A Decade of Hope (15 page)

The Ollertons left New York, but back in California they threw their energy into the project, sponsoring things like golf outings and car-washing events to raise funds. Kathy Ollerton was a woman of substance, and she had acquired a lot of these little offices for independent insurance brokers. One of these brokers happened to be a young man from Afghanistan whose family had lost his brother in a very similar fashion to how we lost Wendy. When the Russians came into Afghanistan, to their town, they walked into every house and grabbed whoever was there and took them. Only men—they didn't touch the women. They took his brother, and they never saw his brother again. And so Ibrahim Mojadiddi became the conduit for us to build our school.

Ibrahim's father was a big landowner in Afghanistan, and was well liked. They had nothing but their property, as everything had been destroyed there. The Taliban had taken over, and that was so destructive. Ibrahim wanted to help, so he said, “My family will donate the land.” That was in 2004, and that was when the ball really got rolling. The whole project was funded for less than forty thousand dollars.

On July the Fourth of the following year, I traveled to Afghanistan, where we dedicated the school. We met with the minister of education. At the dedication we had the governor of the town, the mayor, and the imams. There were over two hundred people inside this building. The girls sang and chanted, and we gave the boys soccer balls. There is a beautiful sign there where Wendy's name is written in Farsi, and we dedicated a little garden to Wendy. It is just the sweetest thing. It was difficult to grow anything in the middle of this barren, hard land, but they grew flowers. We were treated as if we were royalty. They found grass and bark, and they threw it at us as if kings and queens had arrived. We broke bread with them. We were treated as beautifully as I've ever been treated in my life. Each time we walked in they would say, “God bless America.”

I also met the boys and girls. There are over two hundred students in the school, with boys attending in the morning and girls in the afternoon. The boys had previously had to travel over three miles by foot to go to school; the girls simply did not go at all. So this little town now has its own school with Wendy's help. We don't share exactly where it is; we have agreed not to mention the name of the city. The Taliban has become a real stronghold close to this community, and we try to keep it safe.

On my last day there two men had a party in their own home. Of course we were all seated on the floor on beautiful carpets. I only ate rice—I was so afraid of getting sick. These gentlemen came from means and had a cook, and the presentation was just exquisite. When we finished they took out some instruments and started banging away, and the headdress they gave me to wear came off, and we were swaying, and it became just like a revival. There were twelve of us around the floor, but only two women—Kathy Ollerton and myself. Women and men never mix together, but we were mixed for this special occasion. One of the men asked through an interpreter, Would I like to play the drum? I played it as if I knew what I was doing, and said “Oh, this is just like being in church!”

Where we were was just like being in heaven—it was my ultimate healing balm. I had to know in my spirit that I wasn't faking when I said I was not angry toward a whole people. I had to confirm that, and I did. Unfortunately there are some real crazies who have done terrible things, but there are many Christians who have done crazy things too. So while I'm not happy with those insane people, I've met some amazing, beautiful people who I treasure in my heart. And I pray for their safety and their well-being.

I can look at any aspect of nature, whether it's in a photograph or whether it's looking at a tree when I'm in a park, and I appreciate that it's alive. I think about the creator of that tree, and I think there's got to be something bigger and much greater than all that we see in our world. Some people will always say, “Why did God allow evil?” And I say, “Because there's also evil out there. Inevitable evil exists among us.” God didn't say there would be no evil: There's a battle and a war going on. So I think to walk on the side of good, to walk on the side of believing that there's a greater good, and that I want a part in that. The good can exist through me, and hopefully through you, too, the same way that the bad has been exposed through other human beings. The good is shown through us. So we each have to shine the light. Light is so critical to me, because if you're in a room, all you do is flick on the light, and there's no longer darkness, and there's no longer that eerie feeling. Well, I want to be that light. I personally have to find a way to play the role that will speak of the good and never give homage to the negative, the evil, and the bad that's in this world.

