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Why did I walk away? Coping with survivor’s guilt
By Mike Kelly
The Record
BERGEN COUNTY, N.J. — In the silent corners of his meticulous mind, Alan T. DeVona knows he did the best he could at the World Trade Center on that Tuesday in September almost seven years ago.
But his heart pushes him elsewhere.
DeVona, 54, of Oradell, was the Port Authority police patrol sergeant at the command desk in the lobby of the north tower on Sept. 11, 2001, when the first of two hijacked jetliners crashed. In those early minutes, as fire and chaos spread, DeVona helped jump-start rescue efforts by dispatching squads of cops throughout the trade center complex.
Many of the cops assigned to DeVona never made it out, though. About half of the 37 Port Authority officers who perished “passed through my hands,” he said.
Yet, he escaped. Today, he still wonders how.
“I should have died at least three times,” he said. “I don’t know why I survived.”
That inescapable truth now weighs on DeVona like a thick anchor chain. Or as he noted one morning last week: “I think I’m going to be in purgatory for the rest of my life.”
For seven years, DeVona declined to talk publicly about the critical and, some say, courageous role he played as a liaison between Port Authority cops and New York City police, firefighters and EMS workers. The 9/11 Commission never even asked to interview him and other key Port Authority cops, although DeVona’s cool demeanor at the police desk was captured by documentary filmmakers who happened to be in the lobby that morning.
Last week, DeVona sat down with this columnist for more than five hours of interviews.
He readily concedes he suffers from survivor’s guilt. He says he understands why he had to assign police to a variety of stairwells and corridors in the trade center complex on that terrible morning. He also knows those cops helped more than 20,000 office workers escape, one of the largest emergency evacuations in U.S. history.
But DeVona draws little consolation.
For seven years, he has devoted hundreds of hours to reading reports, listening to radio recordings and watching video - all in a deeply personal journey to understand what happened and to perhaps find comfort in his heart.
“I wish I could justify it to myself,” he said of his survival and the guilt that followed. “I understand it intellectually. But what I feel in my heart is what I feel. It’s a struggle, a constant wrestling with myself to try to find the middle ground.”
He paused.
“I don’t have the answer,” he said.
Psychologists say many 9/11 survivors walk a similar emotional path, tracing each moment of the day, sometimes even returning to lower Manhattan just to wander streets that led them to safety.
How did they escape while someone at the next desk did not? Why did they take a safe stairwell and others took one that was blocked by debris? And, perhaps most perplexing, what can they do now with all the mixed-up feelings?
DeVona knows the confusion.
When the first tower fell, he dived under the police desk he ran in the north tower lobby. No debris struck him, but he could not see in the thick, gray smoke.
He pulled out a powerful flashlight. Others saw the beam and DeVona led them, and himself, to safety.
Later, when the second tower fell, he was curled into a fetal position on the sidewalk several blocks away. Again, no debris struck him.
After the attacks, DeVona was promoted to lieutenant. But he left the Port Authority in 2004 on an emotional disability, convinced that he no longer had the coolness needed to order cops on dangerous assignments.
Searching for solace at home, he built a small basement memorial to the 37 Port Authority officers who died at the World Trade Center. Indeed, without a central memorial at Ground Zero, many survivors such as DeVona resort to building their own.
Former Port Authority Officer Eric Bulger assembled a memorial near train tracks in Jersey City. Across North Jersey, other monuments have risen at municipal halls, churches and police stations.
DeVona’s basement memorial includes a piece of stone from the trade center plaza and a red electric votive light meant to symbolize an eternal flame. On a nearby shelf, he displays the police hard hat he wore later at Ground Zero and his handcuffs - still open and unlocked, a reminder to a job undone.
“When Osama bin Laden is finally killed, I can finally close them,” he said. “Until we can prove that, they remain open.”
But none of these gestures worked.
Next, DeVona looked to the back yard of the Oradell home where he and his wife, Doris, raised three children. And then, he began another journey.
It was 2004. DeVona planted a holly tree, then another, then more and more.
Today, DeVona’s back yard is lined with 37 Nellie Stevens holly trees, each about 8 feet tall, each planted by DeVona and named for a Port Authority police officer who perished on 9/11. He also planted three evergreens in honor of other Port Authority workers who died and a purple plum tree for all 2,749 victims.
“I dug and planted each one of them by myself,” DeVona wrote in a letter to cops’ families. “And while on my hands and knees, I was humbled with the thoughts of love, respect and honor for those that gave their lives in valor.”
But that wasn’t the end.
A former Port Authority officer, Bill Connors, gave DeVona a Celtic cross, cut from trade center steel. Another officer, Louis Solivan, gave him an oversized police badge made with steel from the towers.
DeVona put them in his back yard. But that still wasn’t the end.
He designed a 24-by-18-inch brass plaque.
“Through their altruistic deeds of valor, thousands of lives were saved,” the plaque says of the dead officers. “Their actions have humbled all and will never be forgotten.”
One morning last week, after trying to explain why his survival guilt won’t disappear, DeVona walked into his back yard. A recording by the Port Authority’s police bagpipe band played “Minstrel Boy” on outdoor speakers.
DeVona stood over the plaque in silence, then placed his palms on the words.
He was silent for a few seconds, then looked up, his eyes tracing the trees he planted.
“This is how I remember,” he said. “It needed to be done.”
Copyright 2008 The Record