A Decade of Hope (58 page)

Gawad Kalinga pays only for the material; everything else is either donated or volunteered, whether the property itself or the services of the architect, engineer, or construction workers. It's all volunteer. Anyone who wants a house helps build all the homes in the community. The poorest of the poorest will get houses this way. Their lives will be changed.

In the beginning this subdivision area was a slum, home to seven hundred or eight hundred families, until a fire destroyed the entire thing. Then Gawad Kalinga came in to try to rebuild, and priority was given to those who had been burned out. Just on the other side of the Marie Rose Abad Village is another subdivision that is all slums—people on the outside looking in, asking, When can I move in there? That's the challenge now: to get those people into respectable housing. Each house is small—a twelve-byfifteen-foot area to build a bedroom, kitchen, and living room—but effective. Villagers are given a shell, cement, paint, raw walls, and it's up to them to do what they want with them. Some of them have built a second floor, with basket gardens hanging down. People take real pride. It's just good having a roof over your head. It gives them a sense of ownership, and because they get title in twenty years, they have an incentive to keep it clean.

These buildings are a transition for many of them from a cardboard box or a corrugated wood shack to a real house with plumbing.

We now have about three hundred people living in the houses in the Marie Rose Abad Village. When I go there I try to be very low-key, and don't even want to be seen. It is about Marie, not about me. I look at it all and I'm so happy, but also sad, because I can see on the other side of the river a much bigger community waiting in those terrible huts. This had been a very high-crime area, but for the past two years we have not had a single incident. The area used to be a watering hole for drugs, but now there's no longer a single person using them. The house offers a chance to restart something meaningful. Before, all they had was an absence of hope, no life, nothing. Marie has provided shelter and hope for so many of them.

 

Why was Marie killed? I suppress the rage only because I say to myself,
I cannot win this battle
. My pain is so great that if I start to fight, my pain will continue, and it is a battle that I cannot win. Some people have more anger than I can find. I'm not a coward, but it's just, I don't want to exert all my energy and then say, At least I tried. I do not want to accept defeat, no. But I will support in any way I can other people who are willing to take on the fight against terrorism. How can I win? I get so many e-mails from the Department of Justice about how this hearing is going and how that one has been dismissed. The big 9/11 organization, Tuesday's Children, is continuing the fight, and will go to Washington to be heard. If I was in New York I would go with them, to be a part of them, my friends. But I would be a silent minority, not doing any screaming. That would not bring back Marie; it would only bring me pain. But if you need me to stand up for your issues for you to carry on, I will be there.

 

If Marie is looking down on us, she would say, I am really, really glad about what you have done in my memory. I know that the people in the village are very grateful. Her picture is on every row of houses in the village, along with the title Marie Rose Abad Village. I wanted her face, not just a name; I wanted people to see that this is the woman whom you thank. I'm not someone who is overly religious, thinking all the time of heaven and earth and hell and whatever. But I do go to church and I naturally always speak to Marie there, telling her that I hope she's okay and happy. I do believe that she is watching over me, as I have had so many problems, and I feel her coming to me, smiling, a guiding hand. I guess I manage to stay okay because she has been watching over me. I believe that part.

I am not all alone. I have my brother, my sister, my mother—a meager family, but it is my family. I have my other family, Orphelia and her daughter, now our daughter, Gianne, and everyone who works in our house, which is eleven people plus six others working in our beach house. I also have a band I am managing. All of these people are now my family. These are the people that I care for, whatever happens, because this is what I have built here, with our village and my church. They all look to me, and if that is my mission, then so be it. I have been fortunate enough in my finances, and the good thing about that is that I know that I am doing positive things—things that, for some people, make life at least a little better.

Sally Regenhard is the mother of two children—a son, Christian, and a daughter, Christina. Her husband, Al, is a retired NYPD detective. Christian was a probationary firefighter just six weeks or so out of the FDNY training school when he responded with his company to the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11. He perished along with four other firefighters from his assigned company that day. Sally describes herself as an activist and an advocate for high-rise building safety and is respected by many in the 9/11 community for the tenacity and spirit that has grown from a mother's love.

 

 

 

I
'm usually a little on the hard-nosed side, a kick-butt type of person, especially when it comes to the issues that get placed before us. But when it comes to my son, Christian, that's when I cry. What can I say? I'm currently involved with the controversy down at the Ground Zero area where the building of a mosque is planned, and
60 Minutes
called me about it. They sent a girl for a preinterview, and I didn't know if she knew anything, so I had to go through the whole thing about my son and got so upset that I went off on a crying jag. It's draining. It's emotional. It's very difficult to be a 9/11 parent.

 

Growing up I was known as Teresa Mary Doughty. I'm the child of Irish immigrants, from Mayo and from Derry. My father was a conductor on the IRT, and early on he moved the family to Mosholu Parkway. We were practically the only Gentiles in this 99 percent Jewish upper-middle-class neighborhood and so didn't exactly fit in. My mother and father had brogues that no one ever understood. I was the only person on the block who went to Catholic school, and my sister and I had to walk ten blocks to get there. I was the first person in my family to go to college, because everyone in my neighborhood went to college. Later on, when I moved to Co-op City, I met activists there—socialists and union leaders. I learned so much from them about challenging the system, and that's why I was able to challenge the system after 9/11.

I was basically a stay-at-home mom for the early years of Christian's life. I went back to work when he was around nine years old. I also have a daughter, who is now a science teacher, and who like Christian is a graduate of Bronx High School of Science. When they were young I was with them, because I think it is very important for a parent. My husband was doing shift work back in those days. Before he became an NYPD detective, he worked in many precincts across the city as a uniformed patrolman. He was in the citywide anticrime unit and the senior citizens' robbery unit. He was undercover. He was in the riots of the 1960s and at Columbia University for the famous anti–Vietnam War protests. There's a famous picture of him and his colleagues at those protests, working the confrontation of a crowd. It was just a part of his thirty-nine years in the NYPD.

