For perfect attendance, the prize is pain

[KG]

When her husband died on Sept. 11, Beverly Eckert needed to find out why. But with every detail the commission extracts, peace slips further away.
By VANESSA GEZARI
Published June 28, 2004

STAMFORD, Conn. - In a brown leather binder in Beverly Eckert's dining room, there's a tattered notebook and a picture that reminds her why papers are piling up on her dining room chairs, why she's spent so many days in crowded hearing rooms in New York and Washington, scribbling urgent notes.

Eckert's husband, Sean Rooney, worked on the 98th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower. Like many relatives of Sept. 11 victims, she became an activist.

Over the past 15 months, she attended every hearing of the 9/11 commission, the panel set up to evaluate the country's vulnerabilities and response to the attacks, carrying her husband's photograph in one of two leather binders stuffed with papers and notes.

The commission has probed everything from the workings of intelligence agencies to the safety of airplanes and buildings. The hearings frustrated and angered Eckert. They answered questions and spawned new ones, yielding a partial knowledge that is sometimes worse than nothing, the way a dim light deepens the shadows in a dark room.

The information "becomes oppressive," she says. "It illuminates how dysfunctional our systems are. You open one door and there's more behind it. There's nothing comforting about exposing the flaws, because Washington's a long way from endorsing corrective measures."

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[Solly Mack]

1. This quote

"There's nothing comforting about exposing the flaws, because Washington's a long way from endorsing corrective measures."

Says it all...and not just about September 11 either