‘He Loved Those Towers’

He wanted to remind them that laughter is a form of bravery, an act of defiance, a family tradition. He wanted to say that in hard times, laughing is the best thing you can do, and when all is lost, it’s the only thing.

But he couldn’t find the words.

He rolled his shoulders, shifted his weight, bounced on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter in a black tuxedo. He made jokes, trying to stall, breaking up the crowd. No one in the family could be funnier than Tim, especially when the occasion was serious.

But this wedding toast needed to be more than funny. As best man for his younger brother Sean, he wanted to say publicly that Sean had stayed strong when their father died. He wanted to tell everyone that Sean didn’t fold when the family found itself alone and adrift; 10 kids with $27 in the bank and their heroic young father gone.

Finally, after bantering with the drummer, after fussing with the microphone, Tim’s trademark deadpan dissolved, and he looked straight into Sean’s eyes. “Life has a way of throwing things at us, good and bad,” he said, his voice catching. “It’s important to have a sense of humor.”

A few more words, and then he couldn’t go on.

But the point was made: We must.

Last week, the videotape of that 1998 toast became more than just a family memento. It became a message in a bottle. Watching the tape over and over, Tim’s family couldn’t help feeling that he was speaking to them from afar, raising his glass once more and trying to deliver one last piece of advice. It would have been just like Tim--to keep leading, keep coaching, keep urging his family forward, no matter what.

Timothy Gerard Byrne, my cousin, worked on the 104th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center, a bond trader at Sandler O’Neill. He was one of the thousands who never got out, one of the thousands presumed dead, one of the thousands whose stories ended when the building’s 110 stories collapsed before the nation’s eyes.

He was 36, unmarried, though that’s misleading. He was the head of a huge family. When his father died in 1986, Tim was just 21 years old, the third son, but he “stepped up,” as his nine siblings are so fond of saying. He became the father to his eight brothers and one sister, the financial and emotional support for his mother, my Aunt Charlene. He became the family’s center, their tower, as seemingly indestructible as the World Trade Center towers, and every bit as irreplaceable.

Just after the attacks, his siblings had hope. If anyone could walk out of a burning skyscraper, brushing dust off his wide shoulders, it would be Tim. He was the closest thing to a superhero they ever saw. Able to leap tall buildings. It seemed impossible that he could survive, but making the Syracuse University football team as an undersized walk-on seemed impossible too, and Tim did it anyway.

After a week, the family was forced to face the truth. “We’ll have a memorial Mass,” Aunt Charlene told the priests. “And if he comes home, we’ll have a massive party.”

The family scheduled Tim’s memorial Mass for Sept. 22, the anniversary of the death of Tim’s father. It would have been Tim’s wish. It would have been his father’s wish. It would have been an astonishing coincidence, almost as astonishing as the fact that his father’s birthday was Sept. 11.

The church, however, said no. Two weddings were booked that day. So the memorial was reset for Sept. 21, and I phoned Aunt Charlene to say I’d be there. In fact, I’d try to come a few days early.

She wept. She protested, lightly. But it was clear, even with her sons all around her, there would be things to do, ways to help. The days leading up to the memorial would be filled with chores and details and emotional trials. She would need all the family she could get.

Aunt Charlene isn’t really my aunt. She’s my mother’s first cousin, and her children are my second cousins. Still, I’ve called her Aunt Charlene forever, and as a boy I spent long summer days at her house, down the road from my hometown, Manhasset. I attended her husband’s funeral, and I can still close my eyes and see the five oldest Byrne brothers carrying their father’s coffin.

I played marathon games of whiffle ball with those brothers. Pat, Joe, Tim, Sean, Chris, Kevin, Brian, Jim, Colin--they were ferocious competitors, with sharp elbows, and they reminded me as they got older of the movie-star Baldwins, that other numberless band of strapping Long Island brothers.

Then there was the daughter, Kathleen, the eighth child, a tomboy in ribbons and bows.

Eventually, I left Long Island, lost touch with the Byrnes. But the connection was never cut. It couldn’t be. Our mothers were close. Our grandmothers were sisters. Our great-grandmother was an indomitable woman named Margaret O’Keefe, and we all inherited her mythology, drew inspiration from the story of her 19th century journey: Cork, Ireland, to Ellis Island, to Long Island. We all grew up hearing again and again how tragedy couldn’t defeat Maggie O’Keefe, though tragedy tried and tried.

The Byrnes were always my people. We had a bond that withstood distance and time, a bond of shared blood, which now includes shed blood. The same could be said of all Americans. Shed blood makes cousins of us all.

