{"id":2137306,"date":"2026-09-10T10:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2137306"},"modified":"2026-09-10T10:00:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T07:00:53","slug":"its-so-hard-the-9131-days-of-loss-after-september-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2137306","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s so hard\u2019: The 9,131 days of loss after September 11"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Doug Mello found weddings to be especially tough. He could handle the first hour, give or take, but then the thought of never watching his son Chris dance with his bride would consume him and force him out of the room.<\/p>\n

This is why Mello despised the notion that \u201ctime heals all wounds.\u201d Time failed a father of a young man who, 25 years ago Friday, was among the first victims of the mass murderers who turned airplanes into missiles aimed at American pillars of economic and military might.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mello\u2019s boys, J.D. and Chris, were suburban New York football stars at Rye High and athletes at Princeton \u2013 J.D., the older son, was a member of a two-time NCAA championship lacrosse team, and Chris, a little undersized for Division I football, was a rugby man instead.<\/p>\n

The father loved talking about Chris\u2019s toughness as Rye\u2019s leading tackler and as a senior co-captain who helped carry his high school to a state championship game at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, where the Garnets lost to Caledonia-Mumford. Doug was prouder of that defeat than any victory that preceded it because, he said, Chris faced an opponent who had about 100 pounds on him \u201cand he fought that sucker all day long.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a 25-year-old analyst at a Boston venture firm, Chris had been taking boxing lessons \u2013 and impressing his trainer as a natural \u2013 in the weeks before he boarded American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles, on Sept. 11, 2001. He told his girlfriend and childhood sweetheart, Kristy Walsh, that he got upgraded into business class because the flight wasn\u2019t packed. Kristy told him he had a beautiful day to fly.<\/p>\n

Chris was sitting near three of the five hijackers who attacked passengers and crew and, at 8:46 a.m., flew the Boeing 767 into the north tower of the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n

Days after the catastrophe, Doug told me, \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt in my mind Chris struggled with them. Psychiatrist friends have tried to rationalize that it was the first one, that they had no knowledge, that the pilots probably said to keep cool. But if my son had any inkling this was do or die, he definitely wouldn\u2019t have sat there. It wouldn\u2019t have even been a battle if they didn\u2019t have knives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n The families of some victims of 9\/11 find it difficult to take part in large ceremonies to honor the dead. (Kena Betancur \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Photos of a smiling Chris loving life \u2013 here in a pirate\u2019s costume, there in a Mets uniform \u2013 graced the Mello living room. A white envelope addressed to the Mello family and sent from American Airlines sat on the table.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Doug and I kept in touch over the years, sometimes discussing his love for the Red Sox and, later, his disdain for the PGA Tour stars who took big Saudi money to play for LIV Golf. We spoke a lot about the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, an explosion that killed six, including a pregnant mother, injured more than a thousand and shook my wife\u2019s office at Bankers Trust so violently that she thought the bomb went off inside her building.<\/p>\n

Doug was a phone company executive and worked that Trade Center site with compassion and integrity. With power out and trapped workers inside constantly calling loved ones, Doug refused official advice to cut the phone lines to save what appeared to be a collapsing system. He wasn\u2019t severing the only lifeline those people had to their families.<\/p>\n

He met with federal agents after the \u201993 bombing and did what he could to help cops, firefighters and displaced employees. \u201cAnd the tragic irony of ironies,\u201d Doug said more than eight years later, \u201cis my son was killed at the World Trade Center.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

But as he continued to wrestle with his anger and sadness until he died last year at 82, Doug always circled back to the one thing the terrorists stole from Chris that hurt him the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would have been such a great father because he really loved kids,\u201d Doug would say, \u201cand they took that away from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doug and his wife, Ellen, and their son J.D. and extended family members felt that pain every day since 9\/11. When the nation mourns the nearly 3,000 victims in ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary (Is that even an appropriate word?), the families will be dealing with their unfathomable loss for the 9,131st consecutive day.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

{“endpoint”:”https:\/\/api-prd-nyt.theathletic.com\/graphql”,”wpBaseUrl”:”https:\/\/theathletic.com”,”sessionVerificationEndpoint”:”https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/session-verification\/”,”graphicUploadsCDN”:”https:\/\/graphics-cdn.theathletic.com\/dir”}<\/p>\n

Theirs is not a once-a-year public observance, but a private daily reckoning that cannot be understood by anyone who hasn\u2019t experienced it.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Carolee Azzarello understands. She lost her two brothers, Tim and John, the sons of longtime New York Yankees employee Hank Grazioso, while they were working for Cantor Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n

Carolee said she will be staying home Friday with the TV turned off. \u201cI can\u2019t stand the visual of the North Tower with smoke coming out of it,\u201d she said. \u201cEverybody looks at that as a symbol of 9\/11. I look at that as my brothers are in there dying.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as I appreciate \u2018Never Forget,\u2019 I don\u2019t appreciate the constant attention. It started so early this year because it\u2019s 25 years since 9\/11, and it\u2019s so hard to have such a private and personal loss be so public. Nobody else has the anniversary of their parent\u2019s or sibling\u2019s death on a baseball hat or on a T-shirt. \u2026 People remind you all the time. You never get to crawl into a hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carolee\u2019s father, Hank, who worked in the ticket office, was a Mickey Mantle fanatic and the rare baseball lifer who could say he had a conversation with Babe Ruth (as a child at a vegetable stand in Clifton, N.J.) and with Derek Jeter (at a Turks and Caicos restaurant, no less). Watching the coverage of the burning towers on the morning of 9\/11, Hank knelt and prayed with the Yankees\u2019 VP of ticket operations, Frank Swaine, who lost his son, John, another Cantor Fitzgerald employee.<\/p>\n

