EVERY PARENT’S NIGHTMARE…NEWSDAY, July 23, 2011
By Andrew Malekoff
I have not been able to stop thinking about Leiby Kletzky, the 8-year-old boy taken from a Brooklyn street corner earlier this month and brutally murdered. My boys are now in their 20s and they are not Hasidic Jews, but there is something about Leiby's photo that reminds me of them when they were children.
I get chills when I recall a day when I took my boys to the multiplex theater at the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa. Darren was 3 and Jamie was 7. After a movie, we went downstairs to Nathan's for hot dogs and French fries. When we were finished, Jamie told me he thought that he left his Batman toy in the theater upstairs.
Thinking I would offer him a bit of independence, I said, "Do you think you can go get it and then come back down?" He said yes and stepped on the upstairs escalator. Darren and I waited. After a few minutes, I thought he might be having a hard time at the theater. My eyes scanned the mall. When he didn't return after perhaps 10 minutes, my worry turned to fear.
I picked up Darren so that I could move quickly (or was it so that I wouldn't lose him, too?) and I started to search. Jamie wasn't at the theater. I was frantic and looked into every store. I was sweating profusely and my heart seemed to beat through my chest. My imagination took me places I had never been before; places like the one that found Leiby Kletzky.
Then I approached a mall staff member, who led me to the security office. The security man spoke to someone on his walkie-talkie. After just about a minute, Jamie walked into the security office with a staff member. I picked him up and hugged him for a long moment.
For me, it was a moment of profound relief. Jamie seemed happy that we were together, but not upset. The time we were separated was not the eternity to him that it was to me. (He even found his toy.) I think I had emotional blinders on and don't recall if I even asked where Jamie was located.
Sometimes I remember that experience for no reason immediately evident to me. Other times it is triggered by a news story with a bad ending. Recalling those 20 or 30 minutes brings back some of the same physical sensations: The hair on my neck stands on end, a chill runs up my spine and my heart pounds.
Maybe I can't stop thinking about Leiby Kletzky because of that frightening experience at the mall. If those moments had turned into a lifetime of what the Kletzkys now face, I don't know how I would have survived. Yet, somehow, people do survive traumatic grief. Maybe it is their faith.
I heard that there were children in Leiby's close-knit community who questioned the presence of God when the boy's fate became known. How could they not? And, while I ask myself this same question that a child asks his parents, I can only hope there is a better place somewhere beyond our world that isn't so capricious and merciless to even the most innocent and precious among us.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Advocate to restore funding for the Children's Center of Nassau County Family Court
Name: _________________________________
Address: _________________________________
City/State: _________________________________
August 2, 2011
NYS Senator Jack Martins
NYS Assemblyman Chuck Lavine
NYS Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel
Dear Local Legislators:
In 2011 Governor Andrew Cuomo cut one-third of its funding for the Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court that is operated by North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center. The Guidance Center pledged to keep the Children Center open and fully operative by raising funds ($28,000) from community supporters to keep it alive this year. They achieved their goal. However, if the funds are not restored by the State in 2012 the Children’s Center is in danger of closing to these budget cuts.
According to the New York State Unified Court System, the Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court is rated among the top utilized Center’s in New York State.
The Children’s Center as Nassau County Family Court offers:
A quality drop-in child-care services, for children ages 6 weeks to 12 years, while their parents attend to court business; and
A place where families can learn about and gain access to vital services.
Here are the facts:
In 2010, the Children’s Center took care of almost 2200 children;
The Children’s Center was accessible to all families seeking to use the Center 99.5% of the time;
Ninety-nine percent of families utilizing the Children’s Center have a household income of less than $25,000 dollars annually; and
The Children’s Center provides a literacy-rich environment for children; it distributed more than 26,000 free books to children, since 2006, as a part of the federal Reading is Fundamental Program.
The result of curtailing this service is:
Increased stress for at-risk children and their families;
Decreased family court efficiency; and
Reduced access to legal services for women.
The Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court is the only Children’s Center on Long Island that has not had its funding cut by 100% and the only Children’s Center in New York State that did not reduce its days and hours of operation.
We need your help to restore this funding in 2012 and to save the Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court. We are counting on you!
Sincerely,
Address: _________________________________
City/State: _________________________________
August 2, 2011
NYS Senator Jack Martins
NYS Assemblyman Chuck Lavine
NYS Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel
Dear Local Legislators:
In 2011 Governor Andrew Cuomo cut one-third of its funding for the Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court that is operated by North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center. The Guidance Center pledged to keep the Children Center open and fully operative by raising funds ($28,000) from community supporters to keep it alive this year. They achieved their goal. However, if the funds are not restored by the State in 2012 the Children’s Center is in danger of closing to these budget cuts.
According to the New York State Unified Court System, the Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court is rated among the top utilized Center’s in New York State.
The Children’s Center as Nassau County Family Court offers:
A quality drop-in child-care services, for children ages 6 weeks to 12 years, while their parents attend to court business; and
A place where families can learn about and gain access to vital services.
Here are the facts:
In 2010, the Children’s Center took care of almost 2200 children;
The Children’s Center was accessible to all families seeking to use the Center 99.5% of the time;
Ninety-nine percent of families utilizing the Children’s Center have a household income of less than $25,000 dollars annually; and
The Children’s Center provides a literacy-rich environment for children; it distributed more than 26,000 free books to children, since 2006, as a part of the federal Reading is Fundamental Program.
The result of curtailing this service is:
Increased stress for at-risk children and their families;
Decreased family court efficiency; and
Reduced access to legal services for women.
The Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court is the only Children’s Center on Long Island that has not had its funding cut by 100% and the only Children’s Center in New York State that did not reduce its days and hours of operation.
We need your help to restore this funding in 2012 and to save the Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court. We are counting on you!
Sincerely,
Sunday, July 3, 2011
The Power of Group Work with Kids: A Practitioner’s Reflection on Strength-Based Practice
The Power of Group Work with Kids: A Practitioner’s Reflection on Strength-Based Practice
RECOLLECTIONS By Andrew Malekoff, CEO, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, March 2007
This narrative is a reflection of a practitioner’s formative experience in the field as a VISTA volunteer, forming and working with a group of Mexican-American adolescents before receiving any formal education in social work or the human services. The reflection is highlighted by lessons learned that inform strength-based practice in group work with children and youth. The narrative concludes with seven principles conceived over the intervening years that guides his practice today.
Introduction: Tapping in to What One Has to Offer
Social group work’s origins are rooted by melding three early twentieth century social movements: the settlement house movement, progressive education movement and recreation movement (Breton, 1990). What all three have in common is the conviction that people have much to offer to improve the quality of their lives. Each movement realized this, respectively, by organizing neighbors to challenge and change unacceptable social conditions in the community, enabling students to practice democracy and learn citizenship in the classroom, and providing people of all ages opportunities to experience the profound joy of participation in a creative group.
The practice of tapping in to what people have to offer is another way of saying that strengths matter. Weick and Saleebey (1995) affirm that helping people to discover the resources to improve their situations is not an option for social workers but an obligation. It is our duty to understand what people know, what they can do, and what they and their environment have to offer. The lesson of strength-based practice was taught to me early in my career, before formal education tempted me with deficit-driven paradigms of practice. It was a time before I went to graduate school and in a place where I learned that strengths matter. I learned it from the people who, at the time, mattered most: my neighbors. In this narrative I will describe my first experience in forming and working with a group of adolescents. I will highlight what I learned along the way and conclude by presenting seven strength-based principles for group work practice with children and youth.
My First Kids’ Group
I formed my first kids’ group when I was a 22 year old VISTA volunteer (Volunteers in Service to America) living in Grand Island, Nebraska. The community that I called home for nearly three years was largely Mexican-American. None of the roads in that part of town were paved. When I first arrived I roomed with a local family. A short time later I rented a tiny two-bedroom house on the edge of a cornfield. The rent was one hundred dollars a month. A few blocks from my house pig and cattle auctions were held on Mondays and Tuesdays. Living in Nebraska was nothing like my early years growing up in Newark, New Jersey where the landscape was concrete and telephone poles and the closet thing to a cornfield was the corner bakery.
The group I formed in the spring of 1974 included six kids. There were three boys: Danny, Carlos and Marco; and three girls: Lilly, Mariel, and Toni. They ranged in age from 13 to 18. All were first generation Mexican-Americans. They all knew each other well, living in this close-knit place where everybody seemed to know everybody.
The idea to create a group started percolating after I was in town for only a few days. Danny, whose sister’s house I was rooming in, hot-wired a car and took it for a joy ride. It was a rainy night. The car spun out of control, crashing into the side of the sheriff’s house. Really! I learned later that Danny’s father and older brother had done time in the state penitentiary. I saw Danny headed down the same road. In what turned out to be a good financial investment, I kicked in a couple hundred dollars after being asked to contribute to Danny’s bail.
During the same time I met an 18- year old young woman Mariel, who was soon to become the senior group member. I found out through the grapevine that she had been through drug rehab more than once. I was advised by someone to go to Mariel’s home and meet her parents who were described as very conservative. I was warned that there was no way I’d get anywhere with Mariel without her parents’ consent.
It was a wonderful lesson. I learned never to cut parents out of the picture. It made sense to me that the parents of these kids would need to trust the gringo stranger who had suddenly appeared in town. Yet, over the years I have met countless colleagues who perceive anxious parents as a thorn in their professional side and use the cloak of confidentiality to factor them out of the helping equation.
One by one I got to know each of the prospective group members and their parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. Getting to know everyone seemed easy at first. I received many invitations to home cooked Mexican meals. However, accompanying the delicious food and great company were situations that I was totally unprepared for. For instance, there was the time I received a written marriage proposal from one of the group member’s cousins. I never considered a dinner invitation in quite the same way after that.
Hanging Out
I got to know the prospective group members by hanging out in their homes, in the park, on the basketball court, and here and there. The kids were all children of parents who came a generation earlier from Mexico with their parents to work the local beet farms. I also hung out with the adults, often late into the night. I learned something that didn’t take any special assessment skills on my part. The alcohol flowed freely in this place.