After just ten years he passed the sergeant's test and aced it. He was a person who had a lot of talent, especially artistic talents. But in his era of growing up on the Upper West Side, you didn't really become an artist or follow the arts. It was a very blue-collar, macho way of thinking. But he did have a very interesting, multifaceted career, and never took himself too seriously. He became a boss in the detective squad, so he was the sergeant. He had to deal with all these detectives—the good, the bad, and the ugly, but mostly good. And he was known among the detectives as a great boss. Before he retired, he had a remarkable career. I would say he was married to the Police Department. Every time there was a blackout, a snowstorm, riots, he was there. So mainly I was alone with the children while he was out saving the city. But that's all part of the job.

I went to Catholic school, and I hate to admit it, but I didn't get into the Bronx High School of Science, because the science and the math tests were so difficult. In those days the Catholic school system was superb in English, writing, history, and philosophy, but it was really not as demanding in science and, perhaps, in math. I was delighted when my daughter got into the Bronx High School of Science, and I was shocked when Christian got in. They both had one of the finest public educations you could receive in our city. In the early days of Co-op City, where we lived in the Bronx, the school used the open-classroom method of teaching. And so Christian was prepared for the Bronx High School of Science. It is one of the hardest high schools to get into in the whole country.

Christian was always a fantastic thinker, and a very charismatic and beautiful child. He had a Buster Brown haircut, with light blond hair and gorgeous blue eyes. And Christian was blessed with personality. Some children are chronic malcontents. Some are problematic. He was blessed with an easygoing temperament. He was a charming child. Everybody loved him and went crazy over him. I didn't really understand why so many other mothers would just go crazy over Christian. I guess since he was my own, I was too close to him to fully get it. He was just a wonderful child.

As a young boy Christian used to do some drawing, having a knack for the arts like his dad. When we moved to Co-op City in the Bronx, I became friendly with a social worker there. She came to our apartment one day, and after looking at Christian's artwork from nursery school, said, “Sally, I'm seeing that your son is highly intelligent, from the way he made the windows and people in the windows. So when he starts going to grammar school, you have to get him tested.” At that time they had started something new in the city school system, a program for exceptionally talented and gifted students. The kids had to take an IQ test to get in, and they had one school for these children in each borough. So, at my friend's suggestion, I seriously considered having Christian take the test.

Now Christian was smart, but he was also a cutup. He was a very funny child, and some teachers didn't like him because he had the ability to make the class laugh. If this happened in a Catholic school back in the day, the worst boy would get hit with the ruler stick. If the teacher asked the students to cite a word with a hard C, for example, kids would say words like “clock” and “cat” and so on. But Christian would always say something unexpected, like “cuckoo.” And, of course, the whole class would be in hysterics.

Once I was called to the school, and I went over there with my heart in my hand, I was so scared. I looked at Christian, who looked fine to me. But the teacher was pointing at him, saying, “Look what he did.” He had apparently taken a scissors—the little scissors they give to kids at school—and cut his hair into a V-like [style]. The teacher sent me this big official note stating that Christian cut his own hair, with his own assigned scissors, at 12:05 P.M., on such and such a date. I framed that note, and I had that in my home for years and years.

After the hair-cutting incident I went back to the teacher and said, “I've been advised, and I'd like my son to be tested.” She goes, “You're just raising your hopes. Your son is an average student and, what's more, he knows he's average.” I told her, “You know what, I'd still like him tested.” And so he took the exceptionally gifted test while in the second grade. Well, end result: Christian aced the test, a standard IQ test. He scored a 146. The teacher almost collapsed. From there he went on to the gifted student program. My daughter was the studious one, a real brainiac, and although Christian was obviously smart, he was not as studious. He was a more laid-back, casual kid. And when he got into the Bronx High School of Science, I nearly fainted.

Christian did very well at Science for the first three years. But in his fourth year there he spent more time cutting class and hanging out in Harris Field, the park across the street. Now, as a parent, I was typically very easygoing with my children. My husband was the taskmaster, the marine, the cop. I felt from a psychological point of view that children should be able to make their own decisions. But this time I got tough with him and said, “Christian, if you don't graduate from Bronx Science I'm going to kill you.” He was shocked I had said that. By hook or by crook, though, he did it.

But soon after came the greatest trauma I had had prior to 9/11, when Christian announced, one week before his nineteenth birthday, that he was joining the United States Marine Corps—for five years. I almost had a nervous breakdown. I spent the weekend in my nightgown and my robe, crying and fighting and going crazy and calling all my relatives trying to find ways to talk him out of it. I didn't succeed—he was determined.

A large part of Christian's determination, I believe, grew from a very traumatic experience he had before joining the marines. He never told me outright, but I think it was a factor in his decision. He and his buddies were down in Manhattan on West Eighty-sixth Street. I don't know exactly how it happened—maybe they were drinking a little beer or something—and Christian accidentally bumped into somebody on the street. This was in the lawless days of New York City, and they went after him with a broken beer bottle, mugged him, and slashed him. They cut him so severely that, thank God, the ambulance attendants said to him, Kid, when you get to the hospital, tell them you want a plastic surgeon. They took him to Lenox Hill Hospital, thank God. I only found out about it after he went to the hospital and received something like twenty-five stitches in his face. They almost ripped off his lower lip, and they almost got his eye. The plastic surgeon reassured me that he had done his best to maintain the integrity of the lower lip. And he really did. Thanks to the plastic surgery, you could hardly see any marks. God blessed Christian that day. Christian was a blessed person up until 9/11.