Every Loss Deeply Felt in Tiny New Jersey Commuter Towns

RUMSON, N.J. —  Dusty cars sit abandoned in the parking lot near the Highlands Ferry terminal overlooking the New York Harbor, waiting for their commuting owners to return from the World Trade Center and take them home.

Home for one of the score of vehicles is Rumson, a tiny, upscale borough that lies about 50 miles south of Manhattan and is filled with bond traders and stock market executives.

Another should be parked in a driveway in neighboring Fair Haven, where some of the town’s 5,900 residents live in homes that were built about the time Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Others belong in the bucolic suburban hamlets scattered across New Jersey’s rolling green hills.

Though the world’s attention is focused on the vast destruction in lower Manhattan, there is an intense and disproportionate loss felt in these Main Street towns that have lured tens of thousands of blue- and white-collar families. They are facing commutes to Manhattan today with a sense that their safe worlds have been shaken.

The number missing from these towns--four in Rumson, four in Fair Haven, three in Little Silver, as many as 10 in Red Bank--may be small in comparison to the thousands still unaccounted for, but the close-knit nature of these towns has meant that even these small losses have left gaping holes and a sense of violation within their communities.

“Our way of life changed,” said Fair Haven Mayor Bill Leonard. “How long that will last, I don’t know.”

Four towns--Fair Haven, Red Bank, Rumson and Little Silver--are huddled together on an 11-square-mile slice of land. Bus drivers and train conductors call the area home. So do a few New York cabbies, who were eager to buy more backyard on their salaries.

But most of their inhabitants work in the financial world, often for companies that were hardest hit in Tuesday’s terrorist attack, companies such as Cantor Fitzgerald, a bond broker that acts as a middleman to Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and other investment firms. Cantor still cannot find 700 of its 1,000 employees who worked at the World Trade Center.

Their families in New Jersey are waiting too. Here, the Cantor numbers have names, such as Rumson’s Michael J. McCabe, 42, who coached Little League; Holmdel’s Michael LaForte, 39, whose birthday was Tuesday and whose wife is eight months pregnant; and Red Bank’s Rosanne Lang, 42, who preferred weekend barbecues with her 11 siblings to Manhattan club-hopping.

More than 2,000 people from these towns gathered Friday night in a grassy field to mourn their loss. Although one of the smaller gatherings in the region, it was an enormous outpouring for towns whose populations are well under 10,000. For these people, the candlelight vigil felt like millions gathered at the Reflecting Pool in Washington.

Kids ran through the park, singing, skipping, lighting candles and dripping the warm wax on their cool fingers. The grown-ups walked a bit slower, holding hands with neighbors, hugging friends and strangers.

They lit candles with Rumson’s rabbi. They prayed with Fair Haven’s Catholic priest. They listened to pleas for hope and strength and unity and faith from Leonard, the Fair Haven mayor, who listed the missing.

Edmund McNally . . . James Martello . . . Edward Luckett.

“And Mike McCabe,” shouted John Keating of Fair Haven. “Don’t forget Mike.”

Keating rode the ferry to work daily with McCabe, a friend since childhood. McCabe was dreading his first ferry ride back to work: “These are going to be the seats where my buddies were sitting, and it’ll be tough.”

Each loss is personal. Fair Haven Police Chief Rick Towler wrote letters to every local family whose loved ones haven’t returned, offering condolences and support.

“We’re looking at them as still missing,” Towler said. “We’ll give up hope when they clear the last bit of rubble. Then, it’s over. Not before.”

Officer John Koetzner, 24, who joined the force just a few weeks ago, slipped some of the notes into his back pocket Saturday. The sun hung low and warm in the western sky, as Koetzner got into his cruiser and delivered the department’s message.

Four times, he knocked on a door. Four times, he listened to people he knows weep in grief. People cried so often on his shoulder, his jacket was still wrinkled when he returned to the station.

Walking into the lobby, Koetzner nodded to his supervisor.

“You OK?” asked Sgt. Michael Tallarico, studying the young recruit.

Koetzner stared at this boss. “That was rough. Really, really rough.”

Behind them, the TV played an interview with a woman who lives one town away; she was holding a picture of her father, who worked in the World Trade Center. Jessica Boyd, the police dispatcher, burst into tears: The woman on TV is her best friend.

The police radio crackled with static, nearly muffling her sobs.

“People here still leave keys in their cars and their doors open at night,” Tallarico said. “We’re Wall Street towns with Mayberry souls.”

A sign at the edge of Fair Haven greets people to “Tree City USA,” a nod to the forest of trees that cools the town’s many Colonial houses. Violent crime is rare in this town between the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers.

“The last time we had a murder was in 1968, when a brother killed his sister,” said Towler of the Fair Haven Police Department. “We had a suicide back in 1972, but that doesn’t really count. She was from Ohio.”

Beyond the disbelief and grief, the tragedy has caused a crisis of faith.

“People don’t want to talk, but they have to,” said Pastor John Monroe, of the Church of the Nativity in Fair Haven. “I keep telling people, ‘This isn’t God picking on us.’ People aren’t happy with that answer.”

Part of the problem is the guilt survivors feel, say local ministers.

Craig Cummings is one of the few Rumson residents with good news. An institutional equity trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, he normally would have been on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower. But he was scheduled to play golf with two clients that morning--perhaps sparing the life of the father of four.

Cummings began working at Cantor on Feb. 26, 1993--the day the center was first attacked. He had left the building before the bomb blast.

Cummings and his wife, Mary, are thankful for their good fortune. But their emotions are conflicted because several good friends from Rumson did not survive.

“While I am super happy for my children and my wife, there is no rejoicing going on,” Cummings said.

After all, Cummings must explain to his children why about 5,000 people--roughly the population of their entire town--are probably dead. He’s not alone.

“My child asked me, ‘Why do these people hate us so much?’ ” said Barbara Russell, owner of the popular Rumson restaurant What’s Your Beef. She tried to keep her answer simple. There are bad people in this world, she said, and it doesn’t matter to what God they pray or the color of their skin. “I don’t really have a good answer,” Russell said.

Nor can anyone erase the fear of returning to work today, and the dread of facing the destruction of less than a week ago.

This morning, as they make their way north, they will drive past an altar in Red Bank dedicated to the missing. Locals have gathered there every day, drifting by the sloping patch of grass overlooking the Navesink River. Candle wax covers the gray sidewalk in reds and blues, a colorful glue for the notes folks have left.

“Please pray for David and his family.”

“Dear Delores, we will miss you. Love, Richard and Sharon.”

No one bothers to write down last names. Everyone in town knows who the notes are for.