I drove to Aunt Charlene’s from Denver, arriving late Sept. 18. Sean met me in the frontyard. The fourth son, 35, a shipping broker, he hugged me and introduced me to his wife, and brought me inside.

Four brothers lined up to embrace me--Chris and Brian and Jim and Colin. Next came Kathleen, followed by her 7-year-old daughter, Laurelle, then Aunt Charlene, eyes swollen from crying, but still beautiful. She put her arms around my neck, and we didn’t say anything, because we couldn’t.

We gathered in the living room, in the house Tim helped Aunt Charlene buy, on the furniture he gave her last Christmas, and Aunt Charlene described how Tim had phoned her when the first plane hit. He said he was fine. The plane hit the other tower; he didn’t want her to worry.

Mom, he said, I wish I had a camera, because I’m looking at an airplane sticking out of the World Trade Center.

Stop admiring the view and get out of there, she yelled.

Security is giving us the all clear, he said. They’re telling people to return to their desks, everything is fine.

Get out, she pleaded.

He promised he would, then hung up. Minutes later Aunt Charlene watched on TV as the second plane hit Tim’s tower.

“He loved those towers,” said Sean, sitting at the piano, which was covered with candles and photos of Tim: Tim golfing. Tim hugging. Tim laughing.

Sean loved the towers too. That’s why he proposed to his wife at the top of one. That’s why he gave Tim a framed black-and-white photo of the towers as a Christmas present last year. “He loved being up high, looking out on the world,” Sean said, snapping his fingers, rapid-fire, to mean that his brother loved being a mover, a doer, a man who sat astride the clouds. It took years to reach the top, years of struggle and scrimping and sacrifice, and Tim was learning to enjoy his time.

Sean talked about his reaction to the news of Tim’s death. He walked into his daughter’s room and sank onto her bed. “I looked at all her dolls lined up,” he said. “I set 10 dolls in a row, and I thought: ‘Look at them all. That’s us. That’s my family.’ Ten kids. How can 10 kids come out of one person?”

(Each brother’s middle name is Gerard; St. Gerard is the patron saint of pregnant women.)

Now, Sean shot a look of disbelief at his mother, who gave him a weak smile in return. We all fell silent, and one of the brothers suggested watching home movies.

Aunt Charlene’s big-screen high-definition TV seemed like a time machine. It made Tim so vivid, so present. Here he was, walking around the basement, bare-chested, close enough to slap on the back. Here he was, about to graduate from St. John’s Business School, strutting around the backyard in his scarlet robe. Here he was, teasing his younger brother, Chris, his arm hooked around Chris’ neck, his face set in that devastating deadpan.

Chris tried not to smile, and couldn’t help smiling. He was getting the Tim treatment, the business, but it was OK, because for Tim, all laughter was a type of love.

Bracing Themselves for the Tasks Ahead

The next morning, while Aunt Charlene was at church, Brian and Jim and Colin gathered on the porch, bracing themselves for what lay ahead. With only 48 hours before the memorial, there would be an onslaught of phone calls, errands, relatives, reporters. It fell to Chris, 32, the fifth son, a pharmaceutical salesman, to contend with one local reporter who asked, “If you could say anything to the terrorists, what would it be?”

Brian, 29, the seventh son, also a pharmaceutical salesman, told his brothers that the church was considering what to do with all the donations being made in Tim’s name. Possibly a memorial wall on the football field where Tim was a high school star.

“That would be nice,” said Jim, 24, the eighth son, an investment research salesman. “To throw the football around on a Sunday, in front of Tim’s wall?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brian agreed, but he couldn’t hide what he was really thinking: I’d rather throw the ball around with Tim.

Brian was hungry, which made him remember how Tim taught him to hide food when they were boys. With nine brothers under one roof, Brian said, you were quick, or you were out of luck. When their mother whipped up a new batch of brownies, for example, it was crucial to get there first, extract a hunk, and stash it. Preferably on a high shelf, where the other boys wouldn’t find it.

The other boys, Brian said, always found it.

Jim smiled, and nodded.

Jim looked tired. He confessed that he’d been up all night watching home movies of Tim. “At 2:30,” he said, “I couldn’t find any more movies of Tim, so I watched my old football games.”

He laughed, embarrassed, then looked away.

A former wide receiver at Cornell, Jim recalled the many times Tim drove all day to attend his games. Coming off the field, Jim would look for Tim in the stands, and raise his helmet above his head in a special Tim salute. “He was father, brother, best friend, wrapped into one,” Jim said.

I asked about girlfriends. Anyone serious in Tim’s life?

