Every September 11, people around the world pause to remember the thousands who died as a result of coordinated terrorist attacks on American soil. Of all the victims who died, the World Trade Center’s falling people symbolized the horror of the day for many.
The lost souls, who, resigned to their fates either took that final step voluntarily, were pushed out by others behind them struggling to breathe, or were forced out by hot blasts of super heated air. We will never know.
What we do know are the names of two of the fallen.
Why do we need to know their names? So we can know who we are. So we can honor them.
Writer Tom Junod was convinced that America needed to remember the falling people. He undertook the unsavory mission of identifying the fallen Americans — the forgotten 9/11 victims that no one wants to talk about.
“I felt that the idea of people jumping… I felt that the jumpers… I felt that the falling man had been sort of pushed to the side,” Junod said in a 2006 documentary titled 9/11: The Falling Man.
“There is an element of exclusion; that he died improperly. That we want to remember this day for its heroism. And whether we think of the jumpers as heroic or not, they should not be excluded from the consecrated ground of American soil because they died in a way that made us uncomfortable.”
Considering the discomfort that some Americans feel when it comes to suicide, it wasn’t surprising that no one rushed forward to claim the fallen man as one of their own family members.
When the photo of the falling man was published in newspapers on September 12, Americans vented their outrage against the photo editors for selecting that particular image to embody the horrific events of 9/11.
As photo editors are inclined to do during times of national tragedy, they choose images based on the emotional impact of the content of the photos.
The photo editors withheld the series of images of the falling man tumbling, rolling, and flailing desperately at the sky. Instead, they chose the one photo that made the falling man appear peaceful, composed, and willingly accepting his fate as if he had decided to check out with dignity.
Jonathan Eric Briley, 43, was a sound engineer for the Windows on the World restaurant in the North tower — the first tower to be hit. According to Windows on the World head Chef Michael Lamonica who analyzed AP photographer Richard Drew’s photos, Jonathan fit the body type, size and complexion of the iconic falling man in the photos.
Lamonica described Jonathan as a “hard working, dedicated, good guy with a great sense of humor.”
Jonathan’s sister Gwendolyn, who was Jonathan’s closest sibling, said she never thought of the unfortunate figure in the photo as her brother. “I thought of him as a man that just took his life in his hand for just that second,” she said.
Still in denial, Gwendolyn identified the clothing that the man wore in the photo as items her brother owned. But she stopped short of saying it was him.
“I hope we’re not trying to figure out who he is, and more, figure out who we are through watching.”
Richard Pecorella was a family member who did come forward to identify one of the fallen: his wife Karen.
Mr. Pecorella said that when the media began posting images online of the jumpers, he searched and searched through the grainy photos until he found her.
For Mr. Pecorella it became an obsession to identify his wife among the condemned souls clinging onto the windows of the burning WTC.
“It had to be so intense up there and there was no other way out,” he said. “It was either burn alive or go quickly. I envision that it had to be the towering inferno… Do you suffocate to death or do you jump? I think it was brave to do that.”
“It wasn’t painful for me. It really wasn’t,” he recalled of his search for Karen. “I finally have something I can hold onto. This is where she was, and this is how she died — she jumped. She didn’t burn up. She didn’t become dust.”
“Nothing was more painful than losing her,” he said. “But not knowing how I lost her was even more painful. So now that I believe that that’s what took place, it’s easier for me to talk about it. And if she jumped, she jumped.”
