The Woman Who Wasn't There Page #3

MARTA FORN:
[SPEAKING IN

SPANISH]

MARTA FORN:
[SPEAKING IN

SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

She was in love with American

people and the United States.

[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

ALISON CROWTHER:
Okay, come on.

Come on.

You're a good boy.

Yes, you are a good boy, and you

love your cookies,

and it shows.

Bang.

Okay.

That's not totally dead, but.

(Laughs)

Well, he's been wearing a red

bandanna

since we've had him, really.

When we lost Welles, we put it

on him,

and he's always wear, worn, worn

one.

Yes, you have. Yes, you have.

You're a good boy.

I first heard the name Tania

Head

when a friend of ours who we'd

gotten to know,

a very lovely woman who

volunteers down at Ground Zero,

called me and said, "Alison, I

think I've,

I've, I've, I've met someone,

I've heard of someone else who

Welles saved.

This woman at Ground Zero was

leading the tour,

and she started sharing a story

about how

the Man in the Red Bandanna

saved her.

I said, "Oh, oh, that's

wonderful.

You know, we would love to, to

meet her."

BRENDAN:
Tania, I remember the

first time we talked about it.

I asked her, "Do you know that

guy with the red bandanna

that they were talking about?"

And she said, "Yeah, he saved my

life."

ALISON CROWTHER:
And then she

came to me, and she said,

"Well, she's a little reluctant

to meet with you.

She's had some unfortunate

experiences with other families

being very angry that she

survived

and their loved ones didn't,

and she would like to meet with

you but very privately.

It has to be very privately."

I said, "Well, fine." You know,

"We'll meet.

We're members of the Princeton

Club and have dinner there."

She seemed very grateful, and we

were, you know, very pleased.

It was a beautiful thing.

We were, we were very moved that

she, she'd been saved,

and, and obviously, it meant so

much to her.

TANIA HEAD:
I find that family

members

of people who were killed, they

wanna know what happened,

but I just, I just don't wanna

put those images

into their, their heads.

They don't, they don't, they

don't have to know.

They don't have to know how

their loved ones died.

I think it's, it's better if, if

they just don't know

because I saw so much suffering

on that floor to the,

to the degree where it's just,

it's just something that I,

I don't wanna share with anyone.

I'm just kind of been keeping it

to myself.

It's, it's a secret that you

carry with you, it's, and,

and it becomes a burden because

you can't really share

with a lot of people out there.

Who, who wants to, who wants to

talk about body parts

and blood and carnage?

There's nobod...

there's not that many people you

can talk to about that.

[MUSIC]

LINDA:
My head was covered.

But when the second plane

crashed,

I had to run for my life.

[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

LINDA:
Okay, this was tower

number two, the South Tower,

the second tower to get hit.

They were 110 stories each.

They were so tall that sometimes

the people

who came into work that worked

on the upper floors

looked down at the clouds.

This is one of the most

important things that I do

with my life.

I'm a survivor from September

11th,

and I finally found a purpose.

I know why I'm here,

and it's to talk to people like

you that come

and wanna hear our stories.

So, that's very important to me.

This is Tania.

Tania's also a survivor.

She's also Spanish speaking.

So, she has offered to help.

TANIA HEAD:
[SPEAKING IN

SPANISH]

LINDA:
Okay.

She's also a survivor,

and she's also one of my best

friends.

I met Tania...

BRENDAN:
Tania and Linda were

like sisters.

They just, every time we had any

kind of event,

whether it was, you know, like

an official meeting

or any time we went out

socially,

those two were always together.

LINDA:
Let's show him what

regular people

at the U.S. Open do.

You ready?

TANIA HEAD:
Yeah.

LINDA:
Let's show him now what

survivors

do when they go to the U.S.

Open.

TANIA HEAD:
Checking out for

planes

taking off from LaGuardia.

LINDA:
We're watching the planes

take off from LaGuardia.

[Laughter]

MALE PRODUCER That's good.

[Laughter]

LINDA:
Tania taught me how to

live life with grace,

with courage, with the strength

to overcome, to me,

some of the scariest things that

I've ever faced

in my entire life.

[MUSIC]

LINDA:
I don't wanna live my

life based on

what happened to me.

I wanna live my life like

Tania's living her life,

like going out and helping other

people and doing something good

with my really horrible

experience.

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

ALISON CROWTHER:
We had a very

beautiful bronze sculpture

of a phoenix bird rising from

the World Trade Center

with our message that, you know,

good will prevail,

that, that good will rise from

the ashes like the phoenix

and prevail.

So, we were dedicating that

sculpture at church,

and we invited Tania to come.

MALE IN WHITE SHIRT: Tania was

on that 78th Floor sky lobby,

and she's here with us today,

thank God,

and I'm gonna ask her now if she

would speak a little for you.

[Applause]

LINDA:
I remember when we got to

his service,

Tania was a nervous wreck.

She couldn't get up.

She couldn't read the piece, and

she had asked me to read it.

When Alison and Jeff asked me to

speak today,

I sat down staring at a blank

screen, and I cried,

unable to find the words, the

right words to say.

What exactly do you say to the

family of the man

who saved your life and gave his

in the process?

Welles was my hero, too, because

he saved Tania.

And I found myself flying

through the air

and I eventually crashed against

the marble wall.

ALISON CROWTHER:
It was all part

of this beautiful service

that was filled with love and

hope and just,

we were so moved, really moved.

LINDA:
Hey, Welles, I'm

prepared.

[Applause]

ALISON CROWTHER:
I was almost

paralyzed.

The things they were saying

about our son, Welles,

were so beautiful and so

powerful,

and they said over and over

again,

"You have no idea, truly, what

your son faced."

We believe that good, that the

good of the human spirit is

far more powerful than the evil

that happened that day.

TANIA HEAD:
Now that Dave is

gone,

because we were gonna have that

wedding on October 12,

we never really filed the

marriage certificate

here in New York.

So, in the eyes of the laws, we

weren't married.

There was no need for us to file

it because we were gonna

get married here October 12.

So, when he died, that was a

huge problem for me,

but I was able to solve that

with the help of a lawyer,

and a judge, um, ended up

marrying us posthumously,

which was the saddest thing in

the world to become a widow,

you know, like that, but it's

strange.

[MUSIC]

LINDA:
Tania, this year, was

very, very distant

from all of us.

And she had been in denial for

years about her husband dying.

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