Dear Karen and Zachary:

 

            What does one say in times like these, what words can possibly comfort those who’ve lost loved ones?  Questions such as this often came to my mind reading letters of condolence to my family in the shadow of my father’s recent death.  Prominent amongst those letters was one from your husband and father.  I worked for Rich at Cantor Fitzgerald/eSpeed on the top of 1 WTC for the better part of a year.  Now, a little more than a month after that letter from him to my mother and me, I have the most sorrowful task of writing such a letter to you.  That none of us could have foreseen the mass murder of thousands on the 11th of September in such a manner is an understatement, which will resonate forever in this world… that a man as special as your husband and father had the misfortune to be amongst the victims is a blow that will forever shape your lives and mine.

 

            Each day I stop and look at the flyers friends and relatives of victims put up wherever I go, and invariably I find a face from Cantor Fitzgerald/eSpeed… sometimes it’s someone I knew, but often it’s just a face I recognize in passing from work.  The first time I recognized at all someone on one of these flyers was at the Pierre Hotel a day afterward, and it was Rich staring back at me…. I was just stunned, equal parts anger and numbness.  While I knew where Rich was and what had happened from speaking with you right before out Tower 1 collapsed, the stark reality of seeing his face on a flyer was something else entirely, a reality which has yet to soften at all.  While the son of a Rabbi and well-versed in my religion, I’m not at all religious, but owing to my father’s death I’ve been going to temple a lot recently… sitting in temple after a long absence has mainly given me pause for reflection, and since the 11th of September, it is your husband and father Rich of whom I think most often along with my own father.  One of the neat things about working at 1 WTC was that I could see my sailboat from my office, but now when I look up from my boat at the emptiness in the skyline I’m confronted by the absence of what and who once was.  In my religion it is said during Mourner’s Kaddish marking the anniversary of a death that ‘”the departed… still live on earth in the acts of goodness they performed and in the hearts of those who cherish their memory.  May the beauty of their life abide among us as a loving benediction.”  For now I’m anguished and angry, but perhaps in time I’ll dwell more on Richard’s goodness than his absence, as I hope you shall.

 

            As you undoubtedly know, Rich was a special person, even to those who just worked with him.  I was deeply grateful to work for someone possessed of such unusual intelligence, honesty, humor, grace, loyalty, and, most of all, humanity…

 

            Your husband and father Rich was one of the best people I’ve ever worked for, a natural leader.  To some this could be quite intimidating, but to those of us who followed him he was just Rich, the guy with all the gadgets and toys, as well as the plan.  I’m not alone in saying we’d have followed him anywhere beyond Cantor Fitzgerald/eSpeed were he to let us.  Having been in a few potentially life threatening situations while at sea, I know what it’s like when people shift from recognizing your authority to actively looking to you for leadership.  However, unlike the events of the 11th of September, things always worked out as I was trained and prepared.  I can barely imagine what it would have like otherwise, to be helpless.  Surely people were looking to Rich to lead them down to safety, and if anyone could have done it would have been him.  We now know that Rich and everyone else faced insurmountable odds up there and never stood a chance.  I suspect there are quite a few broken keyboards that Rich snapped that morning now lying somewhere in the rubble.

 

             These things I mention of your husband are surely no surprise to you Karen, but to you little Zachary these are things you were yet to find out for yourself about your father.  All the pictures and videos of you, your mother and you father in his office, always most prominently displayed were a testament to Rich’s pride in and love for you and your mother.  As the years go by and you get older, these things will give you a glimpse at who your father was and how much he cared for you and others.  No doubt your mother, uncles and grandparents will be able to fill in the picture in greater detail.. And those of us who worked for Rich will be eager to tell you of the man we knew.  The man we surprised one summer with a party for his birthday… to his utter embarrassment and eventual enjoyment, certainly grateful for the Home Depot gift certificates, which perhaps he used to buy the tools with which he made you a chest and other things.  Make no mistake, Rich spent a lot of his time at work, but it was clear to me that he always knew family, you and your mother, were what mattered most.

 

… Hoping that you find succor in these words, I am,

           

                                                                                    With Kinship In Sorrow,

 

                                                                                    David