Trego's Mountain Ear

I had overslept, and was late for a dental appointment.  I’ll talk about the reasons for oversleeping later – it’s a good thing.  Going down the hill into Eureka, I saw the firetruck, and remembered Garth Erin Feeney – a man that I never met, but had been with my wife’s niece for a bit over 3 years when the bastards put a plane into the twin towers. 

He was at the Windows of the World Restaurant, on the 106th floor of the North Tower.  He had enough time to call his mother from a smoke-filled room, tell her he loved her, and that he wasn’t sure that he’d make it out.  I had no idea who he was or what the connection was when I saw the news – a black woman, on the street below, horror written across her face and in her voice said: “My God!  They’re jumping.”

Go ahead.  Google “Garth Feeney” and get an idea of what the young man I never met was.  Heck, just click these links:

Mother recounts horror of phone call

Garth Feeney Obituary (2001) – Legacy Remembers

Garth E. Feeney | Voices Center for Resilience

Accounts From the North Tower – The New York Times

Garth E. Feeney

Twenty-three years have passed (in another 5 years it will match Garth’s 28-year lifetime) since the lives of Garth Feeney and 2,976 other innocents crossed paths with 19 jihadists.  A year and a half later saw the start of the second Iraq war – where 4,500 US Service members would die between 2003 and 2011.  The war in Afghanistan started in 2001 and went on until 2021 – with another 2,420 US Service men and women dead.

Each of those casualties – on September 11, in Iraq, in Afghanistan – undoubtedly had stories that would have rivaled Garth Feeney’s history to their relatives and friends.  I don’t have any answers to the big picture – just a thought of a young man’s life cut short by a double-handful of extremists.  A young man who didn’t live to marry his fiancee.  A young man who might have had the opportunity to climb at Stone Hill.

So I got to the dentists office – late – and spent the 23rd anniversary of Garth Feeney’s death thinking of a young man I would like to have known.