No, Jim said, looking down. Because Tim already was patriarch to one family, “You wonder sometimes if he didn’t want to make any long-term commitments.” His eyes filled with tears, and he wiped a big hand across them. Next to him sat Colin, 18, the youngest, a sophomore at Notre Dame. He glanced at Jim, saw his brother’s tears, and bowed his head.

Days before the attacks, Jim had a long chat with Tim on the phone. They planned a trip to see Colin this month. They reviewed different career options Jim was weighing. Tim offered to put his younger brother in touch with colleagues, work the phones on his behalf, whatever Jim needed. As always, Tim was wise, shrewd, fatherly--a lifeline.

Finally, before hanging up, Tim reviewed the whole family, checking names off one by one, giving a status report.

“It was weird,” Jim said, “how he just went down the list, how each of us were doing. And he was happy, because we were all doing really well.”

Kathleen, 28, an art teacher, appeared on the porch. She said she was going to the library to photocopy FBI forms that needed to be filed with New York City, to classify Tim as a crime victim. I went along, and we took Laurelle, who rode her scooter. On Main Street, we stopped at a stretch of sidewalk that was a mosaic of melted candles.

“What’s this?” Laurelle asked.

“This,” Kathleen told her, “is from a memorial service last night for all the people who are--umm--who they don’t know where they are.”

She looked at her daughter’s confused face, and put a hand on her head.

We bought Laurelle a smoothie, then ducked into a coffee shop, and while we were waiting in line, Kathleen’s cell phone rang.

“How are you?” Kathleen whispered into the phone. “You’re alive?”

She listened.

“My brother’s not,” she said. “Tim. Yeah. Thank you.”

When Kathleen hung up, her face was pale. The friend who called was a firefighter who said he’d lost 30 fellow firefighters in the World Trade Center. His parents died recently, Kathleen said, and the firehouse had become his surrogate family. A huge band of brothers and surrogate fathers--Kathleen knew all about that.

We walked back, slowly, Kathleen telling me about her troubles as a young girl in Catholic school, when the nuns made her feel stupid. Tim would come home on weekends, from wherever he happened to be, and tutor her for hours. He explained that she had an intelligence nuns couldn’t measure, an intelligence that made him proud.

She stopped walking.

“How many older brothers do you know who would say something like that?” she asked.

She recalled a long weekend Tim recently spent in the Bahamas. He happened to see Aaliyah, the singer, who was killed that same weekend in a plane crash. In fact, Tim was staying at the same hotel as Aaliyah, and his plane took off minutes after hers.

When Tim told Kathleen the story, she shuddered to think about her brother brushing up against death.

“Aw,” he said. “If I died, don’t you know your student loans would all be paid?”

She looked at him in horror.

“Don’t you know,” she said, “that I’d rather live a lifetime in debt than a day without you?”

She was grateful for that chance to tell Tim she loved him. But she was haunted that he’d had some sort of premonition. He seemed so knowing, so resigned.

We talked about Tim’s love of stories, our family’s love of stories, which was genetic, going back to our great-grandmother, at least. Kathleen smiled. “Stories are how we make meaning in this family,” she said. “Everyone in this family invests everything with so much meaning. We’re all little meaning-making machines.”

It will take a lot of storytelling to make meaning of Tim’s death. Kathleen vowed to get started right away, to write down the funny stories for Laurelle, for all the Tims to come. “I have to write them down,” Kathleen said, sounding frantic. “I have to. Because you forget. You forget.”

Her voice trailed away, and she stared at the sidewalk, until Laurelle zoomed past on the scooter.

I asked whether Kathleen had given any thought to what she’d tell Laurelle in the coming days.

“I’ll tell her what I tell her about my father,” she said. “My father is a spirit that’s with us and guides us, and now Tim is with us, in our hearts, a source of strength that no one who didn’t know him can have.”

We both looked at Laurelle for a long time, then turned for home.

A Familiar Toast Is Replayed

We found Aunt Charlene in the dining room, sifting through some of Tim’s bills and papers. Credit cards. Car payments. She could only think for so long before she had to lie down on the couch. Laurelle went to her grandmother and asked whether she could watch an Uncle Tim movie. She liked the one of Uncle Tim in his scarlet robe best.

“I don’t think I can see the graduation movie again,” Aunt Charlene told her. “Makes me too sad. Everyone wishing him luck in the future.”

Laurelle frowned.

“Let’s watch Sean’s wedding,” Aunt Charlene told her, “when Tim’s being so funny.”

