I always dreaded trying to talk to relatives of someone who had just died—something I had done far too often in my years as a crime reporter. It never got easier. My first journalism assignment after just three days of “orientation” at the paper—which back then consisted roughly of “and here’s the women’s washroom, and the cafeteria. Human resources need you to fill out this form and pee in a cup”—had been to interview a woman whose baby had died after the doctor had dropped him on the delivery room floor. She lived in Hamilton, about a ninety-minute drive from our downtown newsroom, and by the time I got to her door I was so filled with dread that I was delighted no one was home. An editor told me to stay put, so I sat in one of the company cars staring at her front door. When she arrived home an hour later, I reluctantly went again, and knocked gently, perhaps hoping she wouldn’t hear. When she did, the sight of her reduced me to tears. After I choked out an introduction and apologies for being there, the poor woman took such pity on my snotty face that she brought me inside for tea and told me about her baby Michael. In the end, the Star was the only paper to get an interview but despite the editors’ praise, I still felt sick. The only saving grace was that eventually the publicity surrounding the case helped push for an investigation into hospital policies regarding newborns and recommendations were implemented, including the mandatory swaddling of babies in a towel before moving them.
Sometimes telling crime stories did make a difference, and I really did believe that as journalists we shared the motto posted in the hall of Toronto’s coroner’s office: “We Speak for the Dead to Protect the Living.” Of my dozens of “pick ups,” as they’re known because essentially we go and “pick up” a picture of the deceased, only a handful of relatives ever closed the door without talking. But the times that they did, that noble mission of making the world a better place by violating someone’s private grief just sounded hollow and I felt ghoulish. Besides, these days, as news gets delivered faster, most stories, no matter how tragic, have a shelf life of only a few days before the next tragedy makes them expire.
Of course, 9/11 was different because the grief was so widespread and public. But for Cindy, like the other relatives, it was a personal loss. I promised in my letter not to bother her if she didn’t call back and included my hotel and cell numbers at the bottom, before convincing a kind hotel clerk to take the note to her room and slide it quietly under the door.
I HAD JUST fallen asleep at the Algonquin Hotel as the sun came up, when the phone rang. In a steady and clear voice, Cindy Barkway told me she had my note and she would be happy to talk. But she was leaving New York. Could I come now? After a quick phone call to Star photographer Vinnie Talotta, who had been in New York shooting Fashion Week on the 11th, we ran to the hotel in time to greet Cindy as she came off the elevator. Cindy’s blond hair was smooth and styled. She wore a twin sweater set that looked cashmere and was accentuated by a string of small pearls. I felt embarrassed at what a mess the two of us were beside this beautiful widow. Cindy’s whole world had collapsed in those towers, but what I would better understand later is that grief affects everyone uniquely, at different times, and Cindy had somehow grasped something so many other relatives couldn’t yet believe. She realized her husband was gone. She knew David wasn’t in a hospital, or trapped alive under the rubble. She said she could feel it and needed to get home to her son Jamie to tell him. But first, she would tell us. We had only about twenty minutes before she had to join her parents in the idling Lincoln Town Car that had been sent by David’s company to drive her to Toronto.
She was remarkably composed. She said she was thankful for the two days she had had with David in New York, roaming the city, dining at the Gramercy Tavern and a steak house on Avenue of the Americas, thinking it would have been so much harder had she been forced to watch it all from Toronto. “He loved his son more than anything in the world,” she said, touching her stomach, which held the baby her husband would not meet. “My children are going to grow up without a father. But I’m going to make sure they know what a wonderful dad they had.”
Cindy had been playing the cruel “what if” game in her head since the towers were hit. What if the planes had struck twenty minutes later, when David was due in another meeting and would have left the building, or what if they had crashed into another skyscraper, far away from the World Trade Center? At first, Cindy believed David had escaped since he was in the north tower, which collapsed second, and perhaps he had time to climb down the 105 flights. He had sent an email to a colleague in Toronto that said, “We need help. This is not a joke,” so it was clear he had not been killed upon impact.
But by the morning of September 12, when David had not returned to the hotel, Cindy went to the missing persons bureau. She was given number 180. She wanted instead to go south and claw through the pile herself, but no one would let her near Ground Zero, and they cautioned her about being outside at all with the questionable air quality. The day before I met her, she had taken David’s toothbrush to the centre for DNA testing.
“I haven’t wanted to leave because that’s admitting David is gone,” Cindy said as she clutched a picture of her husband and walked toward the car. “But it is time to go home.”
None of David’s remains would ever be recovered.
THE FIRST CALL from the newsroom came shortly after we filed the story and photos. I vividly recall Vinnie’s face as he talked. The conversation went something like this:
“Are there any other pictures?”
“I sent what I have,” replied Vinnie, defensive.
“It’s just, well, she doesn’t look, sad.”
“She was. That’s how she looked.”
“But aren’t there any, where she’s, you know, crying?”
Vinnie grew up in Toronto, the eldest son of a first generation Italian household where his mother did not speak English and his father loved to sit in the backyard under a canopy of grape vines, wearing a white undershirt and straw hat as he drank coffee or grappa and embarrassing the hell out of the teenaged Vinnie. Perhaps it is more accurate to say Vinnie grew up on the street. And even though Toronto is heralded for its low crime rate, Vinnie always drove around, and likely still does today, with a small pocket knife tucked somewhere under his seat.
Vinnie joined the Star in 1988 as a “copy boy.” It was a position that has retained its name today even though the duties now entail general office administration. Since computers replaced typewriters, copy boys were no longer needed to run stories from the reporters’ hands to editors, then cram the stories into oblong containers that would be suctioned along tubes to the engravers and eventually to the printing presses.
Over the years, Vinnie got to know everyone at the Star, and everyone knew Vinnie. But it was the photographers he studied and wanted most to befriend. Vinnie learned about journalism in the newsroom, not the classroom, and in 1997 the paper rewarded him with a job as staff photographer. I loved working with Vinnie as a crime reporter because he had a gift for putting anyone at ease. I watched him charm politicians, dignitaries, housewives, ceos, drag queens (and I bet the Queen herself should he meet her), drug dealers and chiefs of police. In Compton, California, where we once did a series on gangs, I interviewed a six-foot-five Crip serving two life sentences for murder, and it was Vinnie whom the gang leader felt more comfortable talking with. Ditto the cops. Yes, Vinnie had charisma and treated everyone as equals, but if pushed too far, he also had a short Italian fuse, and on the phone that day I watched it ignite.
The editors wanted to know if he could go back to photograph Cindy again. I had to wonder what that would involve. Would we keep probing and prodding, and if that didn’t bring her to tears perhaps I would pinch her?
“No,” Vinnie said. “She’s on her way back to Toronto.”
“Could we get her here?”
The call was over.
In the end, David