There was a Latin club in town. Everyone turned out to dance and have a few beers on Fridays after work. It was a family atmosphere and a time for the community to unite, four generations dancing to contemporary and traditional Mexican music. If a newcomer had any intention of being more that a stranger the Latin club was the place to be.
I gradually began to feel less like a stranger. When I sensed that people had become more comfortable with me I thought it made sense to get a few of the kids together. I thought that forming a club might serve to address some of their needs like preventing alcohol abuse and strengthening cultural identity. Many elders in the community feared that assimilation was sucking the rich heritage from their children’s souls.
I had an idea. The kids loved to dance and listen to music, and could they dance. It seemed to me that sitting around and talking rap group style was one thing we could and would do, but that they would probably like doing a lot more than talking. This wasn’t, as they say, rocket science. It just made good sense to me to do what they liked, were good at, and might find meaningful and productive.
All these years later I continue to meet colleagues who assign second-class status to groups that dance and sing and laugh and run and jump and play. An air of condescension and professional arrogance often surrounds the use of nonverbal activities in group, especially in those schools and clinical settings where the spoken word rules the day. When the activity of the group is other than earnest and insightful discussion, parents, referral sources, administrators, and colleagues too often arch a collective eyebrow of disapproval as if to say, “This is nice but when does the real work begin.” There is nothing more deadly to the creative process needed to grow good groups that such uniformed, blind, authoritarian rigidity. Spiritual incarceration. That is what I call it. Learning from the Inside-Out.
As the kids’ group took shape I worried that I didn’t know anything about Mexican culture. I decided that the dance floor at the Latin club was a good place to start. The most spirited dances were communal, young and old circling the floor as a large group, accenting the need to stay connected in the present by preserving the past.
If I could learn Mexican dance at the Latin club, I figured that there had to be others in town that could teach me and the group other things we needed to know. I thought that if I could find such people and get to know them that I could convince them to help me, help us.
I didn’t know anything about alcoholism either. So I found out about an alcoholism program across the street from the cattle auction. I got to know Jim, the director of the center. We spent some time together and he provided me with literature on the subject. Jim told me that he was in recovery and invited me to an open AA meeting. I didn’t know what “recovery” meant, so he taught me. He agreed to help in any way he could. I also met an elementary school teacher who lived in the community. Dolores was a dynamic woman with a great smile, unlimited knowledge about her heritage, boundless energy and a burning desire to help the young people in the community. She was dying to help out. I told her about the group and she agreed to teach dance and sprinkle in some history lessons along the way.
Soon I met others who, as they learned about the group and its purpose, wanted to pitch in too. There were women who offered to sew traditional dresses for the girls to dance in, men who loaned their cherished sombreros to the boys, people in recovery willing to talk about alcoholism and the road to sobriety, and so on. Soon the group had a small army of helpers. And all I had to do was ask.
Giving Up Control
And so I made another valuable discovery. And this was a big one. I learned that I didn’t have to control everything. I could depend on others. Others being the kids themselves and the grown ups who had a stake in them. This took a lot of pressure off me. It meant that I didn’t have to know everything. I did have to be willing to trust others and have faith in what they might have to offer. I later discovered that this was a very unpopular way to think among colleagues who revere a one-to-one medical model, where professional is knowledgeable decision maker, client is passive recipient, pathology rules, and DSM is the holy bible. (“Hallelujah”, cried the lonely managed care clerk from his desolate outpost in the hinterlands of corporate America.)
We decided on a group name: Los Seis – The Six. As I got to know Los Seis better I realized that despite the overwhelming odds that they faced they had lots to offer. They were attractive, creative, talented, intelligent, energetic, passionate, and open-minded – open minded enough to give me the priceless and timeless gift of letting me into their lives so that I can share this gift, and all I learned from it, with others. Others like you, reader.
The group met several times a week. It was fun, exciting, and at times puzzling. One day a newspaper crew came to cover the story of the group. As the photographer readied for the shoot the group unraveled before my eyes. A simmering dispute between Marco and Toni exploded. In frustration, everyone threatened to quit the group. Several ran from the building. I chased them down and persuaded them to return. The full page spread of photos that appeared two days later in the Sunday paper was so impressive that no reader could have picked up on the chaos that transpired just moments before the photos were taken.
The kids always seemed to bounce back from adversity in the group. But there was more at work that individual resiliency. The group had become a force, a distinct entity with an identity and life of its own. There was an undeniable path that I couldn’t explain and didn’t understand at the time. Years later I learned about group culture, group process, and strength-based work and it all started to make some sense.
In time Los Seis became best know as a dance group that traveled throughout the State spreading a message of cultural pride and alcohol abuse prevention. In a sense they became advocates, extending the bonds of belonging beyond the group itself. A highlight was their first public appearance before a gathering of the local community. One of the poems chosen for the event is an epic of the Mexican-American people, the most famous poem of the Chicano movement in America. It’s called “I am Joaquin” or “Yo soy Joaquin”, written by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales (1967), long involved in the civil and human rights movement of the Mexican-American people. The book length poem give voice to what many in the community felt.
As the lights were turned down in the community center, the group members took turns reading by candlelight as a hundred of their family and friends, young and old looked on and listened.
I am Joaquin,
Lost in a world of confusion,
caught up in the whirl of a
gringo society,
confused by the rules,
scorned by attitudes,
suppressed by manipulation,
and destroyed by modern society.
My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival…
La Raza!
Mejicano!
Espanol!
Latino!
Hispano!
Chicano!
or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
and
sing the same
I am the masses of my people and
I refuse to be absorbed.
I am Joaquin.
The odds are great
but my spirit is strong,
my faith unbreakable,
my blood is pure.
I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.
I shall endure!
I will endure!
Working with Los Seis has been one of the enduring pleasures of my life. Nevertheless, at the time I couldn’t help but wonder, how did this happen? What did I do to help make it happen? Was it a fluke? Could I do it again?
Practice Principles for Strength-Based Group Work
It has been 30 years since Los Seis and my belief in the value of good group experiences for kids has only grown despite countless obstacles. In time I became a student, and then a teacher and author, of what was at first the product of an intuitive journey. As I continued the journey, later in graduate school and then in agency work I became disheartened to see so many talented people bailing out and abandoning group work with kids. But who could blame them. Higher education, with a few notable exceptions, has failed. And there is little or on reliable support and supervision in most work places.
Too much of what passes as group work these days is nothing more than curriculum-driven pseudo group work with little interaction amongst group members, no mutual aid, cookbook agendas, and canned exercises. The emphasis is on controlling kids, shoving education down their throats, and stamping out spontaneity and creativity.
Somewhere along the way I became a missionary of sorts, encouraging others to stay the course and attempting to demystify group work so that it could be more easily understood and purposefully practiced.
And so, with the spirit of Los Seis in mind and heart, I’ll conclude with seven principles and a poem that I hope you will embrace, seven strength-based bricks accompanied by a lyrical message to begin building a foundation for the important work ahead:
(1). I hope that those of you who work with young people in groups or who administer programs that include group work, will learn that a group shouldn’t be formed on the basis of a diagnosis or label. I want you to be crystal clear that a group should be formed on the basis of particular needs that the group is being pulled together to address. Felt needs are different that ascribed labels. Understanding need is where we begin in group work. Such a simple concept, yet so foreign to so many.
(2). I hope that you will learn to structure your groups to invite the whole person and not just the troubled or hurt or broken parts. There is so much talk these days about strengths and wellness. This is hardly a new and revolutionary concept. But it has been neglected for too long. However, good group work practice has been paying attention to people’s strengths since the days of the original settlement houses over 100 years ago, mostly without any fanfare.
(3). I hope that you will value the use of verbal and non-verbal activities and will, for once and for all, learn to relax and to abandon the strange and bizarre belief that the only successful group is one that consists of young people who sit still and speak politely and insightful.
(4). I hope that you will come to understand that losing control is not where you want to get away from, it’s where you want to get to. What I mean by this is, when control is turned over to the group and when the group worker give up his or her centrality in the group, that mutual aid can follow and then members can find expression for they have to offer. Encouraging ” what they have to offer” – that’s the kind of group work we need to practice, that’s what real empowerment is all about.
(5). I hope that you will stay tuned in to the near things and far things, the near things of individual need and the far things of social reform. Our young group members need to see the potential of changing not only oneself but also one’s surroundings, so that they may become active participants in community affairs, so that they might make a difference, might change the world one day where we have failed to. A good group can be a great start for this kind of consciousness development and action among young people.
(6). I hope that you will learn that anxious and angry parents are not our enemies and that we must collaborate with them and form stable alliances with them if we are to be successful with their children. Many parents suffer from profound isolation and self-doubt. We must learn to embrace their frustration and anxiety rather than become defensive and rejecting. They get enough of that as it is.
(7). Finally, I hope you will learn that a good group has a life of its own, each one with a unique personality – what we group workers refer to as a culture. We must learn to value the developmental life of a group. Because if people can take this from today, when those that inhabit the world outside of our groups question the value of our efforts, amidst the noise and movement and excitement of a typical kids groups – and when they raise an eyebrow or toss puzzled and disapproving looks our way and ask us, ” what is going on in there?!?” We’ll have more confidence to move ahead and to hang in there and not bail out as too many and adult already has.
I’ll leave you with a poem that I wrote on the existential plight of those of us who work with kids in groups and the faith that is needed to stay the course. The poem, which I wrote while watching a group of kids in a roller rink, is my attempt to demystify the concept of group process (Malekoff, 1997).
What is Going in There? Question and response
What is going on in There? (The question)
We bring our kids to you,
To see what you can do;
They meet a bunch of others,
See, we are all their mothers;
We hear a to of noise,
And, yes, boys will be boys;
But what is going on in there?,
Nothing much we fear.