Tim gave his toast again, and I sat with Aunt Charlene, talking about her husband, Pat. All his life, she said, Uncle Pat was prone to seizures. Then, one night, after a big meal with the whole family, he went upstairs to bed, and while Aunt Charlene was washing the dishes, he suffered a seizure from which he never awoke.

He was 47 years old; the children at the time ranged from 24 to 3.

“I sat down on one of the kids’ beds and I couldn’t move,” Aunt Charlene recalled. “But I felt this voice say: ‘Get up. You have all these people depending on you. You have to go on.’ ”

Now, Brian walked into the room and kissed his mother. Soon, friends of Tim began arriving--schoolmates, old buddies. The house was filling with people, and one woman brought an enormous dish of lasagna.

“I forgot all about dinner!” Charlene said, kissing the woman. “I thought it was the middle of the afternoon. Oh, thank you.”

We ate, then gathered in the living room and flipped back and forth between the news and home movies. A few of the brothers drifted out to the porch, to get some air. It was turning cool. Autumn was hours away, which made them sadder. Football season was Tim’s favorite.

“I was doing OK,” said Chris, who lives with his wife just around the corner. “Then this afternoon I was hanging the flag at my house, and I started thinking about Tim never coming over again, and I kind of lost it.”

The brothers leaned forward, listening.

“When Tim used to come stay with us,” Chris said, “my wife and I would get all excited. We’d make sure to have some special dessert. We’d put clean sheets on the bed. He was like the kid we never had yet.”

Brian talked about the way Tim would arrive at his house, a one-man band, arms full of food and presents. “He’d walk in the door and say, ‘I wanted to bring some chips, but I didn’t know what kind you liked, so I got them all: sour-cream-and-onion, barbecue, vinegar, extra whatever.’ ”

In hoarse whispers, the brothers discussed Tim’s final minutes in the tower. They wondered what he knew and when he knew it. They prayed that he didn’t know anything, and they took some comfort in the fact that he didn’t phone home a second time.

“Those people who got goodbye phone calls,” Brian said, shaking his head. “How horrible is that? Thank God my mother didn’t get a second call. I don’t think we could’ve handled that.”

I asked whether anyone had seen Sean lately. The brothers looked at each other and laughed. Sean was undoubtedly home, they said, having an anxiety attack about his eulogy. If they knew Sean, he’d be up all night.

“This is like a best man speech times 10,” Jim said.

The next morning, the phone rang. Kevin, 31, the sixth son, was calling from California. Like Pat, 39, the oldest son, Kevin is estranged from the family, and the call got the day off to an emotional start.

Soon, the doorbell rang, and the woman from the funeral parlor arrived. Kathleen presented her with a framed photo of Tim, to be set on an easel near the altar. A lovely photo, taken Labor Day weekend, it showed Tim seated on his mother’s couch, arms spread wide, about to laugh.

Aunt Charlene took one look and covered her mouth.

“He was just here,” she sobbed. “Look at him--he was just here!”

Chris rushed over and maneuvered her slowly away from the photo.

Sean came through the door with his eulogy. His eyes were bloodshot. Took me all night, he said sheepishly. He passed out copies, and everyone sat down to read. The brothers laughed when they reached the part about “fireside chats,” which Tim initiated after their father died.

Every Sunday night, the siblings and their mother would gather in the basement, and Tim would hand out Lotus spreadsheets of the family’s finances. “This is the net net,” he’d tell them. Then he’d solve everyone’s problems with school, work, love. Then he’d praise individual achievements. The reason for the meetings was often serious, and scary: The family was on the financial brink. But the siblings remember the basement ringing with laughter.

Jim was the first to finish reading Sean’s eulogy. He walked across the room to hug his brother.

“Great job,” he said, sniffling.

Sean’s shoulders slumped with relief. Then he made an announcement:

“I’m OK today,” he said. “I had myself a good cry this morning, and I’m OK. I’m ready to go.”

The day promised to be frantic. There were haircuts to be had, neckties to be bought, last-minute details to be settled before the memorial. Who was carrying the flag? Who was in charge of lapel ribbons? Sean set out a battle plan for the afternoon. He and Chris would go into Manhattan and check on Tim’s apartment. Jim and his girlfriend, Elizabeth, would pick up Joe, 38, the second son.

Kathleen and I would go to make copies of family photos.

We drove through Huntington, then Cold Spring Harbor, an idyllic village with sailboats wobbling peacefully at anchor off the main road, and a marker commemorating an early resident who divulged an assassination plot against George Washington. An old church was draped in bunting. Shop windows held flags and pictures of residents still among the missing. Funerals and memorials were taking place all day, and a bagpiper could occasionally be heard.

