A Decade of Hope (53 page)

BARBARA: She wanted to go back to social work and work with children. Somehow to combine the two. It was during the first week that we started the Brooke Jackman Foundation. We have a wonderful family, and they began working at it, and a lot of close friends wanted to do something. I remember that they mentioned at the memorial service that there would be a Brooke Jackman Foundation.

ROBERT: The lawyers had to set up paperwork to get a foundation set up, a 501(c)3. We had to get everything going, that type of thing. I think it helped us, because it got us out of bed.

BARBARA: It took me six months to be able to utter a word. I couldn't talk at all.

ROBERT: We did grief counseling.

BARBARA: A doctor from Mount Sinai had volunteered to go down to Ground Zero, and somehow we got hooked up with her. So our family met with her once a week for two years.

ROBERT: And that helped. When we first started going, I remember telling the doctor, “I just want my family to get as normal as they can.” I wanted to get back on track, and that was my job. Hopefully it's done. And sometimes it's horrible, for all of us. It's just, like we said, it doesn't go away. If I see two young girls walking down the street talking, and one looks like Brooke, I'm a basket case.

The foundation was very much a family operation in those first couple of years. So we did everything. Sometimes I don't know how we did it. But it was just the will of the whole family to get together to do this. Well, once we announced it, there were all kinds of e-mails that went out at Bear Stearns. I can't tell you how many employees we had at that time—it could have been twelve thousand. The guys in the Boston office did a whole solicitation of everybody there. Because I dealt with most of the other departments in the other offices out of town selling bonds, they all pretty much knew what we were trying to do.

BARBARA: Friends started sending in donations, and people from all over whom we didn't even know, who had read about it in the paper. I can't say how many donations came in—from Australia, Colorado Springs, North Dakota, France. A teacher in France. So many wonderful people.

ROBERT: The first couple of years we got a lot of money. We're amazed that every year we're doing okay, because in general, the further away you get from the event of 9/11 itself, the less interest there is in this. I think everybody in some way was affected by 9/11, whether they lost somebody or didn't. From our point of view, every year is hard. Usually when you lose somebody, you have a mourning period, and it's over. But whenever an article appears about 9/11, or another anniversary is honored, it's a public matter. It's an abrasion, always rubbing—it doesn't go away.

BARBARA: Of course, nothing could ever truly take the place of Brooke. The ache that's in your heart, it just never goes away. There's always something that reminds you. I couldn't walk into our town for two years. I couldn't go into the local supermarket. I would go two towns away, because I would always remember something—she had her first car accident in that parking lot, or it's a place she liked to hang out with her friends. I couldn't go anywhere near that.

But it helps to know that we are helping other people through her. We have expanded all of our programs, as well. Our literacy programs are in so many more sites now.

ROBERT: The first year we gave out one hundred backpacks. We were running around to Staples, buying the packs, filling them with books, and putting them out there. We had a bunch of friends come and help us pack, and we did that for about seven years, at the end of August, for the new school year. People couldn't wait to help.

BARBARA: We eventually used the gymnasium of a school on the Upper East Side, and would sit there for a few days, assembling the backpacks. It was a lot of work. In the beginning there were three books, then four, and this last year it was five. Up until this year we also gave a little Walkman. We wanted the children to be able to listen to books on tape, because they don't always have time to read them. Now we are using MP3 players, and people can download the books from our Web site. This year we also sent out a few hundred to Haiti.

ROBERT: And a couple of years ago to Louisiana.

BARBARA: Right. For the children after Katrina. But most of them go to the metropolitan area—to homeless shelters or family and children shelters.

ROBERT: They've also opened libraries in some of these shelters and in the schools—like PS 111, where my daughter Erin taught.

BARBARA: This year we are giving out three thousand seven hundred backpacks. Now that's way too many for us, and we have them filled in Chicago. We've found that the need grows each year, and that if you love to do something, you'll do it. We just felt that books and reading are sort of the keys to empowering children for a better life.

ROBERT: What we found was that, for a lot of these children, reading was not being reinforced at home. That's how we started our literacy program, where we involve families. We bring them in and give them dinner, and they play word games and different things with the kids. People can't seem to get enough of it. Most of these programs run eight months or nine months.

BARBARA: And then they have a graduation ceremony.

ROBERT : The best thing was the parents that would come up to you—a woman who is now reading on the bus with her daughter as she's going to work, or when she's dropping the kid off in the morning, or in the Laundromat doing the wash, telling us that this has helped her in her job and with her daughter.

BARBARA: She said, “Now we've become readers. We read in the Laundromat, we read on the subway.” At a graduation ceremony another parent actually gave my daughter and son roses and said, “We have bloomed just like these flowers. We are readers now.” These are very touching. We get little notes all the time.

I also mentioned to a woman, when I went on a school trip, that the children didn't have any hats or mittens, so now she has an organization called Stand to Knit that makes them. And we put them in the backpacks also. Erin is running it all now. She left teaching.

ROBERT: She's the best and only employee we have.

BARBARA: The only paid employee. After the second year I got shingles and I knew I needed help. She volunteered to run the foundation. She has a friend who gave us an office, computer time, telephone, anything that we need. It's very nice. Very generous.

BARBARA: We also have Brooke's Read-a-Thon, which is a two-hour event down at the World Financial Center, where we have officials, the fire commissioner, children's authors, people from the mayor's office, EMTs, and firemen who read to the children.

ROBERT: Twenty-five readers and about a hundred and fifty kids, I'd say. We also do a five-K run in the Oyster Bay area. And our friends come out and help us every year.

BARBARA: And that's grown. One hundred and fifty people this year.