Our rooms are side by side,
And it’s not my style to chide;
But your group’s a bit too crazy.
And what you’re doing’s kind of hazy;
After all they’re here to talk,
Yet all they do is squeal and squawk;
What is going on in there?
Nothing much we fear.
Hi I’m from the school,
And it’s not my style to duel;
But Johnny’s in your group,
And I know that you’re no dupe;
But his dad has called on me,
To gain some clarity;
So what is going on in there?,
Nothing much, I fear.
Now here we are alas,
Facing you in masse;
We haven’t got all day,
So what have you to say;
About this thing called group,
This strange and foggy soup;
Just what is going on in there?,
Nothing much, we fear.
What is Going on in There? (The Response)
If you really wish to know, have a seat, don’t plan to go.
It will take awhile to get, but you will get it, so don’t you fret.
A group begins by building trust, chipping ways at the surface crust.
Once the uneasy feeling is lost, a battle rages for who’s the boss;
Kings and Queens of what’s okay and who shall have the final say.
Once that’s clear a moment of calm is quickly followed by the
slapping of palms.
A clan like feeling fills the air,
the sharing of joy, hope, and despair.
Family dramas are replayed, so new directions can be made.
Then in awhile each one stands out,
confident of his own special clout.
By then the group has discovered its pace,
a secret gathering in a special place.
Nothing like it has occurred before,
a bond that exist beyond the door.
And finally it’s time to say good-bye,
a giggle, a tear, a hug, a sigh.
Hard to accept, easy to deny,
the group is gone yet forever alive.
So you’ve asked me “what is going on in there?,”
I hope that my story has helped make it clear.
Maybe now it is easier to see,
that a group has a life, just like you and like me.
References
Breton, M. (1990). Learning from social group work traditions. Social Work with Groups, 13:3, 21-34.
Gonzales, R. (1967). I Am Joaquin. New York: Bantam.
Malekoff, A. (1997). Group Work with Adolescents: Principles and Practice. New York: Guilford, 50-52.
Weick, A. & Saleebey, D. (1995). A postmodern approach to social work practice. The 1995 Richard Lodge Memorial Lecture, Adelphi University School of Social Work, New York.
Andrew Malekoff is executive director / CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, NY. He is editor-in-chief of Social Work with Groups, a journal of community and clinical practice.
The article was earlier presented as a keynote presentation entitled: “Group Work: The Hidden Treasure in Group Development” March 8, 2002, Melville Marriott, Melville, NY; and published as: “The Power of Group Work with Kids: Lessons Learned” Social Work with Groups, 25:1/2, 2002; “The Power of Group Work with Kids: A Practitioner’s Reflection on Strength-Based Practice,” Families in Society, 2001, 82:3.
The article also appears on the Social Welfare History Project: http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/recollections/the-power-of-group-work-with-kids-a-practitioner%e2%80%99s-reflection-on-strength-based-practice/ with the permission of the author.
RECOLLECTIONS By Andrew Malekoff, CEO, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, March 2007
This narrative is a reflection of a practitioner’s formative experience in the field as a VISTA volunteer, forming and working with a group of Mexican-American adolescents before receiving any formal education in social work or the human services. The reflection is highlighted by lessons learned that inform strength-based practice in group work with children and youth. The narrative concludes with seven principles conceived over the intervening years that guides his practice today.
Introduction: Tapping in to What One Has to Offer
Social group work’s origins are rooted by melding three early twentieth century social movements: the settlement house movement, progressive education movement and recreation movement (Breton, 1990). What all three have in common is the conviction that people have much to offer to improve the quality of their lives. Each movement realized this, respectively, by organizing neighbors to challenge and change unacceptable social conditions in the community, enabling students to practice democracy and learn citizenship in the classroom, and providing people of all ages opportunities to experience the profound joy of participation in a creative group.
The practice of tapping in to what people have to offer is another way of saying that strengths matter. Weick and Saleebey (1995) affirm that helping people to discover the resources to improve their situations is not an option for social workers but an obligation. It is our duty to understand what people know, what they can do, and what they and their environment have to offer. The lesson of strength-based practice was taught to me early in my career, before formal education tempted me with deficit-driven paradigms of practice. It was a time before I went to graduate school and in a place where I learned that strengths matter. I learned it from the people who, at the time, mattered most: my neighbors. In this narrative I will describe my first experience in forming and working with a group of adolescents. I will highlight what I learned along the way and conclude by presenting seven strength-based principles for group work practice with children and youth.
My First Kids’ Group
I formed my first kids’ group when I was a 22 year old VISTA volunteer (Volunteers in Service to America) living in Grand Island, Nebraska. The community that I called home for nearly three years was largely Mexican-American. None of the roads in that part of town were paved. When I first arrived I roomed with a local family. A short time later I rented a tiny two-bedroom house on the edge of a cornfield. The rent was one hundred dollars a month. A few blocks from my house pig and cattle auctions were held on Mondays and Tuesdays. Living in Nebraska was nothing like my early years growing up in Newark, New Jersey where the landscape was concrete and telephone poles and the closet thing to a cornfield was the corner bakery.
The group I formed in the spring of 1974 included six kids. There were three boys: Danny, Carlos and Marco; and three girls: Lilly, Mariel, and Toni. They ranged in age from 13 to 18. All were first generation Mexican-Americans. They all knew each other well, living in this close-knit place where everybody seemed to know everybody.
The idea to create a group started percolating after I was in town for only a few days. Danny, whose sister’s house I was rooming in, hot-wired a car and took it for a joy ride. It was a rainy night. The car spun out of control, crashing into the side of the sheriff’s house. Really! I learned later that Danny’s father and older brother had done time in the state penitentiary. I saw Danny headed down the same road. In what turned out to be a good financial investment, I kicked in a couple hundred dollars after being asked to contribute to Danny’s bail.
During the same time I met an 18- year old young woman Mariel, who was soon to become the senior group member. I found out through the grapevine that she had been through drug rehab more than once. I was advised by someone to go to Mariel’s home and meet her parents who were described as very conservative. I was warned that there was no way I’d get anywhere with Mariel without her parents’ consent.
It was a wonderful lesson. I learned never to cut parents out of the picture. It made sense to me that the parents of these kids would need to trust the gringo stranger who had suddenly appeared in town. Yet, over the years I have met countless colleagues who perceive anxious parents as a thorn in their professional side and use the cloak of confidentiality to factor them out of the helping equation.
One by one I got to know each of the prospective group members and their parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. Getting to know everyone seemed easy at first. I received many invitations to home cooked Mexican meals. However, accompanying the delicious food and great company were situations that I was totally unprepared for. For instance, there was the time I received a written marriage proposal from one of the group member’s cousins. I never considered a dinner invitation in quite the same way after that.
Hanging Out
I got to know the prospective group members by hanging out in their homes, in the park, on the basketball court, and here and there. The kids were all children of parents who came a generation earlier from Mexico with their parents to work the local beet farms. I also hung out with the adults, often late into the night. I learned something that didn’t take any special assessment skills on my part. The alcohol flowed freely in this place.
There was a Latin club in town. Everyone turned out to dance and have a few beers on Fridays after work. It was a family atmosphere and a time for the community to unite, four generations dancing to contemporary and traditional Mexican music. If a newcomer had any intention of being more that a stranger the Latin club was the place to be.
I gradually began to feel less like a stranger. When I sensed that people had become more comfortable with me I thought it made sense to get a few of the kids together. I thought that forming a club might serve to address some of their needs like preventing alcohol abuse and strengthening cultural identity. Many elders in the community feared that assimilation was sucking the rich heritage from their children’s souls.
I had an idea. The kids loved to dance and listen to music, and could they dance. It seemed to me that sitting around and talking rap group style was one thing we could and would do, but that they would probably like doing a lot more than talking. This wasn’t, as they say, rocket science. It just made good sense to me to do what they liked, were good at, and might find meaningful and productive.
All these years later I continue to meet colleagues who assign second-class status to groups that dance and sing and laugh and run and jump and play. An air of condescension and professional arrogance often surrounds the use of nonverbal activities in group, especially in those schools and clinical settings where the spoken word rules the day. When the activity of the group is other than earnest and insightful discussion, parents, referral sources, administrators, and colleagues too often arch a collective eyebrow of disapproval as if to say, “This is nice but when does the real work begin.” There is nothing more deadly to the creative process needed to grow good groups that such uniformed, blind, authoritarian rigidity. Spiritual incarceration. That is what I call it. Learning from the Inside-Out.
As the kids’ group took shape I worried that I didn’t know anything about Mexican culture. I decided that the dance floor at the Latin club was a good place to start. The most spirited dances were communal, young and old circling the floor as a large group, accenting the need to stay connected in the present by preserving the past.
If I could learn Mexican dance at the Latin club, I figured that there had to be others in town that could teach me and the group other things we needed to know. I thought that if I could find such people and get to know them that I could convince them to help me, help us.
I didn’t know anything about alcoholism either. So I found out about an alcoholism program across the street from the cattle auction. I got to know Jim, the director of the center. We spent some time together and he provided me with literature on the subject. Jim told me that he was in recovery and invited me to an open AA meeting. I didn’t know what “recovery” meant, so he taught me. He agreed to help in any way he could. I also met an elementary school teacher who lived in the community. Dolores was a dynamic woman with a great smile, unlimited knowledge about her heritage, boundless energy and a burning desire to help the young people in the community. She was dying to help out. I told her about the group and she agreed to teach dance and sprinkle in some history lessons along the way.
Soon I met others who, as they learned about the group and its purpose, wanted to pitch in too. There were women who offered to sew traditional dresses for the girls to dance in, men who loaned their cherished sombreros to the boys, people in recovery willing to talk about alcoholism and the road to sobriety, and so on. Soon the group had a small army of helpers. And all I had to do was ask.
