After 9/11, gratitude against the odds

Paula Clifford Scott retained her optimism despite losses

For many, Sept. 11 is becoming just another day. Yes, there is a pause at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m., when the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York on that perfect autumn day in 2001.  There are ceremonies to commemorate what we went through. But the country has, for the most part, moved on. America made so many mistakes in the wake of the attacks that people may simply not want to think about it.  

So during this week, I focus more on the personal, not the disheartening political reality. I remember Paula Clifford-Scott, a woman who experienced almost unimaginable loss, and yet,  helped my then-eighth-grade daughter and her class find a way forward.  

Paula lived in New London, Conn., the city where I worked on the editorial page of The Day, a midsized daily newspaper.  She was impossible not to like. She was a native of Ireland, looked years younger than her age of about 70 and always seemed to sparkle. Even her recorded message with its lilting Irish brogue on her answering machine (remember those?) ended with, “Have a grateful day.” Paula lived in New London with her daughter Ruth  McCourt, Ruth’s husband, David, and their beautiful daughter, Juliana, then 4. 

When the blue morning sky shattered with smoke and flames from the first, then the second plane to hit the Twin Towers, I watched TV in the editorial page offices with disbelief.  Within seconds my phone began to ring off the hook. About 40 minutes after the second plane hit the South Tower, my sister Claudia called to tell me there had been an explosion at the Pentagon, not far from where she worked in Alexandria, Va. She beat the Associated Press with the news.   

The message on Paula’s answering machine always ended with, ‘Have a grateful day.’

Then I got a phone call about Ruth. She and Juliana were on board United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane to hit the tower. They had been on their way to Disneyland in California. Paula, perhaps with a mother’s instinct, knew that her daughter and granddaughter were gone the moment she saw the disaster unfolding in New York.  

Meantime, my daughter Anna, in eighth grade, knew something was wrong when science class was over, but the classes didn’t change. The students just sat. The few who then had cell phones began to get text messages about something terrible happening in New York. The teachers didn’t know what to do. Finally, the elementary school hustled the eighth graders into the library, where they spent the rest of the day. The school brought in a television so the students, along with the rest of America, could watch the incomprehensible events, over and over again.   

Paula Clifford Scott and me, during our last visit

In the blur of the days that followed, Paula was, somehow, a model of strength, compassion, and, implausibly, faith.  And, upon hearing that Anna and her friend Susie had questions that few adults knew how to answer, Paula invited the girls, Susie’s mother, Gail, and me to her condo for tea. Paula told the girls that they couldn’t let these awful acts shake them up. She told them they had to have faith. That she knew that the darkness wouldn’t triumph forever. She displayed optimism against all reason.   

Later, the eighth-grade class invited Paula to their graduation. The students introduced her to parents who hadn’t met her yet. The crowd gave her a standing ovation.   

Paula and I stayed in touch. She helped start a memorial garden in honor of all the people from Southeastern Connecticut who died in 9/11, not just Ruth and Juliana. I attended 9/11 memorials with her. She attended parties at my house. Every year on 9/11 I called her. But over the years I saw her less.   

Last year I visited Paula at the nursing home in which she lived. She was near 90. We talked and laughed. She was, from time to time, “chasing the fairies,” as my Irish relatives call mild dementia. But she still retained her extraordinary lightness of being. When she died this past January, I knew she was with Ruth once again and her beloved Juliana.  

There is no quantifying some losses. Our country made mistake after mistake in the wake of 9/11, spending trillions and losing thousands of service members by taking reactionary military actions that seem, in retrospect, to have compounded rather than solved problems. Adversity could have made us a better country, but it didn’t. Now we have more division than ever and more threats to democracy from within our own country than terrorism without.  

Yet when I get discouraged, I think of Paula, her courage, and her determination to ease the fears of 13-year-olds despite her own grief.  

During my last visit with her, I’m not certain that Paula could quite place who I was. But I knew who she was, especially toward the end. That’s when, with a wink and a smile, she told me she was grateful.