That popular belief - supported by some scientific studies - holds that
anyone on earth can be linked to anyone else by a chain of only six other
people.
Lumping together those who worked in the Pentagon and World Trade
Center, who were on the airliners and who were in the immediately at-risk areas -
probably around 50,000 people - and assuming each had 100 friends and
relatives, the degree of separation between an American and someone
involved in the tragedy is less than two.
Looking just at the more than 6,000 presumed dead, the degree of
separation would be less than three.
As with the Vietnam War, AIDS, or any event or phenomenon involving
tens of thousands of people, nearly everyone in the country knows someone, or
someone who knows someone, who was affected. And the odds increase in certain
smaller circles, such as people living in New York City or Washington, D.C.
Others, meanwhile, having not heard of a personal connection yet, worry
they still might; that as thousands of bodies are discovered and
identified, a name from their past will show up on the list of victims: high school
friend, prom date, college buddy, baby sitter.
"Everybody is probably only two or fewer handshakes away," said Steven
H. Strogatz, a Cornell University professor of theoretical and applied
mathematics who has studied what is also called the "small world
phenomenon."
"Perhaps one of every 50 Americans knows somebody who was either a
casualty or escaped, and pretty much everybody knows somebody who knows somebody,"
he said.
"It's significant in terms of how close we all are to the horror. If it
happens to your friend, that's the most horrible thing of all. If it
happens to a friend of a friend, people still have a pretty clear concept of it.
But a friend of a friend of a friend is really pretty meaningless to us.
"The cutoff between two and three handshakes is right where this
tragedy has occurred," Strogatz added. "It's on the intimate side of the
psychological cutoff, and that might be part of why it's so upsetting - that and the
fact that we all have a friend in the television, and in that way we're all
connected to everything."
Even in a community as insular as Crofton, insulating oneself is
impossible - not just from television images, but from some sort of connection to the
tragedy, even if it is one, two, or even more degrees removed.
No one who lives in Crofton is believed to have been killed in the
attacks.
And despite being heavily populated with government, military and
intelligence workers, there were no reports of any serious injuries among its
residents.
Still, this small unincorporated community, where they once locked the
gates at night and where flags fly year-round, was far from untouched.
At Crofton Woods Elementary, fifth-grader Jonathan Harkey, 10, learned
that he lost a distant cousin he'd never met: Brooklyn firefighter Timothy
Stackpole, 42, whose body was recovered last week.
"He had been watching TV, but when we heard this he was very upset - to
the point of tears," his grandmother, Pat Stamato, said. "Even with a cousin
he's never met, it's a connection. It brings it home."
At Prince of Peace Presbyterian Church, about 120 residents showed up
for a vigil the night of the attack, and the church was filled Sunday as well,
said the Rev. John Fregger.
At least one church member was working at the Pentagon when it was
struck, and escaped. And church secretary Karen Kasner's daughter-in-law's cousin,
Tara Creamer, 30, of Worcester, Mass. - who Kasner remembers meeting once
at a wedding - was on the first American Airlines jet that struck the World
Trade Center, the same one church member Laboissonniere's cousin was on.
The attacks made Crofton's patriotic bent even more visible. Its
streets are filled with flags now - the K-Mart sold all 300 it had in stock that
Tuesday and is awaiting more - but "most of those flags are normally
there," said Rev. Fregger. "That's just Crofton. That's who we are."
Richard R. Trunnell, a local attorney and president of the Crofton
Civic Association, said the community is putting together a patriotic concert -
"something uplifting"- next weekend in response to a tragedy that,
directly or indirectly, seems to have touched everybody.
Trunnell's best friend's wife works for a doctor whose brother was a
pilot of one of the airliners that struck the World Trade Center. His neighbor,
who works in intelligence, knew six Pentagon workers who were killed. And his
secretary's stepsister was exchanging instant messages with a friend in
the World Trade Center when the plane hit and the messages stopped.
"We call ourselves the safest community in Anne Arundel County," said
Trunnell, a father of two who was celebrating his 10th anniversary two
days after the attack. "But then one day we wake up, and realize maybe crime's
not our biggest issue."
Buzz Zinn, 67, woke up on the morning of Sept. 11 and took his car in
for repairs.
A Korean War veteran and resident of Crofton since the 1960s, he was
sitting in the waiting room when the news bulletins came on television.
He broke down and cried on the way home, he said, but the next day the
attack took on still another dimension for him.
"I was watching the news Wednesday night when her name came up on the
screen," he said.
