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OUR
SON WORKED ON THE 105th FLOOR
By Hans Gerhardt At 8:48 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, our son Ralph called on his cellphone from New York. “Hi dad,” his message began. “Something just happened at the World Trade Center. We either got hit by a bomb or plane. I am OK. We are OK. I love you, but I have to go now. We are evacuating. Call you later.” My wife,
Helga, and I turned on our television. We saw smoke billowing from the
first tower. Ralph worked for Cantor Fitzgerald Securities. His office
was on the 105th floor. We tried calling him, but his cellphone was busy. It would be like Ralph to pass his phone to others, so
they could call their loved ones. Ralph never called back, and we never
saw him again. Ralph was 34 years old. He called nearly every day and with every call he said, “I love you.” I imagined him during the Olympic hockey tournament in Salt Lake City last winter, then the NHL playoffs, and the World Cup of soccer. I imagined the Canadian and German flags outside his windows at 26th and Lexington, and the Canadian and German beers, and Ralph ribbing his American buddies, saying, “We are going to beat you tonight!” His older brother, Stephan, delivered a eulogy for Ralph at a special ceremony in Washington, D.C. Stephan said of his brother Ralph, “He lived to live!”
A year later? So far we have raised more than $70,000 for the Ralph Gerhardt Trust Fund, which has been disbursed to set up a “Student of the Year” award in Ralph’s name at Don Mills Collegiate in Toronto, also a “Ralph Gerhardt Company of the Year” award for Canada’s Junior Achievers. Ralph was a 1987 Junior Achievement winner. Variety Village in Toronto has established a “Ralph Gerhardt Adventure Club,” which funds two or three annual adventures, taking young handicapped people on canoe trips and fishing derbies. Helga and I will be in New York to attend memorial services for September 11. One can’t thank the American people, our great neighbours, enough for their kindness and compassion shown to our family. And this goes in particular to NYPD’s PC John Trimmer and his family for all the things they did for our family and Linda Luzzicone’s family – on and off duty. We will be eternally grateful for that. We as a family always treasured our relationships with friends and colleagues – in Canada, the United States, Germany and Sweden -- but we were not aware as to how many friends’ lives we really touched until 9/11, giving us such strength and hope in these difficult moments. We will miss
this kid who brought us and the many people he touched so much joy. We
have been lucky to have been able to share his young 34 years with him.
And we hope that his memory will live on.
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He
was my best fishing partner. He fixed things, as he liked to say, that
“dad couldn’t.” He’d go off with me for one-on-one vacations, as he did
with his mother, once taking her in style to Cape Cod for a one-on-one
on Mother’s Day.