Giving Up Control
And so I made another valuable discovery. And this was a big one. I learned that I didn’t have to control everything. I could depend on others. Others being the kids themselves and the grown ups who had a stake in them. This took a lot of pressure off me. It meant that I didn’t have to know everything. I did have to be willing to trust others and have faith in what they might have to offer. I later discovered that this was a very unpopular way to think among colleagues who revere a one-to-one medical model, where professional is knowledgeable decision maker, client is passive recipient, pathology rules, and DSM is the holy bible. (“Hallelujah”, cried the lonely managed care clerk from his desolate outpost in the hinterlands of corporate America.)
We decided on a group name: Los Seis – The Six. As I got to know Los Seis better I realized that despite the overwhelming odds that they faced they had lots to offer. They were attractive, creative, talented, intelligent, energetic, passionate, and open-minded – open minded enough to give me the priceless and timeless gift of letting me into their lives so that I can share this gift, and all I learned from it, with others. Others like you, reader.
The group met several times a week. It was fun, exciting, and at times puzzling. One day a newspaper crew came to cover the story of the group. As the photographer readied for the shoot the group unraveled before my eyes. A simmering dispute between Marco and Toni exploded. In frustration, everyone threatened to quit the group. Several ran from the building. I chased them down and persuaded them to return. The full page spread of photos that appeared two days later in the Sunday paper was so impressive that no reader could have picked up on the chaos that transpired just moments before the photos were taken.
The kids always seemed to bounce back from adversity in the group. But there was more at work that individual resiliency. The group had become a force, a distinct entity with an identity and life of its own. There was an undeniable path that I couldn’t explain and didn’t understand at the time. Years later I learned about group culture, group process, and strength-based work and it all started to make some sense.
In time Los Seis became best know as a dance group that traveled throughout the State spreading a message of cultural pride and alcohol abuse prevention. In a sense they became advocates, extending the bonds of belonging beyond the group itself. A highlight was their first public appearance before a gathering of the local community. One of the poems chosen for the event is an epic of the Mexican-American people, the most famous poem of the Chicano movement in America. It’s called “I am Joaquin” or “Yo soy Joaquin”, written by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales (1967), long involved in the civil and human rights movement of the Mexican-American people. The book length poem give voice to what many in the community felt.
As the lights were turned down in the community center, the group members took turns reading by candlelight as a hundred of their family and friends, young and old looked on and listened.
I am Joaquin,
Lost in a world of confusion,
caught up in the whirl of a
gringo society,
confused by the rules,
scorned by attitudes,
suppressed by manipulation,
and destroyed by modern society.
My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival…
La Raza!
Mejicano!
Espanol!
Latino!
Hispano!
Chicano!
or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
and
sing the same
I am the masses of my people and
I refuse to be absorbed.
I am Joaquin.
The odds are great
but my spirit is strong,
my faith unbreakable,
my blood is pure.
I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.
I shall endure!
I will endure!
Working with Los Seis has been one of the enduring pleasures of my life. Nevertheless, at the time I couldn’t help but wonder, how did this happen? What did I do to help make it happen? Was it a fluke? Could I do it again?
Practice Principles for Strength-Based Group Work
It has been 30 years since Los Seis and my belief in the value of good group experiences for kids has only grown despite countless obstacles. In time I became a student, and then a teacher and author, of what was at first the product of an intuitive journey. As I continued the journey, later in graduate school and then in agency work I became disheartened to see so many talented people bailing out and abandoning group work with kids. But who could blame them. Higher education, with a few notable exceptions, has failed. And there is little or on reliable support and supervision in most work places.
Too much of what passes as group work these days is nothing more than curriculum-driven pseudo group work with little interaction amongst group members, no mutual aid, cookbook agendas, and canned exercises. The emphasis is on controlling kids, shoving education down their throats, and stamping out spontaneity and creativity.
Somewhere along the way I became a missionary of sorts, encouraging others to stay the course and attempting to demystify group work so that it could be more easily understood and purposefully practiced.
And so, with the spirit of Los Seis in mind and heart, I’ll conclude with seven principles and a poem that I hope you will embrace, seven strength-based bricks accompanied by a lyrical message to begin building a foundation for the important work ahead:
(1). I hope that those of you who work with young people in groups or who administer programs that include group work, will learn that a group shouldn’t be formed on the basis of a diagnosis or label. I want you to be crystal clear that a group should be formed on the basis of particular needs that the group is being pulled together to address. Felt needs are different that ascribed labels. Understanding need is where we begin in group work. Such a simple concept, yet so foreign to so many.
(2). I hope that you will learn to structure your groups to invite the whole person and not just the troubled or hurt or broken parts. There is so much talk these days about strengths and wellness. This is hardly a new and revolutionary concept. But it has been neglected for too long. However, good group work practice has been paying attention to people’s strengths since the days of the original settlement houses over 100 years ago, mostly without any fanfare.
(3). I hope that you will value the use of verbal and non-verbal activities and will, for once and for all, learn to relax and to abandon the strange and bizarre belief that the only successful group is one that consists of young people who sit still and speak politely and insightful.
(4). I hope that you will come to understand that losing control is not where you want to get away from, it’s where you want to get to. What I mean by this is, when control is turned over to the group and when the group worker give up his or her centrality in the group, that mutual aid can follow and then members can find expression for they have to offer. Encouraging ” what they have to offer” – that’s the kind of group work we need to practice, that’s what real empowerment is all about.
(5). I hope that you will stay tuned in to the near things and far things, the near things of individual need and the far things of social reform. Our young group members need to see the potential of changing not only oneself but also one’s surroundings, so that they may become active participants in community affairs, so that they might make a difference, might change the world one day where we have failed to. A good group can be a great start for this kind of consciousness development and action among young people.
(6). I hope that you will learn that anxious and angry parents are not our enemies and that we must collaborate with them and form stable alliances with them if we are to be successful with their children. Many parents suffer from profound isolation and self-doubt. We must learn to embrace their frustration and anxiety rather than become defensive and rejecting. They get enough of that as it is.
(7). Finally, I hope you will learn that a good group has a life of its own, each one with a unique personality – what we group workers refer to as a culture. We must learn to value the developmental life of a group. Because if people can take this from today, when those that inhabit the world outside of our groups question the value of our efforts, amidst the noise and movement and excitement of a typical kids groups – and when they raise an eyebrow or toss puzzled and disapproving looks our way and ask us, ” what is going on in there?!?” We’ll have more confidence to move ahead and to hang in there and not bail out as too many and adult already has.
I’ll leave you with a poem that I wrote on the existential plight of those of us who work with kids in groups and the faith that is needed to stay the course. The poem, which I wrote while watching a group of kids in a roller rink, is my attempt to demystify the concept of group process (Malekoff, 1997).
What is Going in There? Question and response
What is going on in There? (The question)
We bring our kids to you,
To see what you can do;
They meet a bunch of others,
See, we are all their mothers;
We hear a to of noise,
And, yes, boys will be boys;
But what is going on in there?,
Nothing much we fear.
Our rooms are side by side,
And it’s not my style to chide;
But your group’s a bit too crazy.
And what you’re doing’s kind of hazy;
After all they’re here to talk,
Yet all they do is squeal and squawk;
What is going on in there?
Nothing much we fear.
Hi I’m from the school,
And it’s not my style to duel;
But Johnny’s in your group,
And I know that you’re no dupe;
But his dad has called on me,
To gain some clarity;
So what is going on in there?,
Nothing much, I fear.
Now here we are alas,
Facing you in masse;
We haven’t got all day,
So what have you to say;
About this thing called group,
This strange and foggy soup;
Just what is going on in there?,
Nothing much, we fear.
What is Going on in There? (The Response)
If you really wish to know, have a seat, don’t plan to go.
It will take awhile to get, but you will get it, so don’t you fret.
A group begins by building trust, chipping ways at the surface crust.
Once the uneasy feeling is lost, a battle rages for who’s the boss;
Kings and Queens of what’s okay and who shall have the final say.
Once that’s clear a moment of calm is quickly followed by the
slapping of palms.
A clan like feeling fills the air,
the sharing of joy, hope, and despair.
Family dramas are replayed, so new directions can be made.
Then in awhile each one stands out,
confident of his own special clout.
By then the group has discovered its pace,
a secret gathering in a special place.
Nothing like it has occurred before,
a bond that exist beyond the door.
And finally it’s time to say good-bye,
a giggle, a tear, a hug, a sigh.
Hard to accept, easy to deny,
the group is gone yet forever alive.
So you’ve asked me “what is going on in there?,”
I hope that my story has helped make it clear.
Maybe now it is easier to see,
that a group has a life, just like you and like me.
References
Breton, M. (1990). Learning from social group work traditions. Social Work with Groups, 13:3, 21-34.
Gonzales, R. (1967). I Am Joaquin. New York: Bantam.
Malekoff, A. (1997). Group Work with Adolescents: Principles and Practice. New York: Guilford, 50-52.
Weick, A. & Saleebey, D. (1995). A postmodern approach to social work practice. The 1995 Richard Lodge Memorial Lecture, Adelphi University School of Social Work, New York.
Andrew Malekoff is executive director / CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, NY. He is editor-in-chief of Social Work with Groups, a journal of community and clinical practice.
The article was earlier presented as a keynote presentation entitled: “Group Work: The Hidden Treasure in Group Development” March 8, 2002, Melville Marriott, Melville, NY; and published as: “The Power of Group Work with Kids: Lessons Learned” Social Work with Groups, 25:1/2, 2002; “The Power of Group Work with Kids: A Practitioner’s Reflection on Strength-Based Practice,” Families in Society, 2001, 82:3.
The article also appears on the Social Welfare History Project: http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/recollections/the-power-of-group-work-with-kids-a-practitioner%e2%80%99s-reflection-on-strength-based-practice/ with the permission of the author.
