The Woman Who Wasn't There Page #4

JANICE:
There was times when I

was concerned

that she would hurt herself,

maybe commit suicide because she

would sometimes say

that she wanted to die,

and a couple of the other board

members and I

would talk about that,

and we were concerned at times

that she might

take her own life.

LINDA:
Tania was in the middle

of doing

this very intensive therapy

called flooding

to face Dave's death.

JANICE:
You would tell your

story to a therapist,

and you would record it,

LINDA:
And you have to keep

reliving over and over again

the experience of the tragic or

traumatic event

that went through your life.

She tape recorded her experience

from September 11th.

TANIA HEAD:
I heard the engines.

I saw people pray.

You knew that you were gonna

die,

and I was just praying, please

don't let this hurt.

Please don't let this hurt.

LINDA:
I would be behind her,

and she would start circling

around,

and the tape would play, "Oh, my

God.

Oh, my God, the plane is coming.

The plane is coming," and it

would literally crash.

And I could tell you, I could

visualize the stuff,

listening to her talk about it.

[SIRENS]

LINDA:
She would recount how her

assistant was decapitated,

how everyone around her was, was

burnt.

She told me that her arm was

completely severed,

that there was just one little

piece of skin right here

that where it was hanging off,

and some man started tugging on

her arm,

and she was screaming and crying

because she was afraid

that this man was gonna pull her

arm off,

and she told me that she took

her arm,

and she tucked it into her coat

to keep it from falling off her

body.

And she'd start crying harder

and harder,

and she would just, she'd be a

wreck,

and I would be trying to hold

her up,

like I didn't know what to do. I

didn't know what to do.

Right now, even talking about

this,

I get so worked up that I start

going

into so much anxiety over this,

but I did this for her because

she was gonna get better.

The nightmares were so bad.

In fact, they were worse.

I started incorporating what she

had told me on the tape

into my nightmares, and there

wasn't almost a night

that I didn't have a building

collapsing on me.

When I finally told her,

"Tania, I've got to stop doing

the flooding exercise with you,"

she told me that I was a

horrible friend,

and I was so selfish.

How could I be such a selfish

person?

Didn't I realize what she went

through?

Didn't I realize that the trauma

that she had sustained

was so much worse than the

trauma I had sustained?

I mean, how can, how can I live

with that?

ELIA:
I actually became very

worried about Linda

because I know Linda's still

working through her own stuff.

So, I was worried that Linda

would be that much involved

with someone whom I came to

realize

was not doing well at all and,

and seemed to be getting worse.

[MUSIC]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

SONIA:
[SPEAKING IN SPANISH]

[MUSIC]

MARTA FORN:
[SPEAKING IN

SPANISH]

MARTA FORN:
[SPEAKING IN

SPANISH]

MARTA FORN:
[SPEAKING IN

SPANISH]

[HELICOPTER]

GERRY BOGACZ:
Okay, folks,

welcome everyone

to our walk today that's gonna

be recognizing

all the members of the 9/11

community,

the victims and their families,

the rescuers and recovery

workers.

The walk has been organized by

the World Trade Center

Survivors' Network.

It's an amazing organization in

that

there's no real hierarchy to it.

Everybody just gets together and

does the work,

and I do wanna recognize the

coordinators of this,

Tania Head.

[Applause]

GERRY BOGACZ:
Tania began to

tell me

that people in the network were

saying that they had

had some concerns with things

that I was doing.

There were people who had told

her

that I was not representing

survivors aggressively enough.

Then, the board of the, of the

network basically called me in

and told me what their concerns

were.

A primary person in that whole

conversation was Tania.

It was Tania who was basically

running this meeting.

JANICE:
Tania was frightened of

Gerry,

that he was a hard worker,

and, he started the Survivors'

Network,

and I think she knew that she

couldn't manipulate him.

So, she kind of manipulated

everybody else to go

against him so that she could

get him out.

LINDA:
She had me thinking that

Gerry was bad

for the organization.

Yet, in my heart, I adore Gerry.

I, still to this day, I adore

and love Gerry.

He's such a good person, but you

have to sometimes

separate yourself from you as a

person

and you as part of an

organization,

and that's what we had to do.

GERRY BOGACZ:
And, um,

personally, I'm very proud of,

of this organization and the

people who are in it.

They've done a great deal of

work...

We were having our annual

elections for the board,

and the night before the

election meeting,

Tania called me and started to

talk to me about,

"You don't really wanna come to

this meeting, now, do you?"

You know, that type of thing,

and I started talking.

I said, "Yeah, no, I'm, I, I, I

wanna be there,"

and so forth, and then I

realized

through the conversation that

what she was really saying

Is that I wasn't going to be

elected to the board,

or re-elected to the board.

I even said it to her.

I said, "You're telling me I'm

not gonna be re-elected,"

and she was kind of quiet, and I

said,

"Well, I'm still gonna be

there."

[CITY SOUNDS]

GERRY:
The next day, I went to

the meeting,

and, in fact, I wasn't

re-elected to the board,

and I left at that point.

I remember standing at the bus

stop waiting for the bus home,

and, you know, having a physical

reaction to it,

just feeling shaken, totally

shaken but not in a,

in a psychological way, a

physical way,

actually shaking and just

wondering

how I had managed to alienate

all those people,

you know, and, and, and part of

me was sort of beginning

to rebel against it.

There was some anger there, too,

like,

what, what, what just happened?

But it was mostly self-doubt.

It was mostly like, what did I

do here?

How, how did this happen?

The next day, they came out with

a press release,

which described the new board

with Tania as the president,

offices we didn't have before.

So, there was this mysterious

quality to it, too.

I just couldn't put all these

pieces together

and figure out why did it come

out this way.

And I haven't really been active

with the network since.

BRENDAN:
I'm like, "Oh, my God.

I, I, I can't believe I'm seeing

this."

And it's like now wait a minute.

I, I keep trying to find one

more website

that will confirm her story,

and I'm checking and checking

and checking... Nothing.

Needless to say, I didn't get

any sleep that night,

but I sat on this information.

These people were so important

in my life.

They brought me back.

You know, they, they made me

into a human being again.

I don't what would have happened

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