1993 World Trade Center bombing victims remembered at annual ceremony
Seaford native Edward Smith still makes an annual pilgrimage back to New York to mourn his pregnant wife and their unborn son and the other lives lost or changed forever 32 years ago.
On Wednesday, Smith heard a memorial bell toll at 12:18 p.m., as he has in years past, to mark the moment a van parked by a terrorist exploded in a below-ground garage at the World Trade Center, killing six, including his wife Monica, the couple's unborn son and another Long Islander. More than 1,000 people were injured.
Monica Rodriguez Smith, 35, was weeks from giving birth.
"It was her last day of work before she was to give birth of a baby, and so our lives were at the pinnacle, and then that all came crashing down because of people’s ideologies," Smith, now 62, and living in Scottsdale, Arizona, said Wednesday after the ceremony.
The other Long Islander killed in the bombing was John DiGiovanni, 45, of Valley Stream, a sales manager for Kerr Chemicals, who had pulled his car into the garage just before the bomb went off.
Wednesday’s ceremony — marking a terrorist bombing that would presage the Sept. 11 attacks — drew dozens to the former site of the north tower, now part of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. There were survivors, loved ones, personnel from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the FDNY and the NYPD, some of whom hadn’t been born before either attack.
The bombing was carried out by Islamic extremists who were aggrieved by United States U.S interference in the Mideast, support for Israel and the deaths of Palestinians.
"Terror for terror," said the attack’s mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, who according to an FBI summary wanted the bomb to topple one tower, with the collapsing debris knocking down the other. He wanted to kill 250,000 Americans, a number inspired by the number of fatalities from U.S. atomic bombings of Japan during World War II (which, according to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimate, ranges from 110,000 to 210,000).
Yousef was later convicted of planning the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. Five others were also convicted. Just after the trial, Smith, who had been living with his wife in the Seaford house he grew up in, moved to Arizona.
At Wednesday’s ceremony, Charlie Maikish, who was the director of the World Trade Center in 1993, delivered remarks, as did Elizabeth L. Hillman, president of the 9/11 memorial and museum, which oversees the reflecting pools where the names of the victims of the attacks on "2/26/1993" and "9/11/2001" are engraved.
"Telling their stories helps us better understand the many consequences of terrorism and appreciate the triumph of human dignity," she said.
Maikish described the towers — where the explosion in 1993 caused a nearly 100-foot crater, a few stories high and deep — as "an international icon to a free, open and democratic symbol of Western capitalism."
About two years after that bombing, Yousef was on the last leg of being flown back to New York from Pakistan to face trial. An FBI official pulled back Yousef’s blindfold and gestured below, toward the towers, The New York Times reported at the time.
"Look down there. They're still standing," the official told Yousef. He retorted, "They wouldn't be if I had enough money and explosives."
Seaford native Edward Smith still makes an annual pilgrimage back to New York to mourn his pregnant wife and their unborn son and the other lives lost or changed forever 32 years ago.
On Wednesday, Smith heard a memorial bell toll at 12:18 p.m., as he has in years past, to mark the moment a van parked by a terrorist exploded in a below-ground garage at the World Trade Center, killing six, including his wife Monica, the couple's unborn son and another Long Islander. More than 1,000 people were injured.
Monica Rodriguez Smith, 35, was weeks from giving birth.
"It was her last day of work before she was to give birth of a baby, and so our lives were at the pinnacle, and then that all came crashing down because of people’s ideologies," Smith, now 62, and living in Scottsdale, Arizona, said Wednesday after the ceremony.
The other Long Islander killed in the bombing was John DiGiovanni, 45, of Valley Stream, a sales manager for Kerr Chemicals, who had pulled his car into the garage just before the bomb went off.
Wednesday’s ceremony — marking a terrorist bombing that would presage the Sept. 11 attacks — drew dozens to the former site of the north tower, now part of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. There were survivors, loved ones, personnel from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the FDNY and the NYPD, some of whom hadn’t been born before either attack.
“It was her last day of work before she was to give birth of a baby, and so our lives were at the pinnacle," said Ed Smith, of Seaford, above in a wedding photo with his wife, Monica, who died, along with the couple's unborn son, in the Feb. 26, 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center. Credit: Collection 9/11 Memorial & Museu
The bombing was carried out by Islamic extremists who were aggrieved by United States U.S interference in the Mideast, support for Israel and the deaths of Palestinians.
"Terror for terror," said the attack’s mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, who according to an FBI summary wanted the bomb to topple one tower, with the collapsing debris knocking down the other. He wanted to kill 250,000 Americans, a number inspired by the number of fatalities from U.S. atomic bombings of Japan during World War II (which, according to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimate, ranges from 110,000 to 210,000).
Yousef was later convicted of planning the bombing and sentenced to life in prison. Five others were also convicted. Just after the trial, Smith, who had been living with his wife in the Seaford house he grew up in, moved to Arizona.
At Wednesday’s ceremony, Charlie Maikish, who was the director of the World Trade Center in 1993, delivered remarks, as did Elizabeth L. Hillman, president of the 9/11 memorial and museum, which oversees the reflecting pools where the names of the victims of the attacks on "2/26/1993" and "9/11/2001" are engraved.
"Telling their stories helps us better understand the many consequences of terrorism and appreciate the triumph of human dignity," she said.
Maikish described the towers — where the explosion in 1993 caused a nearly 100-foot crater, a few stories high and deep — as "an international icon to a free, open and democratic symbol of Western capitalism."
About two years after that bombing, Yousef was on the last leg of being flown back to New York from Pakistan to face trial. An FBI official pulled back Yousef’s blindfold and gestured below, toward the towers, The New York Times reported at the time.
"Look down there. They're still standing," the official told Yousef. He retorted, "They wouldn't be if I had enough money and explosives."
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
SARRA SOUNDS OFF: Two state girls hoops titles, and Matt Brust joins the show On the latest episode of "Sarra Sounds Off," two Long Island schools win state basketball titles and 1980s All-Decade Team member Matt Brust joins the show to talk LI hoops history.
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SARRA SOUNDS OFF: Two state girls hoops titles, and Matt Brust joins the show On the latest episode of "Sarra Sounds Off," two Long Island schools win state basketball titles and 1980s All-Decade Team member Matt Brust joins the show to talk LI hoops history.