For me the fundamental question is, How do you allow yourself to open yourself up in life? There's a little faith-based book that many of us read,
The Prayer of Jabez
. Jabez was really an insignificant person in the Old Testament, not even a prophet. But he said a very simple little prayer: “Lord extend my territory. While that's happening, stay close to me.” I paraphrase it to say, “Stay close to me, Lord, so no harm will fall upon me.” It became a critical book in my life, because that is all I want to say: God, give me an opportunity to touch someone else's life. Give me the opportunity to be in the presence of someone else. Give me an opportunity to touch someone who might be hurting. It's pretty much the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi: Make me an instrument. I don't want to do anything else. I really believe that my calling in life has become, because of Wendy, to be a servant, and however I need to serve, that's what I want to do. I've been an educator my entire life and I cannot think of a greater calling to give me a greater extension of my territory. And, post-9/11, God has really extended my territory.

But look at what has happened ten years later. I traveled around the country speaking about preparedness, and also, I did a very big public speech about faith. Yes, faith and church and school have to be separate. But you can't take away from what is in my heart, who I am. I'm an educator ; I love God. God has been my strength. It's not about standing in the front of my school building proselytizing, but rather about showing who you are, where your strength comes from. I would say to kids in my school, I don't care if you believe in this pencil. If this pencil makes you happy, then go with it. But be sure to go with
something
. You cannot, should not, believe you are in this life as an entity of no value, with no connection to a greater being. Let's honor what we believe, And that's my spin on life for the rest of the time I have on this earth. I honor Wendy. And I honor God. That's what I mean when I say, “God, make me an instrument.”

Peter King (Republican-NY) is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the United States House of Representatives. He has been a congressman since 1993, serving as the U.S. representative for New York's Third Congressional District. He is the son of a New York City police lieutenant.

 

 

 

I
was born in 1944 in Manhattan and grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, on Forty-fourth Street between Skillman and Forty-third. Both of my parents were Irish Catholic, and two of my four grandparents were born in Ireland. One was born here but raised in Ireland, and my mother's father was actually Welsh and Episcopalian, but converted to Catholicism.

My father was a city cop. He was promoted to lieutenant and was the director of physical training at the police academy. I knew he had a job at the academy, but no one ever told me until recently that after he retired they put his picture on the wall down there.

We lived just two doors down from the Celtic Cafe, a block and a half from Lynch's Funeral Home, a block and a half from Sunnyside Gardens, where they had the Golden Gloves fights, and a half block from Robert Halls, which was the highest level of clothes that anyone in the neighborhood bought. We had the usual stereotypes for that time. The bar owner was Irish, the delicatessen guy was German, the candy store guy, Jewish. I went to St. Teresa's Grammar School. The nuns had a tough job with over seventy kids in the classroom, and we went to school in shifts of four hours a day.

I always thought it was a really safe neighborhood, but looking back at it now, the brother of the guy who sat in front of me at school went to the electric chair, along with a guy whose father owned a bicycle store. They had killed a guy when a stickup went bad. The neighborhood also had a lot of guys who were locked up, but with all that, it wasn't dangerous. Unless you bothered somebody else, nobody bothered you, and I don't ever remember anyone getting jumped.

We lived almost twelve years in Sunnyside, and then moved to St. Albans on Long Island. I went to Brooklyn Prep High School and looking back on it, I found it tougher than college or law school. Jesuits are totally unforgiving when it comes to your studies. I then went to St. Francis College in Brooklyn. I worked full time during my last two years there, to help pay the bills, while also going to college full time. I saved some money and ended up going to law school at Notre Dame. I graduated in 1969, and right out of law school went into the Sixty-ninth Regiment, U.S. Army. I did almost six months on active duty and four and a half years on reserve duty. A lot of cops and firemen were in the unit.

When I returned, I practiced law in Manhattan for a while. Then I went out to Nassau County, which was not as expensive as the city. I developed a small law firm, got into politics, was elected councilman, and then county comptroller in 1981. In 1992 I was elected to Congress, and I've been there ever since.

