 September 14, 2001
When Liam Callahan, 44, of Rockaway, N.J., a member of the Port Authority's emergency rescue unit, was summoned to the World Trade Center, he called his wife, Joan, to ask about their children, who were on their way to school.
"I said, "Whoever gets home first, start dinner,'” Joan Callahan said. "It was like a regular day in my life.”
She has not seen her husband, who was on the "short swing,” a shorter day shift on the end of a two-day shift, since Monday. Right after the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center, Callahan called her husband's station, but his team had already been dispatched to the scene.
"I knew at that point there was no talking to him,” she said.
Callahan described her husband, a 20-year veteran with the Port Authority, as a man who loved his job. He immediately signed up for the agency's emergency rescue unit when it was created a few years ago.
"His job was very dangerous that day,” she said of Tuesday's disaster. "Other days it wasn't so dangerous, but that day it was.”
Callahan continues to hope her husband will be found. The recent recovery of several firefighters has given her "renewed optimism.”
"Don't talk about us in the past tense yet,” she said. "We're very much alive.”
The Callahans have four children: Brian, 17, Bridget, 14, Ellen, 13, and James, 11.
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Added by: Anonymous
10/29/2001
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