Opposite Only on the Surface

They sit 30 miles apart, at opposite ends of one of New York’s longest subway lines, Duke Ellington’s famed “A” train. No two neighborhoods have been hit as hard this fall as the Dominican community of Washington Heights in northern Manhattan and the beachfront community of Belle Harbor at the far tip of Queens.

On the surface, they couldn’t be more different.

The crowded streets and tenements of Washington Heights are home to 250,000 Dominicans, the fastest growing immigrant group in the city. Belle Harbor and the rest of the Rockaways, in Queens, are bedroom communities of mostly Irish and Jewish families over which jumbo jets carrying those immigrants fly a dozen times a day, headed for or coming from nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Monday, one of the planes, American Airlines Flight 587 bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, dived into four Belle Harbor homes. The neighborhood, which had already suffered the deaths of scores of firefighters, police officers and stockbrokers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lost five more residents in the crash. Dozens of Washington Heights residents on board the plane were also killed.

“Two beautiful communities were affected by this,” Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said.

He and others were quick to note that the seemingly different communities share more than disproportionate loss.

“Both communities have a strong belief in God, both rely heavily on family; both are places where people are very much connected to each other and have a strong work ethic,” he said.

“They’re both communities of immigrants,” said Msgr. Gerald Walsh, 59, of St. Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic Church in Washington Heights, where many priests, firefighters and police officers have Irish surnames. “This was a heavily Irish neighborhood until the ‘60s. As they went up the ladder and got education and good jobs, they moved outside to places like Belle Harbor. Now the Dominicans are doing the same thing.”

Washington Heights’ bustling boulevards and block after block of brick apartment buildings are the first stop in the U.S. for many Dominicans. They get off the plane with a large suitcase and a relative’s or friend’s uptown address. Kids play in concrete schoolyards and on crammed sidewalks, where an occasional skinny tree and pigeons and rats are the only nature.

“People come here and find cheap housing. It’s close to jobs downtown, and they get a good education and get out, hopefully,” Walsh said.

Many Dominicans own neighborhood grocery stores called bodegas; others seek work in restaurants and factories.

Roberto Despraded, 41, was one such immigrant. He immigrated a decade ago and worked long nights as a security guard at a restaurant and club in White Plains, N.Y.

This fall, he had saved enough money to bring his two young sons back to Santo Domingo to see his sisters. His older brother Ernesto helped him carry his suitcases downstairs early Monday morning. His wife and daughter opted to stay behind; his daughter did not want to miss a week of school.

On Thursday, Ernesto and a long line of neighbors sat in folding chairs in the dimly lit hallway outside his sixth-floor apartment. Inside, a circle of relatives and friends sat in front of a huge family photograph with candles, bouquets and bowls of fruit. It was a scene repeated at scores of apartments in a 20-block radius.

“The whole neighborhood is in shock; we cannot believe it,” said Rosa Sosa, 71.

Mary Gratereaux, 53, who has lived here for 20 years, agreed. “Our American dream cost us too much on Monday. It cost us our lives.”

On Thursday night, more than 1,000 people packed St. Elizabeth’s as Cardinal Edward Egan held a Mass--in Spanish and English--for those killed in the Flight 587 crash and at the World Trade Center. About 50 undocumented Dominicans who were busboys and maintenance workers were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks on the trade center.

The next morning, a borough away, 1,000 mourners filled St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Belle Harbor at the double funeral for Kathie Lawler and her son Christopher, who died when Flight 587 hit their home. A dozen funeral Masses for World Trade Center victims had already been held there in recent weeks. Two Irish bagpipe bands marched behind the hearses, drowned out occasionally by jumbo jets roaring overhead.

Belle Harbor, sitting on the narrow Rockaway Peninsula facing the Atlantic Ocean, is a community of two-story, wood-frame houses, green front lawns and quiet, tree-lined streets where sea gulls and wild geese circle overhead. The neighborhood is bordered by beaches on each side of the four-block-wide peninsula, the bridge across Jamaica Bay, the High Point pub and the parish church.

Hundreds of New York firefighters and police officers live here and vow never to leave. Many speak of “Rockapulco” and “never getting the sand out of your shoes.”

“It’s impossible to understand unless you live here,” said Kathy Blum, 31, standing outside the church after the funeral. “Everybody’s Irish or Jewish or married to somebody who is. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody watches out for everybody. The camaraderie on this peninsula makes it paradise. . . . And when something bad happens, they’re there for you, no questions asked.”

Sean Heeran was at the funeral as well. Born and raised in Belle Harbor, he is a fourth-generation New Yorker. His great-grandfather immigrated from Ireland during the potato famine, and his grandfather worked in hotels while living in an apartment on Fordham Road in the Bronx, not far from Washington Heights. His father, Bernie, grew up there.

“My dad speaks very highly of that neighborhood,” Heeran said. “It was a good place, strong roots, real camaraderie. It was a tough place, kids learned to be street smart, but he survived and came here.”

Bernie Heeran became a firefighter and pub owner. He married a girl from Rockaway, and they bought a house and stayed. “He worked his whole life for us,” said Sean, who graduated from Villanova University in 1993. “He would say, ‘I’m working hard for you guys. Go to school and make the grade.’ ”

Like many other young men in the neighborhood, he and his younger brothers, Charlie and Billy, were attracted to Wall Street. Charlie was a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, at his desk on the 104th floor on Sept. 11 when the building was hit. Sean and Billy, blocks away, saw the tower fall and ran for their lives.

Sean lives on Manhattan’s west side, but he has been spending a lot more time in Belle Harbor in recent weeks.

“Neighborhood is the most important thing to me. In times of need, people are there for you. I know I wouldn’t be able to get through my brother’s death without them,” he said.

“I hear the Washington Heights neighborhood is the same as ours in many ways,” he said. “Obviously I am praying for all of them.”

Giuliani will preside over a joint memorial service for the residents of both communities this morning in Jacob Riis Park, near the Flight 587 crash site. Grieving relatives will be bused in from Washington Heights.

Heeran, 26, said he thinks Giuliani’s idea of a shared service is a fine one.

“Black, white, blue, green--race and nationality doesn’t matter right now. We’re two groups of people who should get together, because we’re both experiencing the same pain.”

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Times staff writer Josh Getlin contributed to this report.