'Green-Wood Cemetery Is Ground Zero for Me'

Photo by David Berkowit/Flickr

For the past nine years, NPR’s StoryCorps van has been driving around, collecting stories from loved ones of those killed on 9/11 — with the ultimate goal of collecting one story for each life lost.

And this Friday — Sept. 11, 2015 — NPR shares another one of those stories with the world.

The storyteller is Isaac Feliciano, a longtime groundskeeper at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The subject of his story is his wife, Rosa Maria Feliciano, whom he dropped off at the subway 14 years ago today. She took the train that morning to her workplace, Marsh & McLennan, a professional services firm on the 96th floor of the south tower. Her husband never saw her again.

Below is Feliciano’s full interview, courtesy of StoryCorps. He begins at Green-Wood cemetery on the morning of the attack.

“They say it’s the highest point of Brooklyn, so you could see the fire, the flames and all the smoke. And I said, ‘Oh my god, my wife is there.’ She worked on the 96th floor, but I was hoping for the best.”

“My daughter was two years old. A few days later, she just started screaming and crying, calling her mother. That’s when it hit me.”

“And then the first week of January, right shortly after New Year’s, two police detectives rang my doorbell. They told me that they have found part of her — just the upper torso.”

“I guess I was so numb, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. We were married 10 years. We talked about everything, and she always made me see the better side of things, always. That was one of the things that I cherished about her the most.”

“Whenever I feel down, I just go over there to the grave site and I talk to her about the girls. It makes me feel like she’s still with me, and that I can go see her anytime — go talk to her anytime. The cemetery’s big, so sometimes, I realize I’m driving by where she’s buried at, but I’m supposed to be somewhere else. Like, ’What the hell am I doing down here? I’m supposed to be on the other side of the cemetery.’”

“When I get like that, then I say, ’You know what? I need to go see her.’ So the next day when I come in, I come straight there and I stop.”

“It’s going to be already, what, 14 years? And when I cross the bridge every morning, I see the city and it just doesn’t look the same anymore. I just see that new tower there, but I can’t see myself going there for no reason at all.”

“Her name is Rosa Maria Feliciano. She’s buried here, so Green-Wood Cemetery is Ground Zero for me.”

Listen to the full audio of Feliciano’s interview at StoryCorps.