THE LONGEST DAY
The Longest Day
RECOLLECTIONS By: Andrew Malekoff, CEO, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, March 2007
This article is about a community-based children's mental health agency's - North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center - response to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
“And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd…and this also has (become) one of the dark places of the earth.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
A chill returned as the sun disappeared behind the ruins of the World Trade Center. Renee Fleming, accompanied by the orchestra of St. Luke’s, sang God Bless America. I waved to a police officer wearing a light blue windbreaker. The words NYPD COMMUNITY AFFAIRS were printed in white block letters on the back of her jacket. She waved back and smiled. I headed for the emergency lane on my way to the boat that would be returning the mental health workers to the Pier 94 on 57th Street.
Moments earlier I said goodbye to the family I stood beside during the memorial service. They sat in the back row of our section, one of scores of sections filled with thousands of folding chairs, each chair occupied by a grieving family member. I stood with my back against an iron gate so I wouldn’t block anyone’s view. The family lost their father and husband, a decorated firefighter. The widow was a slight woman of Italian descent, probably in her sixties. Although it was hard to guess her age because of the years added by September 11th.
Her husband’s photo was pinned to her wool coat, and to the coats of her three children. He was handsome. He had a white mustache and full head of silvery hair, combed straight back. When the memorial service started an hour earlier one of her sons, an off-duty police officer, asked me to please make sure that no one obstructed his mother’s view. He said, “You can see how short she is, less than five feet.”
World Trade Center Memorial Service: October 28, 2001
The service began with a processional that included His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York. Then, singing the Star Spangled Banner was police officer Daniel Rodriguez of the NYPD. He had become a presence across the nation in recent weeks, appearing in his dress blues and singing the national anthem at Yankee Stadium.
Everyone was on his or her feet. A massive wall of mourners rose around the tiny figure to my right. When I saw her struggling to climb, I took her arm and helped her up onto the folding chair. I told her that she could grab on to me. “Hold on to my shoulders,” I said. She hesitated. “Don’t worry you won’t knock me over,” I told her.
I could feel her trembling as she removed her right hand from my shoulder and fumbled for a tissue inside her coat pocket. I reached into my pants pocket and handed her a handkerchief. When I was picking out my clothes earlier in the morning I came across several unopened packets of white handkerchiefs. They belonged to my father who died seven years earlier. As I got dressed I thought that today my father would want somebody who needed it to have one of his handkerchiefs. At first she refused my offer, not wanting to impose. I urged her, “Please, take it. It’s okay.”
As I stepped away from this family to exit the memorial service my eyes were drawn to an attractive young woman with blonde hair, wearing dark sunglasses. She held a framed 8 by 10 inch photo portrait of her husband. I can still see his face clearly. Earlier, a colleague of mine talked to the woman with the photo. She leaned over and whispered to her, “You know when I look at him I feel like smiling.” And the woman holding the photo of her husband smiled weakly and said, “That’s the kind of guy he was, he made everyone smile.”
After a few more goodbyes I continued down the emergency lane. The organizer told us earlier that God Bless America was our cue to leave the site and head for the boat. I walked along a narrow path sandwiched between fifteen thousand mourners of every shade and age. Some were singing, some crying, and some holding up photos of lost loved ones. Passing me in the opposite direction was a woman who was hooked up to a respirator. Emergency personnel wheeled her away on a stretcher, while a companion walked alongside wearing a surgical mask.
Many mourners wore surgical masks. The odor of the smoldering ruins was strong and distinctive. After three hours I could feel something accumulating inside my throat. My imagination jumped ahead ten years. I wondered about the health risk to those who have been exposed daily to the toxins rising from ground zero. I thought about a photojournalist that I met who barely escaped the attack. He referred to his assignment that day as “a field trip into hell.” Maybe this is what hell smells like, I thought.
The Tyranny of Imagination
After walking several blocks to the Hudson River, we boarded a boat and headed back to the Pier. It would be about a thirty-minute ride. As we drifted away from ground zero I tried to wrap my mind around what I just came from. The idea of 15,000 mourners at a gravesite for thousands of murder victims in a location less than an hour from my home was hard to absorb.
I thought about the dozens of people I met in recent weeks who escaped and their surreal descriptions of the morning of 9/11, images and sensations that will never leave them: the odor of jet fuel; sweat-drenched firefighters in full gear climbing up stairs and urging everyone else to head down; women bursting from the buildings carrying shoes in hand in order to run faster; people jumping to their deaths rather than being burned alive; and frantic figures scattering from the site holding food trays overhead to avoid the blizzard of debris, running as fast as their legs would carry them past stretch limousines with assorted airplane parts jutting from the hoods.
One woman, an Empire BlueCross BlueShield employee, told me that when she exited the building the first thing she did was look up. Almost immediately she saw the second plane crash into tower two. She said that before she could run to safety she had to find another witness to confirm what she saw. “I thought I was going crazy, hallucinating,” she said. The horrifying images of those who escaped are rivaled only by the tyranny of imagination that now plagues the bereaved.
Weeks before the memorial service we had been receiving calls at the agency. There were calls from businesses, local government, the New York City Fire Department, and local schools and community groups.
We also received direct calls from people who escaped and families who lost loved ones. One call was from a parent whose eleven-year-old son Danny refused to eat. His father was missing. Through Danny’s story I learned about the tyranny of imagination. Danny imagined his father to be alive in his office in the World Trade Center and trapped, alone, and starving. If his father couldn’t eat, Danny reasoned, then he wouldn’t eat.
A Community Agency Responds
As the leading community-based children’s mental health center on Long Island we anticipated an avalanche of calls from individuals and institutions. We knew that how we organized our efforts would be critical. We also knew that there is no blueprint for the unprecedented.
How did we respond? On September 11th several top staff gathered to make a plan. First, any staff member directly affected by the attack was encouraged to do whatever they needed to do for themselves and their families. Second, staff members were directed to contact all agency clients to check in and make themselves available as needed. We knew about the potential effects of the disaster on persons with less exposure but significant risk factors such as prior unresolved trauma or loss. Third, the agency would extend its hours and days of operation. Fourth, we would make a list of staff willing to make themselves available for special assignments including responding to individual and family crises, providing consultations to schools, leading groups for surviving family members of deceased firefighters, and offering support to displaced employees who escaped and lost colleagues. This was how we started. Soon thereafter we addressed how to meet the ongoing needs of our own staff, soon to be steeped in the recovery effort.
Preparing for the Unprecedented
Within 24 hours of the terrorist attack there was a request from an employee assistance program. Professionals were needed to meet with court personnel in New York City. I was one of two who volunteered. The “debriefing,” as the EAP director called it, was to take place all day on Friday, September 14th. There were no further details or instructions.
I took down travel information, identified a contact person, and wondered what I would do when I got there. I figured that I would draw on my clinical, group work, and crisis intervention experience. Intuitively, I started reaching for frames of reference.
One of my assignments fifteen years ago was to meet with a group called Parents of Murdered Children (POMC). The lay leaders for the group, a bereaved husband and wife who lost their son, called the county executive’s office and said that the group was “stuck” and needed some assistance. I learned from that experience that trying to act smart was a big mistake. A colleague from another agency took a prescriptive stance, while I sat quietly. Being there, listening, and bearing witness was where it was at. In time I was accepted, enabling me to help the group to identify their need to do more than repeatedly tell their stories.
They expressed a need to take social action. I learned from them about secondary victimization at the hands of various bureaucracies. In time they moved their meeting place to the agency to accommodate their growing membership. They became effective advocates, influencing legislation and treatment of crime victims and their families. My experience with POMC also taught me about the value of moving from support to social action.
I remembered another group, a group of kids I once worked with from changing families. One prospective group member witnessed the murder of his mother at the hands of his father. Some of my colleagues didn’t think he should join the group. They reasoned that he would vicariously traumatize everyone else. In other words, he would freak out the other kids. I insisted that he be included. He did well in the group, spoke as freely as he chose to, and was readily accepted by the others. I learned from that experience to always err on the side of inclusiveness.
I remembered my part-time job as a crisis worker. The beeper would go off and soon I was in the emergency room or police station with little time to prepare. I learned from that experience that by assuming a stance of uncertainty and cultivating a part of my mind reserved for the unknown, I could cut myself some slack and learn from the inside out. After all, no one is an expert at another’s experience. Inside out, that’s the way to go.
How does one prepare for the unprecedented? Listening and bearing witness, offering groups to reduce isolation and foster social connection, and learning from the inside out. It was a start. After all, social workers always talk about learning by doing. This was as good a time as any to do just that. I had to rely on what I already knew and, most of all, be flexible. It was also important for me to say to myself, “I’m not in this alone.” Many would be spending time with individuals, families, and groups who are struggling with the aftershock of 9/11. We struggle ourselves. Emotionally no one has been spared.
Zero Degrees of Separation
So, three days after the attack I went to the Supreme Court to meet with court personnel. I met with three groups for about one-and-a-half hours each. Participation was voluntary.
The groups included individuals with missing relatives or friends, individuals with relatives or friends confirmed dead, individuals who were in the World Trade Center complex during the attack, individuals with family members who barely escaped, individuals who witnessed the attack and collapse of the Twin Towers from courthouse windows, and others who heard about it, like many of us on television, radio or through word of mouth. All were deeply affected. Most were in a state of disbelief. Following are my reflections on the day.
When I first arrived court officers confiscated my pocketknife. I learned that this is a new policy at the courthouse. Prior to the World Trade Center attack any blade less than four inches was okay.
I met with my contact person, gathered some information, and quickly suggested how to organize groups. Knowing something about planning groups was invaluable. There were three groups of 8 to 12 people. We met in a vacant courtroom. I arranged chairs around two long adjacent prosecution and defense tables. I asked that there be no observers.
While I was waiting for my first group a court officer stopped by and told me, “Today should be interesting.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “It’s foreclosure Friday.” He explained that every Friday they have an auction of foreclosed property and, typically, about two hundred Arab-Americans participate in the auction. This seemed to signal growing unease with people of Middle Eastern descent.