ROBERT: We have a fun run for the little kids and then a five-K race for the adults.

ROBERT: You know, when you go back to that day, I remember being in the office, and Brooke called. And some guy picked up the phone and said, “It sounds like your daughter.” I picked it up and there was no sound. And then, next thing I saw on the screen was the tower going down. And you just can't believe that your child's there. I think of the days that we spent going around the city and not admitting to ourselves the worst. I'm just amazed we were able to get through it. You know, you're not supposed to have to give the eulogy for your child. That's not supposed to happen.

Regarding 9/11: The only thing I think about is that somewhere one hand wasn't telling the other what the hell was going on, and it should have been preventable. Those guys should have been caught or stopped. But, you know, these things have happened, and I'm sure maybe there will be more stories about what this group knew and didn't tell that group. Because that's the way the world goes around.

BARBARA: I attend a support group that my daughter Erin suggested. One of the facilitators lives in Chappaqua, near President Clinton, and he wanted to come down and talk to us, but the group voted for him not to come, because as a whole it felt that he didn't do enough, that he could have prevented it. So in the back of my mind, the question is always there: What if he had done more? With the embassy or the
Achille Lauro
or—I don't know. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if he'd taken a stronger stand. But to blame the rest, al Qaeda, it's like a blur to me. You can't even put a face to it. I don't know about blame for this whole thing, because I don't think I've given it that much thought. I just go forward and do what we can do to change. And for me, change comes from education. That's what I hope.

ROBERT: I am not a hater, but who knows what else will come? Someone else will be unhappy with the world because of the way it is. They want a bigger share for themselves. It's been going on for centuries. I guess we are all trying to take our hate and make it positive.

BARBARA: I don't think it's hate. We just want to make something positive of this situation. I can't say that I've ever hated anyone. Bob was in Vietnam, and he wrote a book that was published after he was home, letters he had written to his sister in an elementary school class. He wrote to them that he was in Vietnam to make the world safe for them. That's how he perceived it. It's ironic what happened with us.

ROBERT: Since 9/11, I think I've gotten a little more spiritual. Our kids and my wife have not. They find no solace in organized religion. They feel that organized religion or God or whatever you want to call it has left them. Because if there was a God, Brooke would be here.

BARBARA: Brooke and all the other people that were there.

ROBERT: Our rabbi was new to the temple at the time this happened, and he did a yeoman's job. He didn't even know us, but he was very comforting in the beginning, and still is to this day. I wouldn't say he's extremely religious, but he is extremely learned, and a mensch.

BARBARA: You know, I never thought I would be able to laugh again, because the ache you always feel is there, but you learn to cope, and I think that we are trying to do more than just cope. We want to show our grandchildren that it is a good world, it is a positive world.

ROBERT: Now that they're seven and five they're starting to ask a lot of questions about 9/11.

BARBARA: And their aunt Brooke.

ROBERT: The aunt that they never met. They always talk about her as if she's in the room, which is a little hard sometimes. I hope that as they get older they'll be helping out to raise money for the foundation, with lemonade sales and whatever. I really want them to know what happened, and maybe my analysis of it will help them down the road.

BARBARA: We want people to remember Brooke and everyone else who lost their lives that day. I have been looking at the designs of the 9/11 memorial. You know, I have a few questions about it. I don't like how the names are being placed. I don't know if I like it placed underneath, as it's going to be. But this is what we have, and hopefully it will come out as beautiful as they are telling us it will.

ROBERT: The first time you go down to that open pit, it's heartbreaking, like getting hit in the chest. A stabbing in the heart. And you walk around, and you say,
This is where she is.
We got a couple of fragments back [and] actually had a burial.

BARBARA: And then we had to open the casket again. And that was the worst. She's at the cemetery, but she's not really there.

ROBERT: We put up a headstone because it gives us a place to go. It's very hard.

BARBARA: Brooke's birthday was August 28. So the month of August, leading up to September 11, I feel washed out. It's a terrible time. Sometimes I really don't know why she went to Wall Street. When she graduated she went for book publishing, but she was bored with that. And then she went on the Columbia Web site and saw this opening that she applied for at Cantor Fitzgerald.

She never even had a finance course.

ROBERT: She went, interviewed, and was one of two out of a hundred who got hired. It was never in her makeup to be a trader or to do that type of thing. And I don't know why she took that job. I keep thinking,
Did she go there because I was there? Because my son was there
? Why would she do that?

BARBARA: It was so tragic for so many Cantor Fitzgerald families.

ROBERT: I think Howard [Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm that lost 657 employees in addition to Brooke Jackman] did a superb job. He was in a tough position. His brother on the agency desk died. I must have seen the guy eight to ten times over the next two years. He would fly to New York to see all the families whose loved ones worked there, and was always sending little notes and stuff about people to us. In the beginning Howard got very bad publicity, and in the end I think he did an enormous job. I think he did the best he could, and he didn't know what was going to happen to that firm. But he made a promise to everyone, and he stuck to it. Families who lost their sole support got health benefits for five or six years. They took care of their people, more so than any other firm I ever heard of. And now the firm is doing very well. I would never take anything away from the guy.

BARBARA: I just keep wanting to do more. So where do we see the future ? Hopefully we will grow. We did three thousand seven hundred backpacks this year, and we will get to ten thousand. Hopefully we'll open more libraries, more literacy programs, more read-a-thons. We just want to grow.

ERIN: A lot of families created named efforts and said they would do them for five years or ten years. We always had a forever outlook. To grow it as big as we possibly could.

BARBARA: I remember that Erin told me about the Susan Komen Foundation, which was started by her sister. And look how it's grown. We said that someday we're going to get ours to grow like that.