I often get the impression from friends who live outside this area that they think small-town journalism is far removed from the big headline stories. But there’s always a connection – and certainly at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
When they struck, we in the newsroom were focused on where those local connections might be. And then the following day I learned that a Shelburne Falls friend had lost two of his friends from his Morris dance team that day … in a most improbable way.
One had just begun a new job at the World Trade Center; a second was flying on one of the planes that crashed into it. The improbability was nearly staggering as the event itself.
I wrote a column about Fred’s loss of two friends “in an instant” . But there was more.
(Sept. 13. 2001)
The power of the electronic message was its exclamation. And its timing.
Fred DeVecca of Conway could feel it as he read the joy in the words from one of his very closest friends.
Steve Adams, whom he’s known for 20 years, was like a brother. Steve had struggled in his adult life, a former philosophy major trying to find a suitable job.
As a special friend and a fellow member on the Marlboro Morris Team, Fred had struggled along with Steve’s constant kvetching. Kvetching about politics, although his convictions kept him from ever voting. Kvetching about jobs he had, briefly, at McCusker’s Market in Shelburne Falls and then the Northfield Mount Hermon School kitchen. Kvetching about nearly everything.
Steve was a perfectionist who knew good food and good wine and knew the joys of dancing to timeless English ritual dances with his Morris buddies, like Fred and Chris Carstanjen of Turners Falls. And in the tradition of the pubs, they reveled in sharing a bitter ale or two together afterward. One of the smartest people in Fred’s life, Steve enjoyed reading a good mystery but had never seemed able to solve the mystery of why he was always underemployed, always left wanting.
Until now.
The e-mail sang in celebration, popping a virtual cork on his recent promotion to a job that would have to be heaven for a wine aficionado. Until six months ago, Steve had worked at Table and Vine in Northampton, advising customers nearly as fussy as him on choosing just the right wine for life’s celebrations. He shared an apartment in Shelburne Falls, not that far from where he’d spent a few years living in Charlemont and not far at all from where he’d hung out at Fred’s for a while.
”I’ve been promoted to beverage manager!” Steve wrote Monday night, in the message Fred found first thing on Tuesday. ”I’ve gone from asst. cellar master to beverage manager in less than six months. It means I’ll be ordering wines, beers and spirits for the largest grossing restaurant in North America, overseeing and training the asst. cellar masters as well as other responsibilities. No more working on my feet! … and all for twice the money I’ve been making!!! Not that I’ll be making big money … but at least now I can afford to live normally and hold my own.”
It was the exclamation points that shouted through this gray electronic communication from his dear friend.
”He used an exclamation point!” said Fred, who like Steve has honed his skills as a writer. ”He’s never been excited about his own life.”
To take the job, Steve had to move back with his wife, Jessica, from whom he’d separated. Yet in a wonderful twist of events, it seemed things were going well for the couple.
For the first time in his life, in fact, Steve actually seemed to be happy. At 51, he finally showed self-esteem, his wife reported.
He was so enthused Tuesday morning that he went to work early — 8 a.m. at Windows on the World. His new job on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center had given him a hopeful new view of life.
But terror exploded like a fireball into his rejuvenated life and so many others.
In those incredible moments, it fractured our own views of the world, obscuring many of the bizarre twists that occurred that day.
Marlboro Morris member Chris Carstanjen was aboard the United Airlines 767 jet from Boston that exploded into the World Center’s twin towers a few minutes later, a macabre reunion of dancing buddies without their bells. It’s a reunion hidden beneath the rubble and dust to be cleared from lower Manhattan.
Fred DeVecca shakes his head in disbelief that in this tiny corner of western Massachusetts, the lives of friends could have converged and ended this way in Tuesday’s colossal tragedy. He can’t believe that his loyal friend, who was there for him when his own health gave out last year, who finally could live normally and hold his own — is gone without a trace.
Above all, he can’t believe the growing chorus of those calling for vengeance at any cost — especially if it means ending lives as innocent as these.
”I lost two friends,” he reflected, holding back tears, ”and I don’t want retribution. I can’t see the sense of it. Bombing Afghanistan is not going to bring Steve back.”
– RICHIE DAVIS