Although there were many differences among the participants, there was common ground in their struggle to cope. Many signs and symptoms of trauma and stress were reported. These included numbness, shock, headaches, loss of appetite, aches and pains, frequent trips to the bathroom, sleeplessness, flashbacks, disbelief, startle response to loud noises and especially airplanes, helplessness, gruesome nightmares, anger, uncertainty, guilt, and fear.
Fear was a powerful theme. Many felt that the courthouse was unsafe. During one group meeting a female court officer came in to search for explosives. We later learned that a bomb threat had been called in. She looked under chairs and desks and behind the elevated area where the judge sits. She never said a word. She just searched. Several group members nodded in agreement with one who said, “I feel like we are a target in this courthouse.”
Many group members reported having difficulty regulating and expressing emotions. In every group at least one or two people wept openly, women and men. In every group at least one person bolted from the room and then came back. More than one person said, “I can’t stop crying.” And more than one said, “I can’t cry.” More than a few were angry.
There was anger at the government. “How could they let this happen?” they wondered. There was strong sentiment among a few to strike back. There were some not-so-veiled signs of bias towards people of Middle Eastern descent.
Many shared feelings of disbelief, saying how surreal it all seems. One group member said, “I am in a semi-daze; I feel like I am not even here.”
Guilt was a powerful theme, especially guilt about going on with mundane day-to-day activities. This was balanced by the belief that showing strength and not giving in to terrorism was necessary. A court officer said he felt insignificant, like “a grain of sand.” He said he felt helpless and wondered if he was going crazy.
A group member who lamented, “Aren’t our children entitled to the life we enjoyed,” best expressed the loss of innocence.
Someone’s son escaped from the 78th floor. He took the stairs. His co-workers waited for the elevator. They didn’t survive. His mother through sobs retold the son’s story. When he emerged from the building, she told us, he witnessed flaming bodies falling from the sky. Two colleagues held her hands as she told the story.
In each group, members reached out to comfort one another through physical contact and understanding words. In one group a woman who said she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t cried, was brought to tears by another’s pain over a missing sister.
Despite the pain, all three groups welcomed humor. A court officer who loves to dance said he’d never dance again. Later, when the group was discussing ways to cope with stress, it was recommended that he teach the group how to dance. The image brought laughter and a momentary relief from tension.
In closing, participants said, “It was good to vent,” “It’s good to get it out,” “It’s good to know you’re not alone,” and “It’s good to know you’re not crazy.”
I was struck by the difference between what I was first told about these people and the reality. I had been advised that not too many people were personally affected. I discovered that everyone was profoundly affected. The experience generated empathic connections, fostered mutual support, reduced isolation, and normalized people’s responses and reactions to a surreal situation.
I remain deeply moved by the intensity of the experience and the participants’ ability to reach out to one another. It confirmed for me what I was already feeling. All of our lives are changed forever and to move forward we need each other. I knew that experiences like this, in groups, would be important for people in other settings and workplaces. And so I discovered a new frame of reference for the work ahead.
I discovered from this experience that the culture of people’s associations in the workplace and other settings had to accommodate to the disaster. I felt that in order for September 11th not to cause alienation, people needed permission and support to tell their stories and share ongoing difficulties and concerns. This would foster social connection, reduce alienation, and help people to cope with their reactions to the terrorist attack and anxiety associated with war in Afghanistan and domestic threats such as bio-terrorism. My experience in the courthouse helped me to understand in a deeper way that trauma isolates and atrophies otherwise healthy relationships, preventing them from growing.
Taking Care of Ourselves
The leadership of the agency created various opportunities for the staff and board of directors to tell their stories and share concerns. It required thinking “out of the box.” At the October board meeting, in which the traditional yearly strategic planning agenda was abandoned, board members and administrative staff debriefed and defused. After the meeting a past president of the agency described the experience as a “defining moment for the organization.” It galvanized the board’s commitment at a critical time, stimulated a course of action for supporting the development of our trauma and bereavement services, and strengthened the bond between board and staff.
Debriefing and defusing is only the beginning. We are learning from one another that the lessons we will offer to the traumatized for coping with the disaster also apply to us. In time we would learn about “vicarious PTSD” and “compassion fatigue,” and “secondary traumatic stress disorder,” fancy terms for our own vulnerability from too much caring and too little self-caring. Eating well, exercising, going easy on caffeine, getting sufficient rest, and…well, everything we advise to others now applies to us. We’re really all in this one together.
Parade of Grief
On the boat ride back to the Pier it was more comforting thinking about the pride of being associated with a committed organization and dedicated colleagues than being tormented by what brought me there in the first place.
As the pier came into view I knew that many families would soon be arriving to collect urns with ashes from ground zero. Each family would also be given an American Flag. If the deceased were a veteran, families would receive a special plaque acknowledging their service to the United States. And a few would get the rest of my father’s handkerchiefs.
My job was to accompany families to any one of dozens of booths occupied by Red Cross workers. As each family approached a booth, a Red Cross worker would recite a few well-rehearsed lines of condolence and then hand them a single urn and flag.
After they collected urns and flags, I accompanied families to a communal area where they could have a bite to eat. If people needed to talk there was an informal spot with comfortable chairs and couches. Most did not choose this option.
Two sisters asked me if they could go to the photo wall where family members posted thousands of snapshots of the missing. They said they wanted to write something on their brother’s photo. I escorted them to a wall that was bordered on the base by hundreds of teddy bears that were placed there by family members of those who died. There were lots of teddy bears at the Pier. There were also therapy dogs on hand. These gentle creatures were sprinkled about, offering their intuitive gifts to comfort the children, and grown ups too.
Many of my colleagues had been in this place weeks before, staffing what was known as Children’s Corner, spending time with the children while their parents presented DNA samples or applied for death certificates. A family assistance center was also set up on Long Island, to offer a more convenient setting for the thousands of surviving family members living in the suburbs just east of New York City.
Photos and intimately detailed descriptions lined the walls inside and outside of the Pier. They were also posted on buildings and makeshift walls that surrounded ground zero and in various other locations throughout the city. Loved ones described ankle bracelets with nameplates, dimples on elbows, and birthmarks of various shapes and sizes. And there were love poems and pleas for help in finding the missing. Following is a handwritten page I saw posted in Penn Station:
Ray Valdez, age 39, wearing khaki pants, navy blue long sleeved shirt “My brother arrived at work at 8:30 on September 11. His building was hit soon after. He called home on a borrowed cell. He left this message: ‘Liz it’s me, Ray. My building has been hit. I made it to the 78th floor. I’m okay but will remain here to help evacuate people. See you soon.’ Those were my brother’s last words. We have physically searched every hospital on the list provided to us. He was always the type to help one in need. If anyone has seen Raymond please call. God Bless.”
I offered an older couple, who lost a daughter in the disaster, a bag for the urn and flag. Macys had provided paper shopping bags with handles. Macy’s bags will never look the same to me. As I helped them with the bag, I saw the tears in their eyes. I was a little surprised when the gentleman said how well taken care of he felt.
In a conversation with three brothers a little while later, they shared a slightly different sentiment. The brothers ranged in age from mid-twenties to early thirties. They told me that their brother, a firefighter, left no wife or child behind and that both of their parents were deceased. They wanted to know why they couldn’t have three urns, one for each brother. They were also angry about the lack of benefits provided by the fire department. “Just because he didn’t leave a wife or children behind, it’s as if he doesn’t count,” said the eldest. The brothers signaled something that was coming, something that would replace the warm feeling associated with the abundance of good will generated in the aftermath of this disaster. Coming are disillusionment, frustration, anger, and feeling overwhelmed with the inevitable bureaucratic nightmare of red tape.
Reconstruction, Recovery, and Reaching Out
Seven years later survivors of the Oklahoma City terrorist attack continue to struggle. Many are still in counseling and some, particularly rescue workers, have only just begun. Marriages have ended, custody of children has been lost due to new addictions that have developed, and there have been more than a handful of suicides related to the 1994 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. There are also signs of getting through the trauma. An important part of recovery and reconstruction is taking some action that represents triumph over helplessness and despair. We learned about this first hand.
One of the services offered by the agency in the aftermath of 9/11 are bereavement groups for children who lost parents in the World Trade Center. One group worker made contact with an Oklahoma organization to exchange information and experiences in order to prepare for the work ahead. One day a large box arrived in the mail. It was addressed to the children in the bereavement groups. It came from a group of elementary school children in Oklahoma City.
Inside the box were 55 teddy bears. A laminated card bordered by American flags was hanging from string around each teddybear’s neck. Each card contained a message written by an Oklahoma City child to a child from New York. One of the cards said,
“Dear New York, I am very sorry about the plane crash. And I am very sorry if someone special to you died in it.”
Accompanying each Teddy Bear was a plastic bag with several items inside and a note explaining their significance. “To the families and friends of the lost:
A candle to remind you of the light they brought to your lives;
A (chocolate) kiss to remind you of the love they continue to send;
A flag to remind you that America will never forget.
A postcard for when you need to reach out;
We promise to be here.”
Everything feels different to me now. I remember a conversation I had many years ago with two parents whose son had been murdered. The father said, “It’s six years since our twenty year old son was stabbed to death in his own home in the middle of a sunny afternoon. The pain of our loss is still sharp and tears are never far from the surface.”
Many years from now when September 11th is remembered as a national day of loss, I’m sure I’ll think back and try to recall what things felt like before that sunny summer morning.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Andrew Malekoff, MSW, is executive director/CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, Roslyn Heights, NY and editor of Social Work with Groups.
This article was first published in a special issue of the Journal, “Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping,” Volume 8, Number 3, Summer, 2002, pages 28-35. This special issue of the Journal is devoted to professional helpers responses to 9/11 and was co-edited by Andrew Malekoff and Alex Gitterman. Published by California State University at Long Beach.
This article was also posted on the web on The Social Welfare History Project: http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/recollections/the-longest-day/
with the permission of the author.
