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Mom Turned Activist Shares In
$1 Million Union Square Awards
By Greg Barrett
November 30, 2002
Gannett News Service WASHINGTON — Sally Regenhard
is the mother always seated in the front row with a large
laminated photo of her dead son. She's the bold Irish Catholic
positioned squarely in the face of officials at almost every
Sept. 11-related news conference and congressional hearing from
New York to Washington. She's the petite strawberry blond who
pressed through security at a congressional hearing last month on
Sept. 11 intelligence failures to squeeze off a single question
for FBI Director Robert Mueller. "What did the FBI tell the NYPD
members of the Joint Terrorist Task Force before 9-11 regarding ...
warnings about the US being attacked?" she demanded."I don't
know," she recalls Mueller answering, taken aback by her
bark."I'd like for you to find out," she said before security
moved between them.
They should never have killed Sally Regenhard's
son — whoever "they" are. For 14 months, Regenhard has scattered
blame like buckshot. Her accusations take aim at the "demonic,
cave-dwelling barbarians" who piloted jets into the World Trade
Center, the engineers who built the "house of cards" that fell on
her firefighter son and the "idiotic bureaucrats" who approved
its unconventional design.
On November 22, 2002, Regenhard, angry founder of
the nonprofit Skyscraper Safety Campaign, will receive $48,500 as
her cut of the fifth annual $1 million Union Square Awards
sponsored by the Fund for the City of New York. It's the first
money her nonprofit organization has received. Regenhard quit her
job as a business executive soon after Sept. 11, 2001, to create
the organization. She has spent $15,000 of her own money on
travel between New York and Washington, phone calls and expenses.
Regenhard said she's done her part "in keeping Amtrak afloat."
She will be among 44 New Yorkers feted in a special ceremony in
Manhattan. The honorees founded 20 grassroots initiatives
benefiting everything from the arts to the homeless.
But don't expect Regenhard to be cheerful. No
amount of money or recognition will mask the pain."I still have
my boxing gloves on," she said dryly. The Skyscraper Safety
Campaign, created by Regenhard and co-chaired by Sept. 11 widow
Monica Gabrielle, spurred the National Construction Safety Team
Act, signed into law Oct. 1 by President Bush. The law creates
federal investigative teams with subpoena power to immediately
impound the ruins of collapsed buildings. The law is designed to
prevent a repeat of what happened after the Sept. 11 attacks,
when most of the World Trade Center's twisted steel was sold for
recycling before it could be examined for flaws.
As the Senate prepared to vote on the legislation
on Sept. 17, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., cited the
efforts of Regenhard and Gabrielle, whose husband of 28 years was
an insurance broker in the World Trade Center."Without their
dedication to this issue, this would not have gotten on the radar
screen and we wouldn't have gotten the public support and the
fast action in the Senate," Clinton said. "This legislation is so
important because it will save lives. It will empower the
National Institute of Standards and Technology ... to have the
tools it needs to properly investigate major structural
failures."
One week earlier, Regenhard and Gabrielle shadowed
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., stuffing a letter into his hand as he
left a Wall Street luncheon. The letter urged McCain to help push
the National Construction Safety Team Act through the Senate
committee where it was stuck. When McCain delivered a speech the
next day to Sept. 11 victims' groups on Staten Island, Regenhard,
as usual, sat in the front row with the photo of her handsome
28-year-old son, Christian, a former military man, like McCain.
She raised her hand alongside those of the news media."Will you
support the National Construction Safety Team Act?" she asked
loudly."Yes," McCain answered. Three days later the bill moved
out of the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation
Committee, which McCain will head when the 108th Congress
convenes in January."
That law is totally the result of the Skyscraper
Safety Campaign," said Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science
at New York's John Jay College and a fire protection engineer who
lobbied for the National Construction Safety Team Act."I may have
provided the technical advice on it ... but Sally is the face of
the cause. It certainly wasn't Glenn Corbett who got two
congressional hearings and got this thing moving politically."But
Regenhard isn't ready to relax. She has unanswered questions,
such as the one she asked Mueller. She still charges forward with
accusations and anger. "Psychology tells us that depression is
hostility turned inward. I say, don't turn the hostility inward,
turn it on the people it should be focused on," she said. "Get
angry. Get determined. Show up at city council meetings. Show up
in New York. Show up in Washington."
For all the bluster, she cries as easily today as
she did the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, when she realized the
distant view from her Bronx high-rise would forever hold the last
memory of Christian. It was from that 30th-floor co-op that she
and Christian had for decades enjoyed a view of the World Trade
Center, its towers looking like tufts of grass across the Hudson
River. Today, the Skyscraper Safety Campaign operates out of
Christian's childhood bedroom, the one with the view. Most days,
Regenhard wears an article of Christian's clothing— a fleece
shirt or quilt jacket — just to feel close to her son. Speaking
about him, she chokes on grief but pushes through until the
quivering in her voice steadies."The families of 9-11 have been
called the Ôwalking wounded.' We are not the walking wounded, we
are the walking dead," Regenhard said. "When I lost my son, I
lost my heart. It was pulled out of my body."
Christian Regenhard, a writer, artist, mountain
climber and bohemian world traveler, was studying fine arts at
San Francisco State University in 2000 when his mother mailed him
an ad about the New York fire department seeking recruits. He
flew home, aced the written and physical tests and cut off his
ponytail. He was a rookie when the five-alarm fire sounded on
Sept. 11. Regenhard can't help but blame herself for sending him
the ad."I bought into the aura that the New York City fire
department was the best in the world ... that it was safe," she
said, crying again. "I will regret it for as long as I live —
which better be another 50 years because I've got a lot of butt
to kick."
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© Copyright (c) 2002, Gannett News Service
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