I began being absorbed by security matters in our country with the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Even then, I didn't pay as much attention to it as I should have. Both parties have a retreat at the beginning of each congressional session, and it was while I was at the Republican retreat in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1993 that they announced that a bomb had gone off in the World Trade Center. One of the congressmen in a flat joke attempt said, Any time New Yorkers get killed, that's a good sign. It didn't create a sense of urgency in America or in Congress.

In the early seventies the Croatian freedom fighters set off a bomb occasionally or the Puerto Rican nationals would be involved in a serious shooting or a bombing. These were very tragic events, and usually a few people were killed, but they didn't have consequences beyond. Looking back at the Trade Center bombing now, my initial reaction was that this was a similar incident. I came back to Washington a day or two later, and it wasn't even that big of a thing in the newspaper. My recollection is that Bill Clinton never came to New York to visit the site, and I don't think [Mayor David] Dinkins came back from wherever he was. Ray Kelly basically took over the operation. It just did not register how significant that bombing was, and many concluded it was just some crazy Muslim extremist who was mad at the world. And New York had experienced that before, dating back to the J.P. Morgan Wall Street bombing in 1920.

From February of 1993 through September of 2001, I wasn't on the intelligence committee, so I didn't know of any secret briefings that might have been given, but I never heard the '93 bombing discussed by anyone. It was just out of sight, out of mind.

The evening of September 11, 2001, was supposed to be the annual White House barbecue, which the president hosts for the members of Congress and their families. Both my kids were finally just getting out of school, and my daughter was married, so, rather than paying a bunch of rent every month I had bought a condominium across from the Watergate. My wife, Rosemary, had planned to fly down the night before, but her flight was canceled because of massive thunderstorms, so she was taking the 8:30 A.M. Delta shuttle out of LaGuardia. My chief of staff picked me up that morning right around 8:30 A.M., and as we were driving to the office my daughter called me on my cell phone. Her husband worked about three blocks north of the World Trade Center, and his office looked out at the towers. She told me, before it had been reported on the news or anything else, that he could see out the window that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and she said it was a giant plane. Now my concern was—and it may have been very self-centered, but again, I wasn't even thinking of a terrorist attack—of nothing other than the fact that my wife was on an 8:30 flight that would have been coming up the Hudson at the same time. Right away I was afraid it was my wife's plane, so I called my office, and they called Delta, and all Delta would say was that there had been an accident but couldn't tell us anything else, wouldn't confirm anything. My assistant dropped me off at the Cannon [House] Office Building, where everyone was walking down the hallway, laughing and drinking their coffee, cops were very relaxed, and there was no sense of tension at all. I went into my office, where the TV was on, and just as I walked in I saw the plane hitting the World Trade Center and said, “Oh, they have it on tape.” I didn't realize then that it was the second plane hitting. I was still concerned about my wife, and then I turned on my television and learned that the second tower had been hit.
Of course
, I said to myself at that moment,
this is a terrorist attack
.

I still couldn't get in touch with my wife. After the second plane hit my son-in-law had taken off from his building, but he didn't have a cell phone. And then my son, who worked in the Commerce Department, called, but after a false report that a bomb had gone off at the State Department—though then they said it was at the Commerce Department—all the phones went dead there for about fifteen minutes. So I had no indication where my wife, my son, or my son-in-law were. At about 9:21 A.M. my wife called and said, “I don't know what's going on, I don't know how I'm going to get to the White House tonight. They say there are no flights going out today.” She had no idea what had happened; they had stopped the planes on the runway, and the pilot announced that all flights had been canceled. I said to her, “Do you know what's happened?” and she said no. I said, “We are at war.” It was the first time I heard myself say that. And then they announced it on the plane, and I heard people screaming all around her. I sent someone from my staff to pick up my wife, and then my son called, and my son-in-law called from a cab on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Within a half hour we knew everyone in my family was safe, and as far as I was concerned the whole world was safe for that solitary, brief moment.