RECOLLECTIONS By: Andrew Malekoff, CEO, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, March 2007
This article is about a community-based children's mental health agency's - North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center - response to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
“And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd…and this also has (become) one of the dark places of the earth.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
A chill returned as the sun disappeared behind the ruins of the World Trade Center. Renee Fleming, accompanied by the orchestra of St. Luke’s, sang God Bless America. I waved to a police officer wearing a light blue windbreaker. The words NYPD COMMUNITY AFFAIRS were printed in white block letters on the back of her jacket. She waved back and smiled. I headed for the emergency lane on my way to the boat that would be returning the mental health workers to the Pier 94 on 57th Street.
Moments earlier I said goodbye to the family I stood beside during the memorial service. They sat in the back row of our section, one of scores of sections filled with thousands of folding chairs, each chair occupied by a grieving family member. I stood with my back against an iron gate so I wouldn’t block anyone’s view. The family lost their father and husband, a decorated firefighter. The widow was a slight woman of Italian descent, probably in her sixties. Although it was hard to guess her age because of the years added by September 11th.
Her husband’s photo was pinned to her wool coat, and to the coats of her three children. He was handsome. He had a white mustache and full head of silvery hair, combed straight back. When the memorial service started an hour earlier one of her sons, an off-duty police officer, asked me to please make sure that no one obstructed his mother’s view. He said, “You can see how short she is, less than five feet.”
World Trade Center Memorial Service: October 28, 2001
The service began with a processional that included His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York. Then, singing the Star Spangled Banner was police officer Daniel Rodriguez of the NYPD. He had become a presence across the nation in recent weeks, appearing in his dress blues and singing the national anthem at Yankee Stadium.
Everyone was on his or her feet. A massive wall of mourners rose around the tiny figure to my right. When I saw her struggling to climb, I took her arm and helped her up onto the folding chair. I told her that she could grab on to me. “Hold on to my shoulders,” I said. She hesitated. “Don’t worry you won’t knock me over,” I told her.
I could feel her trembling as she removed her right hand from my shoulder and fumbled for a tissue inside her coat pocket. I reached into my pants pocket and handed her a handkerchief. When I was picking out my clothes earlier in the morning I came across several unopened packets of white handkerchiefs. They belonged to my father who died seven years earlier. As I got dressed I thought that today my father would want somebody who needed it to have one of his handkerchiefs. At first she refused my offer, not wanting to impose. I urged her, “Please, take it. It’s okay.”
As I stepped away from this family to exit the memorial service my eyes were drawn to an attractive young woman with blonde hair, wearing dark sunglasses. She held a framed 8 by 10 inch photo portrait of her husband. I can still see his face clearly. Earlier, a colleague of mine talked to the woman with the photo. She leaned over and whispered to her, “You know when I look at him I feel like smiling.” And the woman holding the photo of her husband smiled weakly and said, “That’s the kind of guy he was, he made everyone smile.”
After a few more goodbyes I continued down the emergency lane. The organizer told us earlier that God Bless America was our cue to leave the site and head for the boat. I walked along a narrow path sandwiched between fifteen thousand mourners of every shade and age. Some were singing, some crying, and some holding up photos of lost loved ones. Passing me in the opposite direction was a woman who was hooked up to a respirator. Emergency personnel wheeled her away on a stretcher, while a companion walked alongside wearing a surgical mask.
Many mourners wore surgical masks. The odor of the smoldering ruins was strong and distinctive. After three hours I could feel something accumulating inside my throat. My imagination jumped ahead ten years. I wondered about the health risk to those who have been exposed daily to the toxins rising from ground zero. I thought about a photojournalist that I met who barely escaped the attack. He referred to his assignment that day as “a field trip into hell.” Maybe this is what hell smells like, I thought.
The Tyranny of Imagination
After walking several blocks to the Hudson River, we boarded a boat and headed back to the Pier. It would be about a thirty-minute ride. As we drifted away from ground zero I tried to wrap my mind around what I just came from. The idea of 15,000 mourners at a gravesite for thousands of murder victims in a location less than an hour from my home was hard to absorb.
I thought about the dozens of people I met in recent weeks who escaped and their surreal descriptions of the morning of 9/11, images and sensations that will never leave them: the odor of jet fuel; sweat-drenched firefighters in full gear climbing up stairs and urging everyone else to head down; women bursting from the buildings carrying shoes in hand in order to run faster; people jumping to their deaths rather than being burned alive; and frantic figures scattering from the site holding food trays overhead to avoid the blizzard of debris, running as fast as their legs would carry them past stretch limousines with assorted airplane parts jutting from the hoods.
One woman, an Empire BlueCross BlueShield employee, told me that when she exited the building the first thing she did was look up. Almost immediately she saw the second plane crash into tower two. She said that before she could run to safety she had to find another witness to confirm what she saw. “I thought I was going crazy, hallucinating,” she said. The horrifying images of those who escaped are rivaled only by the tyranny of imagination that now plagues the bereaved.
Weeks before the memorial service we had been receiving calls at the agency. There were calls from businesses, local government, the New York City Fire Department, and local schools and community groups.
We also received direct calls from people who escaped and families who lost loved ones. One call was from a parent whose eleven-year-old son Danny refused to eat. His father was missing. Through Danny’s story I learned about the tyranny of imagination. Danny imagined his father to be alive in his office in the World Trade Center and trapped, alone, and starving. If his father couldn’t eat, Danny reasoned, then he wouldn’t eat.
A Community Agency Responds
As the leading community-based children’s mental health center on Long Island we anticipated an avalanche of calls from individuals and institutions. We knew that how we organized our efforts would be critical. We also knew that there is no blueprint for the unprecedented.
How did we respond? On September 11th several top staff gathered to make a plan. First, any staff member directly affected by the attack was encouraged to do whatever they needed to do for themselves and their families. Second, staff members were directed to contact all agency clients to check in and make themselves available as needed. We knew about the potential effects of the disaster on persons with less exposure but significant risk factors such as prior unresolved trauma or loss. Third, the agency would extend its hours and days of operation. Fourth, we would make a list of staff willing to make themselves available for special assignments including responding to individual and family crises, providing consultations to schools, leading groups for surviving family members of deceased firefighters, and offering support to displaced employees who escaped and lost colleagues. This was how we started. Soon thereafter we addressed how to meet the ongoing needs of our own staff, soon to be steeped in the recovery effort.
Preparing for the Unprecedented
Within 24 hours of the terrorist attack there was a request from an employee assistance program. Professionals were needed to meet with court personnel in New York City. I was one of two who volunteered. The “debriefing,” as the EAP director called it, was to take place all day on Friday, September 14th. There were no further details or instructions.
I took down travel information, identified a contact person, and wondered what I would do when I got there. I figured that I would draw on my clinical, group work, and crisis intervention experience. Intuitively, I started reaching for frames of reference.
One of my assignments fifteen years ago was to meet with a group called Parents of Murdered Children (POMC). The lay leaders for the group, a bereaved husband and wife who lost their son, called the county executive’s office and said that the group was “stuck” and needed some assistance. I learned from that experience that trying to act smart was a big mistake. A colleague from another agency took a prescriptive stance, while I sat quietly. Being there, listening, and bearing witness was where it was at. In time I was accepted, enabling me to help the group to identify their need to do more than repeatedly tell their stories.
They expressed a need to take social action. I learned from them about secondary victimization at the hands of various bureaucracies. In time they moved their meeting place to the agency to accommodate their growing membership. They became effective advocates, influencing legislation and treatment of crime victims and their families. My experience with POMC also taught me about the value of moving from support to social action.
I remembered another group, a group of kids I once worked with from changing families. One prospective group member witnessed the murder of his mother at the hands of his father. Some of my colleagues didn’t think he should join the group. They reasoned that he would vicariously traumatize everyone else. In other words, he would freak out the other kids. I insisted that he be included. He did well in the group, spoke as freely as he chose to, and was readily accepted by the others. I learned from that experience to always err on the side of inclusiveness.
I remembered my part-time job as a crisis worker. The beeper would go off and soon I was in the emergency room or police station with little time to prepare. I learned from that experience that by assuming a stance of uncertainty and cultivating a part of my mind reserved for the unknown, I could cut myself some slack and learn from the inside out. After all, no one is an expert at another’s experience. Inside out, that’s the way to go.
How does one prepare for the unprecedented? Listening and bearing witness, offering groups to reduce isolation and foster social connection, and learning from the inside out. It was a start. After all, social workers always talk about learning by doing. This was as good a time as any to do just that. I had to rely on what I already knew and, most of all, be flexible. It was also important for me to say to myself, “I’m not in this alone.” Many would be spending time with individuals, families, and groups who are struggling with the aftershock of 9/11. We struggle ourselves. Emotionally no one has been spared.
Zero Degrees of Separation
So, three days after the attack I went to the Supreme Court to meet with court personnel. I met with three groups for about one-and-a-half hours each. Participation was voluntary.
The groups included individuals with missing relatives or friends, individuals with relatives or friends confirmed dead, individuals who were in the World Trade Center complex during the attack, individuals with family members who barely escaped, individuals who witnessed the attack and collapse of the Twin Towers from courthouse windows, and others who heard about it, like many of us on television, radio or through word of mouth. All were deeply affected. Most were in a state of disbelief. Following are my reflections on the day.
When I first arrived court officers confiscated my pocketknife. I learned that this is a new policy at the courthouse. Prior to the World Trade Center attack any blade less than four inches was okay.
I met with my contact person, gathered some information, and quickly suggested how to organize groups. Knowing something about planning groups was invaluable. There were three groups of 8 to 12 people. We met in a vacant courtroom. I arranged chairs around two long adjacent prosecution and defense tables. I asked that there be no observers.
While I was waiting for my first group a court officer stopped by and told me, “Today should be interesting.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “It’s foreclosure Friday.” He explained that every Friday they have an auction of foreclosed property and, typically, about two hundred Arab-Americans participate in the auction. This seemed to signal growing unease with people of Middle Eastern descent.
