Remembering Garden City's many 9/11 losses: 'My life was never the same'

Jonathan Neff Cappello's name has been carried into an Iraq combat zone. It survives in the names of nieces and nephews he never met.

A Long Island lacrosse award bears the name of David Leistman, a Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader who had starred in the sport at Adelphi University.

More than 200 high school seniors bought new laptops, thanks to a fund honoring Australia-born computer scientist Stephen K. Tompsett.

Tributes, scholarships and a stone memorial on the Village Green are among the ways Garden City honors the three men and 20 other people with ties to the village who were killed 25 years ago with thousands of others when a pair of hijacked planes struck their workplace, the World Trade Center, on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the quarter-century since, many in the village of about 23,000 people have found solace in charitable work and quiet remembrances of loved ones who went to work that day and never came home.

But the scale of the loss remains unimaginable for some. A pastor in the village said trade center workers who escaped the towers still ask themselves why they survived when so many did not.

“The sheer number of our residents who perished is one of the things that makes it very difficult to forget,” said Garden City Mayor Edward Finneran, who on 9/11 worked for Merrill Lynch in a building near the Twin Towers and watched as they collapsed. “And I think [it's] very difficult to see how it would fade in people's memories.”

Outwardly, the village seems little changed by the tragedy. Children have grown, parents have become grandparents and workers have retired in the 25 years since.

But this time of year, things are different. Garden City residents know that when the calendar turns to September, memories of 9/11 are lurking.

For families and friends of victims, the loss is ever present.

“My life was never the same," said Cappello's mother, Claudia Cappello, 78, who still lives in the village with her husband, Robert. “Something like this, it changes you."

A loss so great

Garden City was among the Long Island communities that suffered the most losses that day, but the village is far from alone in its grief. About 500 Long Islanders died in the terrorist attacks, including about 350 from Nassau County, about 200 of whom came from Hempstead Town. Long Island's 9/11 diaspora stretched from Port Washington and Valley Stream and as far east as Sag Harbor and Greenport.

The Village Green memorial lists 23 people linked to Garden City who died in the attacks. Some had moved away and were living elsewhere when they were killed.

The village fire department will hold a ceremony at the memorial at 7 p.m. Friday. This year, it will include the Garden City High School choir — teens born after the attacks.

“It is important for us who went through it … either directly or indirectly, to educate them so this is not just a passage in a book at school,” said Garden City Fire Department Chief Jonathan Parrella, 52, who was a Hempstead firefighter 25 years ago.

Those who died reflected the affluence of the village, a wealthy enclave where corporate executives and their families live in Gothic Revival homes and typically are members of one of the village's three country clubs. Median income in Garden City two years ago was $244,152, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Aside from Durrell Pearsall, 38, a New York City firefighter, the village's Sept. 11 victims worked for one of the prestigious financial institutions and insurance brokerages — Aon Corp., Instinet, Marsh & McLennan, Cantor Fitzgerald, Sandler O'Neill and others — that occupied the World Trade Center's upper stories and collectively lost hundreds of workers.

Garden City victims ranged in age from 23 to 63. All but one were men.

“Folks were going over to homes of people that they knew hadn't been heard from,” Finneran said. “Most came home, but of course you know a good number did not.”

The loss was so great that a seemingly continuous line of funeral entourages moved through the village in the months after 9/11.

Now, some residents struggle with a question posed by the passage of time, said the Rev. Maria Francesca French, senior minister of Garden City Community Church: When is it OK to stop grieving?

Her Protestant congregation includes Twin Towers workers and first responders who experience survivor's guilt, she said. One man was reluctant to take part in the church's upcoming Sept. 11 memorial service for fear of being retraumatized.

“People want to turn the page, but they don’t know how to do so while being respectful and not feeling guilty," said French, who was an 18-year-old East Islip college student in 2001. "It’s almost like we don’t have the language for it."

“I think the conversation is like, how is the grief showing up 25 years later? How it is being reshaped? How is it transforming us and the way that we live?” the pastor said. “It’s a very triggering time for people, for sure.”

Giving back

Many have found comfort in giving back to others.

Some Garden City victims' families established scholarship funds at colleges in Connecticut, Massachusetts and North Carolina.

The family of Tompsett, 39, an Instinet executive, has helped about 250 students interested in pursuing careers in science and technology.

“I still run into parents whose kids won the awards,” said Tompsett's sister-in-law, Geralyn Groh-Szuba. The fund gave out tens of thousands of dollars to students before ending in 2022, she said.

A dozen Fairfield University students benefited from a scholarship named for Cappello, a spokesperson for the Connecticut school said. Cappello graduated from Fairfield in 2000, a year before taking a job at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he was a trader in training.

At Fairfield, Cappello had befriended Brian Connelly, a fellow freshman from Stratford, Connecticut.

Months after his friend's death, Connelly joined the Army. In 2004, while serving in the Iraq War, Connelly inscribed Cappello's initials and "9/11/2001" inside his Humvee. Later, he carried a Mass card from Cappello's memorial service.

“I can’t disconnect my life as it is now — it’s impossible to disconnect that from the loss of Jonathan,” said Connelly, who retired two years ago as a lieutenant colonel and who now lives in Auburn, Alabama, where he works for a software company.

“It takes a special person to have that level of impact to make a person say, ‘I’m going to join the Army now.’ ”

Leistman played a “crucial” role in securing Adelphi's first two national lacrosse championships in 1979 and 1981, the school website states. He was, the website states, “one of the greatest players in Panther lacrosse history.”

Leistman, who was 43 when he was killed, is "never out of mind," his brother Donald said.

“Unfortunately, it's just a memory,” Donald Leistman said. “ ... I think 25 years just magnifies the amount of time, unfortunately, that I've been without my brother and that all of these people have been gone.”

Cappello's memorial service was held on what would have been his 24th birthday: Sept. 29, 2001. He left his parents and two older brothers, Robert Jr. and Jamey.

In the years since, Robert Jr. and Jamey gave their children middle names in their brother's honor. Jonathan for the boys, Neff for the girls.

Claudia Cappello said her grandchildren may have saved her life. “Trust me, they all know about him," she said. "They know everything there is to know about this young man.”

There is some solace in being surrounded by memories of her son, she said. And when the pain becomes unbearable, Jonathan seems to appear at her side.

“I can feel him,” Claudia Cappello said. “There are days when I can feel him so much that I can’t explain it.”