Although he hadn't seen Ann Judge in eight years, he used to visit her
monthly at the National Geographic Society as part of his job in the sales
and marketing department of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
"She had a big heart, and she would always take time to see me," Zinn
said last week, wearing an American flag T-shirt as he took his daily
three-mile walk along the Crofton Parkway.
She used to give him National Geographic publications for his
grandchildren, and she once gave him an atlas, he said, crying as he
recalled it.
At home, after he clipped a short story from the newspaper about her
death, he placed it inside the atlas.
George Laboissonniere, who comes from a big family in a small state,
answered a phone call from his sister in Rhode Island Tuesday morning and
turned the television on.
He was worried about a first cousin, whose husband works near the World
Trade Center.
Later that day, returning home from a church vigil, he learned from his
sister that the first cousin's husband was unharmed, but that his third
cousin, David Angell, and his wife had been killed on the first plane to
strike the World Trade Center.
Angell, originally from Rhode Island, was the producer of Frasier and
other television shows.
"The last time I saw him was probably 35 years ago. We weren't that
close, but it's still a relative, and someone I knew as a child," said
Laboissonniere, a retired supervisor for the Washington Transit Authority.
"Watching on TV is one thing, but when you realize someone you knew, a
blood relative of yours, was killed, then you start trying to imagine what
they were thinking and what was going on. It makes it much more personal."
Bob Torene knew his wife was attending a conference near the World
Trade Center, but he didn't know what was happening there.
While he was on the golf course, Laurie Torene was standing in the
lobby of the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center.
"There was a loud clunk, like a big steel girder was hitting the
building, then there were these deep yawning noises," she said.
She and two co-workers from the U.S. Census Bureau in Suitland tried to
run out the front door, but were turned back because debris was falling from
above. They escaped out a side door and headed toward the river.
As she tried to call her husband, unsuccessfully, on the cell phone,
she heard an aircraft, looked up and saw it crash into the second tower of the
World Trade Center.
As they neared the Staten Island Ferry, she heard another boom as the
first tower collapsed.
"On the ferry you couldn't see anything for a while because smoke was
surrounding everything. And once it cleared, I didn't look back. I
couldn't. I didn't want to see."
Knowing her husband was playing golf, she was able to call the pro shop
from the ferry on a cell phone and pass on word that, though she had to
leave her luggage behind, she was safe.
She made it home the next day, after she and two co-workers, unable to
find a rental car, rented a U-Haul truck for $300 and drove back to Maryland.
She stayed home from work Thursday and again on Friday.
"I've just sort of cocooned since I got back."
Kathleen Depman spent part of Tuesday morning not knowing what was
going on, and part of it knowing.
Not knowing was better.
It wasn't until about 10:30 a.m. that a school secretary called her out
of class and into the hallway to tell her that her daughter and sister had
both called to say they were concerned about her husband, David Depman.
"I asked what they were concerned about," Mrs. Depman said.
The secretary told her that airliners had hit both the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, where her husband, a Navy commander, works in
intelligence.
She left class and tried to call.
"All I got were those crazy busy signals where it keeps buzzing very
quickly."
She returned to her class of fourth-graders and taught until the lunch
break, when she tried to call again. All she could get was voicemail.
During lunch, the principal announced to students that planes had hit
buildings in New York City and Washington, and assured the students they
were safe.
Throughout the afternoon, parents arrived to remove children from
school, and Depman did her best to reassure the children that remained.
"I didn't tell them that I was worried. I figured it was best to follow
the regular routine," said Depman, 36. "I hadn't seen anything that was on TV
by then, and it's probably better that I hadn't."
Depman said she was putting a science videotape into the classroom
VCR - her back to the door - when she felt a tug at her shoulder.
It was David Depman.
He had been inside the Pentagon, about one corridor away, when the
plane hit. He saw a wall buckle. He assisted a co-worker to the Pentagon
courtyard, where he was told to leave.
Having left his car keys in his office, Depman, 40, began hitchhiking.
Four rides later, he was dropped off at Crofton Woods Elementary.
"Thank God," the principal said when Depman, in uniform, walked into
the school.
As he headed toward his wife's classroom, a parent volunteer who was
monitoring the halls tried to stop him.
He kept walking.
"I said, `I'm Commander Depman, and I'm going to see my wife in the 4th
grade.' "
The Depmans hugged in the classroom and, later, went home to be with
their teen-age son and daughter.
They put up their flag.
They watched TV.
They answered phone calls.
They learned that David's brother, who works for a telecommunications
company, had found out that his boss was a passenger on the plane that hit
the Pentagon.
They learned that Kathleen's sister's husband had a friend who was a
passenger on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center.
By the end of the day, the world had gotten a lot scarier.
And a lot smaller.