I had a number of discussions with Hank before he died in 2023. In one, he detailed his sons\u2019 recovered remains, descriptions that don\u2019t belong in print. In another, we spoke the morning after U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you\u2019re having a great day,\u201d I said when he answered the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI most certainly am,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n John, right, Hank, center, and Tim Grazioso. (Courtesy of the Grazioso Family)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Hank said he sat in his bedroom, alone with his thoughts, as he tried to process the bin Laden news. He cited \u201crelief\u201d as the most conspicuous feeling among the \u201ceight million emotions running through me.\u201d When he woke up that morning, he said, \u201cI thought to myself, \u2018Well, at least the boys have some kind of closure.\u2019 I think they\u2019re celebrating up there right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For months after their murders, Grazioso kept seeing visions of his sons every time he opened his Yankee Stadium ticket window. Two years before he died, Grazioso said he saw another fleeting vision of Tim and John smiling in a bright light in his bedroom.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s wife, Tina, and their three children and significant others are scheduled to attend Friday night\u2019s Yankees-Mets game in the Bronx. Hank loved bringing his boys and Carolee to the old stadium, in the old days.<\/p>\n

Carolee won\u2019t be attending the game or the morning ceremony downtown. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like facing the world on Friday,\u201d she said. Like many 9\/11 family members, she will honor her lost loved ones in private.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n Jeremy Glick with his daughter, Emerson, on July 17, 2001. (Reuters)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Jed Glick was on the phone Wednesday to say that he has felt personal anguish every day for a quarter century, but that he was heading to a ceremony in Shanksville, Pa., because, in part, of how welcoming and kind that local community was after his brother Jeremy died a hero in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think it\u2019s important to educate everyone who wasn\u2019t alive or has no memory of 9\/11,\u201d Jed said. \u201cPeople need to know the tragedy of it and the cases of heroism and unity on that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representing a school, Rochester, that didn\u2019t even have a team, Jed\u2019s brother won the 1993 national collegiate judo championship in the 86-kg division. Ncjajudo.org reported that \u201cto everyone\u2019s surprise\u201d the top contender from Fresno State \u201clost to little-known Jeremy Glick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeremy Glick is now known to the world as one of the brave souls on the scheduled Newark-to-San Francisco flight who fought the hijackers and denied them a direct hit on a prominent Washington, D.C. target, bringing down the plane in a Shanksville-area field.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs tragic as it was, it certainly does help that my brother went down fighting,\u201d Jed said. \u201cThe fact that he was able to do it is not remarkable to me because that\u2019s who Jeremy was. That was the first time we were able to fight back that day, and if that did save the Capitol or some other target and a lot of lives on the ground, there\u2019s some good you can take out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Jeremy spoke with his wife, Lyzbeth, and told her to take care of their baby daughter Emerson before he left the phone and charged the terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son, Eli, is seven and my daughter, Birdie, is 10 months old, so I\u2019ve had eight months more with my daughter than Jeremy had with his,\u201d Jed said. \u201cI think about things like that. This time of year, it all starts coming back, the shock, the suddenness of it all, where I was when I found out, seeing the rest of your family, how the weather is just like it was that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 23 on 9\/11, so it\u2019s been a longer period than I was with my brother. It\u2019s a very painful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the early years after the attacks, Ellen Mello attended one 9\/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center site but hasn\u2019t made it back since.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so large, so big,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt lost in it. I thought it was an incredible thing they were doing, but for me personally, I was just overwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like her son, J.D., Ellen is most appreciative of the 9\/11 memorial and museum, the annual ceremony and the foundation named after Chris and his Alta Communications colleague traveling with him that day, David Retik, which has distributed $4.2 million in philanthropic grants to develop young leaders.<\/p>\n

Ellen is also thankful for those who have supported Doug\u2019s pride and joy, the Chris Mello Scholarship Fund, which awards money to distinguished students on each side of the Rye-Harrison football rivalry.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we are private mourners,\u201d Ellen said. \u201cI\u2019ve kept my mourning for the loss of Chris separate from the whole historic event. This was not just a catastrophe. Each person who died had an individual family life that was snuffed out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellen said her husband had an enormously difficult time dealing with his grief. \u201cIt haunted him,\u201d she said. Doug wasn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cChris would have been my best man,\u201d his brother said. J.D. and his wife, Gina, have two children, Jaden and Jack, who were born after 9\/11. \u201cIt is tough to describe to them an uncle they have never met or never will meet,\u201d J.D. said. \u201cBut Chris comes up often \u2026 and the really sad part is they would have loved him, and he would\u2019ve been a wonderful addition to their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris was known for his easy smile and generosity of spirit, and his mother finds comfort in the fact that her younger son was so happy with his life. Ellen still feels joy when she looks at pictures of Chris, including one taken near the Statue of Liberty two decades ago, a framed photo that Doug took of his young sons.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n J.D., left, and Chris Mello as young boys. (Courtesy of the Mello Family)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There is little J.D. on the left and little Chris on the right, with the Twin Towers right behind them, rising toward the sky. Ellen had the framed picture in her bedroom. She was walking through one day when the image stopped her cold.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my goodness,\u201d Ellen said. \u201cTo think what would unfold there so many years later.\u201d<\/p>\n

A hell-on-Earth event for nearly 3,000 families who still suffer every single day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doug Mello found weddings to be especially tough. He could handle the first hour, give or take, but then the thought of never watching his son Chris dance with his bride would consume him and force him out of the room. This is why Mello despised the notion that \u201ctime heals all wounds.\u201d Time failed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-2137306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2137306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2137306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2137306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2137306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}