September 11, 2011
Ten years ago today, Moira Smith, a 13th Precinct NYPD Officer on September 11th, died while saving others in the pyre that on that Tuesday was the World Trade Center. Brooklyn born, Irish Catholic bred, she was 38, an active and cheerful woman, who, five years before had run with the bulls in Spain with Jim Smith – her then boyfriend, and later her husband. She’d consciously tempted fate then and had before. In 1991, she’d confronted destiny head on while rescuing victims of a Union Square subway crash, and for her bravery Moira earned the NYPD’s Distinguished Duty Medal. She ran her races well, with strength and exceptional courage. On 9/11 Moira Smith ran in and out of the south Tower saving others. This time, though, she ran headlong and without hesitation into her heroic end. Moira A. Smith was the only woman of 23 NYPD officers to die that day.
She left behind many who loved her, her husband Jim, and her beloved daughter, Patricia Mary, just two years old on 9/11. As Michael Daly writes below, mother and daughter today, ten years on, bespeak “the opposing tides of the receding past and the onrushing future.” What a beautiful story he tells . . .
New York Daily News, by Michael Daly, August 19, 2011:
“When you remember Moira, you hold onto what is most dear
New York City Police Officer Moira Smith – the only female officer among the 23 NYPD cops who died on 9/11 – led stunned and bleeding people from the twin towers – only to run back in and perish with so many other heroes in the effort to rescue more. Her daughter Patricia Smith was two years old when her mother died. Now 12 she said, “To everyone, it’s been 10 years. It seems like five.”
“From two to 12.”
Patricia Smith was using her age to measure the passage of time since 9/11 and the murder of her uncommonly heroic mother. “To everyone, it’s been 10 years,” observed the daughter of Police Officer Moira Smith. “It seems like five.”
That was surprising coming from a 12-year-old, for it had been virtually her whole life since that day her mother led stunned and bleeding people from the twin towers – only to run back in and perish with so many other heroes in the effort to rescue more. I had last seen Patricia when she was 2, striding across the stage at Carnegie Hall with her father at the NYPD’s medal ceremony after 9/11. She was wearing a red velvet dress and shiny black shoes as she received the posthumous Medal of Honor on her mother’s behalf. The eight-pointed star was on an emerald green ribbon. My clearest memory is that she was so small it hung just above her knees.
Now, she sat with her father at the Il Vagabondo restaurant in Manhattan, nearly a teen, wearing a light blue V-neck T-shirt, a smart phone seemingly attached to her hand. A blue bracelet on her wrist might have been mistaken as a tween fashion accessory were it not for the inscription: “P.O. Moira Smith 9/11 Never Forget.” Not that she and her father, retired cop Jim Smith, ever would or could forget. When you remember Moira you hold onto what is most dear in the opposing tides of the receding past and the onrushing future. Never forgetting can indeed make 10 years feel like five, even when they extend back to the very start of your memories. Each of those years was marked by a solemn anniversary observance at Ground Zero, reminding Patricia of the lives her mother saved there. “It’s just good to be there and see what effect my mom had on people,” Patricia said.
On the wall above where Patricia sat was a framed photograph taken in this same restaurant of Moira holding her when she was not yet 1. Moira and Jim had made a tradition of coming to this Italian spot on St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate being Irish in the particular way of a couple who loved each other’s company best of all. “Eat Italian food, play bocce,” Jim said. The photo was taken on St. Patrick’s Day of 2000, the first after Patricia’s arrival had made the perfect pair a family of three. Moira beams with the excitement of all that seemed sure to come. That was also what she knew she stood to lose in the burning south tower a year later.