Kathleen pointed to a fancy restaurant and laughed.

“That’s where Tim took my mother to break the news that he was moving out.”

It was 1991. Upon graduating from business school, Tim had moved back home, to watch over his brothers, and to pay rent each month to the “Byrne Corporation,” as he called it. Once he’d put the family’s finances on an even footing, however, he wanted privacy again; his own place.

“My mother started crying,” Kathleen said, “and everyone was looking over at their table, like Tim was breaking up with this woman.”

At the copy store, the clerk knew somehow that Kathleen was connected to the World Trade Center. Something about the way she carried herself. He asked, so she told him. An hour later, when we picked up the photos, we found a note attached: “NO CHARGE. Please say a prayer for two friends, Jim Haran, Kevin Frawley, Cantor Fitzgerald.”

Back at the house, Sean and Chris had returned from Tim’s apartment. Seeing all Tim’s stuff, inhaling his scent, it was hard, they said. To calm themselves, to honor Tim, they raided his humidor and smoked two of his fattest Cuban cigars.

They also raided his stash of family memorabilia, bringing back shoe boxes full of photos. Aunt Charlene sifted through them, lingering over one portrait: Her husband leaning against a tree, seven young Byrne boys in the branches or on his shoulder. “Look how this photo is fading,” she said, touching the faces with her fingers. “Why is it fading like that?”

We watched home movies again. A family trip to one of Jim’s football games. Tim was behind the camera, doing a hilarious running commentary. At one point, he zoomed in crazily on Colin, who couldn’t stop laughing. Even when Tim aimed the humor at him, along with the camera, Colin only laughed harder. There was nothing like the feel of Tim’s focus.

As Thursday night wore on, as the memorial loomed the next morning, the mood in the house grew darker. Aunt Charlene’s sister Edith arrived from Vermont, with her husband, Don. Aunt Charlene wept and clung to them, and Sean thanked them for coming. “We’ll get past this,” he told them in the front hallway. “There’s only one direction to go, and that’s forward, and this family will move forward.”

They studied him. The transformation was already underway.

Death as a Journey

Friday, the black limousines arrived at 9 a.m. sharp. The family rode slowly to the church where Tim had been an altar boy, a favorite of the priests, and where he would’ve been married one day.

Two brothers were assigned readings. Jim read from the New Testament, the first letter of Paul the apostle, to Timothy. Brian read from Ecclesiastes.

“I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with,” Brian read, his voice raw. “He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, He has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Dan Driscoll, one of Tim’s best friends, delivered a staggering tribute, clenching his jaw as he spoke, refusing to break. He described Tim as “a prince--the prince of his family.”

Tim was tireless, Driscoll said. He never buckled under the weight of his responsibility.

“I would call him at his desk,” Driscoll recalled with a laugh. “And I’d say, ‘How’s it goin’ Byrnesy?’ And he’d say, ‘Gettin’ it done, Dan-O. Gettin’ it done. I’m in the trenches, gettin’ it done.’ ”

The mourners roared with laughter.

In the future, Driscoll said, he would most remember Tim’s laughter. “Laughing, laughing, laughing,” he said. “I was friends 20 years with Tim, and we never had a conversation without laughing.”

Recently, Driscoll said, a priest helped him see death differently. Picture Tim on a boat sailing into the distance, the priest said. While watching him disappear, you say, “There he goes, there he goes.” But realize that the boat is sailing to another shore, and on that shore are people waiting for him, saying, “Here he comes, here he comes.”

Among those people, Driscoll said, will surely be Tim’s father.

“And when Tim steps on that shore,” Driscoll said, trembling, “his father’s going to be the first to greet him.”

He looked down at the long row of Byrneses in the front pew, lined up like the dolls of Sean’s daughter.

“And his father’s going to shake Tim’s hand, and say, ‘Son, I am so proud of you.’ ”

Nearly 1,000 mourners filed outside into a light rain. A bagpiper played a dirge as the Byrne family got into the limousines. They went to a brief reception, then home to Aunt Charlene’s house, which now felt desolate.

Aunt Charlene sat on the couch, watching friends carrying fruit baskets come through the front door. Glancing down, she spotted the framed photo of Tim, which someone had propped against the coffee table. She picked it up and held it on her lap.

“This is right where you were sitting, Tim,” she whispered, looking into his eyes. “Right here on this couch.”

She smiled.

“You look so relaxed,” she said, tenderly, as though he were a boy, and she were tucking him in for the night.

She ran her fingers across the glass, once lightly across his smiling face.

“It just shows,” she said. “We have no idea what lies ahead.”