Although there were many differences among the participants, there was common ground in their struggle to cope. Many signs and symptoms of trauma and stress were reported. These included numbness, shock, headaches, loss of appetite, aches and pains, frequent trips to the bathroom, sleeplessness, flashbacks, disbelief, startle response to loud noises and especially airplanes, helplessness, gruesome nightmares, anger, uncertainty, guilt, and fear.
Fear was a powerful theme. Many felt that the courthouse was unsafe. During one group meeting a female court officer came in to search for explosives. We later learned that a bomb threat had been called in. She looked under chairs and desks and behind the elevated area where the judge sits. She never said a word. She just searched. Several group members nodded in agreement with one who said, “I feel like we are a target in this courthouse.”
Many group members reported having difficulty regulating and expressing emotions. In every group at least one or two people wept openly, women and men. In every group at least one person bolted from the room and then came back. More than one person said, “I can’t stop crying.” And more than one said, “I can’t cry.” More than a few were angry.
There was anger at the government. “How could they let this happen?” they wondered. There was strong sentiment among a few to strike back. There were some not-so-veiled signs of bias towards people of Middle Eastern descent.
Many shared feelings of disbelief, saying how surreal it all seems. One group member said, “I am in a semi-daze; I feel like I am not even here.”
Guilt was a powerful theme, especially guilt about going on with mundane day-to-day activities. This was balanced by the belief that showing strength and not giving in to terrorism was necessary. A court officer said he felt insignificant, like “a grain of sand.” He said he felt helpless and wondered if he was going crazy.
A group member who lamented, “Aren’t our children entitled to the life we enjoyed,” best expressed the loss of innocence.
Someone’s son escaped from the 78th floor. He took the stairs. His co-workers waited for the elevator. They didn’t survive. His mother through sobs retold the son’s story. When he emerged from the building, she told us, he witnessed flaming bodies falling from the sky. Two colleagues held her hands as she told the story.
In each group, members reached out to comfort one another through physical contact and understanding words. In one group a woman who said she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t cried, was brought to tears by another’s pain over a missing sister.
Despite the pain, all three groups welcomed humor. A court officer who loves to dance said he’d never dance again. Later, when the group was discussing ways to cope with stress, it was recommended that he teach the group how to dance. The image brought laughter and a momentary relief from tension.
In closing, participants said, “It was good to vent,” “It’s good to get it out,” “It’s good to know you’re not alone,” and “It’s good to know you’re not crazy.”
I was struck by the difference between what I was first told about these people and the reality. I had been advised that not too many people were personally affected. I discovered that everyone was profoundly affected. The experience generated empathic connections, fostered mutual support, reduced isolation, and normalized people’s responses and reactions to a surreal situation.
I remain deeply moved by the intensity of the experience and the participants’ ability to reach out to one another. It confirmed for me what I was already feeling. All of our lives are changed forever and to move forward we need each other. I knew that experiences like this, in groups, would be important for people in other settings and workplaces. And so I discovered a new frame of reference for the work ahead.
I discovered from this experience that the culture of people’s associations in the workplace and other settings had to accommodate to the disaster. I felt that in order for September 11th not to cause alienation, people needed permission and support to tell their stories and share ongoing difficulties and concerns. This would foster social connection, reduce alienation, and help people to cope with their reactions to the terrorist attack and anxiety associated with war in Afghanistan and domestic threats such as bio-terrorism. My experience in the courthouse helped me to understand in a deeper way that trauma isolates and atrophies otherwise healthy relationships, preventing them from growing.
Taking Care of Ourselves
The leadership of the agency created various opportunities for the staff and board of directors to tell their stories and share concerns. It required thinking “out of the box.” At the October board meeting, in which the traditional yearly strategic planning agenda was abandoned, board members and administrative staff debriefed and defused. After the meeting a past president of the agency described the experience as a “defining moment for the organization.” It galvanized the board’s commitment at a critical time, stimulated a course of action for supporting the development of our trauma and bereavement services, and strengthened the bond between board and staff.
Debriefing and defusing is only the beginning. We are learning from one another that the lessons we will offer to the traumatized for coping with the disaster also apply to us. In time we would learn about “vicarious PTSD” and “compassion fatigue,” and “secondary traumatic stress disorder,” fancy terms for our own vulnerability from too much caring and too little self-caring. Eating well, exercising, going easy on caffeine, getting sufficient rest, and…well, everything we advise to others now applies to us. We’re really all in this one together.
Parade of Grief
On the boat ride back to the Pier it was more comforting thinking about the pride of being associated with a committed organization and dedicated colleagues than being tormented by what brought me there in the first place.
As the pier came into view I knew that many families would soon be arriving to collect urns with ashes from ground zero. Each family would also be given an American Flag. If the deceased were a veteran, families would receive a special plaque acknowledging their service to the United States. And a few would get the rest of my father’s handkerchiefs.
My job was to accompany families to any one of dozens of booths occupied by Red Cross workers. As each family approached a booth, a Red Cross worker would recite a few well-rehearsed lines of condolence and then hand them a single urn and flag.
After they collected urns and flags, I accompanied families to a communal area where they could have a bite to eat. If people needed to talk there was an informal spot with comfortable chairs and couches. Most did not choose this option.
Two sisters asked me if they could go to the photo wall where family members posted thousands of snapshots of the missing. They said they wanted to write something on their brother’s photo. I escorted them to a wall that was bordered on the base by hundreds of teddy bears that were placed there by family members of those who died. There were lots of teddy bears at the Pier. There were also therapy dogs on hand. These gentle creatures were sprinkled about, offering their intuitive gifts to comfort the children, and grown ups too.
Many of my colleagues had been in this place weeks before, staffing what was known as Children’s Corner, spending time with the children while their parents presented DNA samples or applied for death certificates. A family assistance center was also set up on Long Island, to offer a more convenient setting for the thousands of surviving family members living in the suburbs just east of New York City.
Photos and intimately detailed descriptions lined the walls inside and outside of the Pier. They were also posted on buildings and makeshift walls that surrounded ground zero and in various other locations throughout the city. Loved ones described ankle bracelets with nameplates, dimples on elbows, and birthmarks of various shapes and sizes. And there were love poems and pleas for help in finding the missing. Following is a handwritten page I saw posted in Penn Station:
Ray Valdez, age 39, wearing khaki pants, navy blue long sleeved shirt “My brother arrived at work at 8:30 on September 11. His building was hit soon after. He called home on a borrowed cell. He left this message: ‘Liz it’s me, Ray. My building has been hit. I made it to the 78th floor. I’m okay but will remain here to help evacuate people. See you soon.’ Those were my brother’s last words. We have physically searched every hospital on the list provided to us. He was always the type to help one in need. If anyone has seen Raymond please call. God Bless.”
I offered an older couple, who lost a daughter in the disaster, a bag for the urn and flag. Macys had provided paper shopping bags with handles. Macy’s bags will never look the same to me. As I helped them with the bag, I saw the tears in their eyes. I was a little surprised when the gentleman said how well taken care of he felt.
In a conversation with three brothers a little while later, they shared a slightly different sentiment. The brothers ranged in age from mid-twenties to early thirties. They told me that their brother, a firefighter, left no wife or child behind and that both of their parents were deceased. They wanted to know why they couldn’t have three urns, one for each brother. They were also angry about the lack of benefits provided by the fire department. “Just because he didn’t leave a wife or children behind, it’s as if he doesn’t count,” said the eldest. The brothers signaled something that was coming, something that would replace the warm feeling associated with the abundance of good will generated in the aftermath of this disaster. Coming are disillusionment, frustration, anger, and feeling overwhelmed with the inevitable bureaucratic nightmare of red tape.
Reconstruction, Recovery, and Reaching Out
Seven years later survivors of the Oklahoma City terrorist attack continue to struggle. Many are still in counseling and some, particularly rescue workers, have only just begun. Marriages have ended, custody of children has been lost due to new addictions that have developed, and there have been more than a handful of suicides related to the 1994 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. There are also signs of getting through the trauma. An important part of recovery and reconstruction is taking some action that represents triumph over helplessness and despair. We learned about this first hand.
One of the services offered by the agency in the aftermath of 9/11 are bereavement groups for children who lost parents in the World Trade Center. One group worker made contact with an Oklahoma organization to exchange information and experiences in order to prepare for the work ahead. One day a large box arrived in the mail. It was addressed to the children in the bereavement groups. It came from a group of elementary school children in Oklahoma City.
Inside the box were 55 teddy bears. A laminated card bordered by American flags was hanging from string around each teddybear’s neck. Each card contained a message written by an Oklahoma City child to a child from New York. One of the cards said,
“Dear New York, I am very sorry about the plane crash. And I am very sorry if someone special to you died in it.”
Accompanying each Teddy Bear was a plastic bag with several items inside and a note explaining their significance. “To the families and friends of the lost:
A candle to remind you of the light they brought to your lives;
A (chocolate) kiss to remind you of the love they continue to send;
A flag to remind you that America will never forget.
A postcard for when you need to reach out;
We promise to be here.”
Everything feels different to me now. I remember a conversation I had many years ago with two parents whose son had been murdered. The father said, “It’s six years since our twenty year old son was stabbed to death in his own home in the middle of a sunny afternoon. The pain of our loss is still sharp and tears are never far from the surface.”
Many years from now when September 11th is remembered as a national day of loss, I’m sure I’ll think back and try to recall what things felt like before that sunny summer morning.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Andrew Malekoff, MSW, is executive director/CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, Roslyn Heights, NY and editor of Social Work with Groups.
This article was first published in a special issue of the Journal, “Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping,” Volume 8, Number 3, Summer, 2002, pages 28-35. This special issue of the Journal is devoted to professional helpers responses to 9/11 and was co-edited by Andrew Malekoff and Alex Gitterman. Published by California State University at Long Beach.
This article was also posted on the web on The Social Welfare History Project: http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/recollections/the-longest-day/
with the permission of the author.
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