Father Kevin Madigan is the quintessential New Yorker: pragmatic, a realist. And so, when the Manhattan pastor reflects on the 15 years since Sept. 11, 2001, it’s not surprising that his responses reflect his character.

“Just put one foot in front of the other every day and keep on going with God’s help,” he told Our Sunday Visitor.

When Father Madigan, just after celebrating Mass and hearing confessions at his parish of St. Peter Church in Manhattan, heard a plane had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center, he ran outside — St. Peter’s is located about a block and a half away. He had a vague notion of going to help, but on the street, all he saw were upturned faces looking at the fire and smoke billowing out of the north tower.

“Standing where I was, some distance from the tower, I thought I was relatively safe,” he recalled. “When all of a sudden, a burst of flame emerged from the other tower, and debris was flying in all directions. I remember the wheel of an airplane flying over my head, and a bottle of water bursting against the wall by which I was standing. Of course, at that moment, everyone fled in the opposite direction.”

Vocation Of Service

Terri Tobin, now a deputy inspector with the New York Police Department, had just arrived at the World Trade Center when the second plane hit. She helped evacuate the site until she was knocked out of her shoes and blown across the road by the force of the south tower collapsing.

“It only reaffirmed for me that I was doing exactly what I was meant to be doing on 9/11. I think that police work in the NYPD is a vocation,” she said. Tobin, a member of St. Francis de Sales Parish in Belle Harbor, Queens, is in her 34th year with the NYPD.

Light From Darkness

In the weeks, months and years following the tragic event, hope and renewal — moments of light emerging from darkness — were found in simple things, Father Madigan recalled. Like in the inscription on a new baptismal font: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:24).

Then there was the Bible found amid the debris, fused with steel and opened to the Sermon on the Mount — in particular, the passage on forgiveness.

“That’s certainly a testimony and something to remember,” Father Madigan said of the artifact, now on display in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. “I remember, too, in the days after all the readings at that time of the year were about forgiveness.”

Then there were the people. Father Madigan spent the years after 9/11 rebuilding his parish — physically, spiritually and emotionally. He regularly talked with those who would be “coming in, still traumatized” and looking for assistance, whether survivors or family members who had lost loved ones.

“The faith they showed, and also the lack of anger and hostility and a desire for revenge, was certainly something that inspired me,” Father Madigan said, contrasting this response to the wars that followed.

“How true it is that violence just brings on even more violence, so that the response to 9/11 was more violent than even the attack was,” he said. With the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, “we had to show that we’re going to get even with — show our power. (But) Jesus says, you cast out one devil and seven worse come back. That was a witness to it.”

Perspective And Memory

Perspective, too, comes with time — as does healing. Father Madigan is now pastor of a parish on the Upper East Side, where he is not constantly reminded of that fateful day.

“For the first five years, six years, not a day went by when I didn’t think about 9/11,” he said. “There would always be some kind of reminder of that day, just walking down the street something would flash in my memory about what it was like before or during or the days after. That’s what being out of the situation does. It sort of puts it behind me.”

Tobin marks the anniversary by visiting the firehouse of a cousin who was killed that day at the age of 33. “Even 15 years later, he wouldn’t be 50 years old,” she noted.

One thing stands out for her most about that day. “When people were evacuating those buildings, no one knew, no one cared and no one looked at anyone’s gender or race, ethnicity or religion,” she said. “It was just people in a common experience helping one another. And that will always stay with me.”

Gretchen R. Crowe is editor-in-chief of OSV. Follow her on Twitter @GretchenOSV.

With a broken ankle, a chunk of concrete lodged in her skull through the back of her Kevlar helmet and covered in dust, Tobin continued her work of bringing people off the street to safety, even evacuating an apartment building of about a hundred people.

“I try to remember, although it was the worst terrorist attack ever to occur on American soil … we were able to get out 10 people for every one that perished,” she told OSV.“So we also have to look at it as the greatest rescue ever,” Tobin said.

Tobin cited the training and professionalism of her colleagues for being able to keep people calm and move them out and away from the towers.

Editor’s Footnote:  The plans for the Vanderburgh County Public Safety Foundation event will be held on August 23, 2017 at the steps of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum is really coming together? …the event keynote speaking will be Dr. Terri Tobin, now a deputy inspector with the New York Police Department.  ..during the next several weeks you will be receiving more detailed information about this most worthily public event?