Four years ago, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, 12 remarkable kids from five Long Island families talked with The Post about what it was like to have lost a parent in the World Trade Center.
For this anniversary, all 12 children are speaking again – to pay their respects, to share their emotions and to remind people to never forget, never give up and to live life to its fullest.
When the time came, Jacquelyn Hobbs didn’t have her dad around to teach her to drive, so she asked a family friend to help her instead.
“I always knew my dad wouldn’t be able to teach me,” said Jacquelyn, 17, who received her license last month. But “it was still awkward, at first.”
“It got easier,” she said. “But I still thought about my dad.”
Jacquelyn thinks a lot about her father, Thomas Hobbs, an energy broker with Cantor Fitzgerald, remembering him relaxed and happy.
Jacquelyn, a senior at Sacred Heart Academy, is a member of the Teen Girls Club, part of the WTC Family Center in Rockville Centre. The group consists of eight girls who lost a parent on 9/11, and the camaraderie, she said, is important.
“It’s helpful just knowing girls my age are going through the same thing,” she said.
Jacquelyn and her brothers, Stephen and David, have planted a memorial garden in their Baldwin, L.I., back yard for their father.
An engraved stone in the garden is particularly treasured by David, 13, an eighth-grader at Baldwin Middle School. It bears the words, “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.”
“I guess that’s what happens,” David said. “It’s true.
“I always read the stone,” said the young teen, whose father taught him how to play soccer and ride a bike.
“I just look at it, and it’s my dad, and he’s looking down, making sure I shouldn’t be doing anything I shouldn’t be doing wrong, just watching.”
Stephen, 15, a sophomore at Kellenberg Memorial HS in Uniondale, said he most misses his dad when he’s with his friends “and they’re joking around with their dads.”
Stephen then thinks of a good memory and shakes off the sorrow.
“I remember a time when I played soccer, and he got into it a bit too much. He started yelling at me, and I started yelling at him, and I got a yellow card [a penalty]. Back in the car, he apologized, and we joked about it,” Stephen said.
Now, Stephen plays lacrosse and wishes his dad were here, yelling at him from the sidelines.
“I kind of miss that,” he said.
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Tommy Gies is honoring his firefighter dad the best way he knows how – he’s become one of the city’s Bravest.
The 23-year-old entered the FDNY in May 2004 and was the valedictorian of his probie class at the Fire Academy – which would have made his dad, Fire Lt. Ronnie Gies, proud.
Tommy’s now assigned to Brooklyn’s Ladder Co. 147.
“It’s the best job in the world,” said Tommy, who got married in late July. “But it’s tough going to work every day, and following in the footsteps of someone you love so much.”
Tommy’s brothers, Ronnie and Bobby, say they plan to join the FDNY, too.
“My dad taught me to go out, have fun, enjoy life, always look at the best of things, not the worst of things. And that’s what I’m doing,” said Bobby, 18, a sophomore at New York Institute of Technology and a volunteer, along with Ronnie, at the Merrick Fire Department.
Ronnie, 21, said of their father, “If I could be half the man he was, I’d still be a decent person.”
Ronnie, a senior at SUNY Farmingdale, has weighed the consequences of becoming one of the Bravest.
“Once you have one person in the family that’s done it [become a firefighter] and you see it really is the greatest job in the world, then it’s not hard,” he said.
“It’s a risk. [But] to see my dad and now my older brother leave for work with a smile on their face . . . why wouldn’t you want that?”
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Chris Wieman often thinks about his mother, Mary Lenz Wieman, an insurance broker with Aon Corp., and what happened to her.
“It’s always something you carry with you – like a burden,” Chris, 17, a senior at Southside HS, said. “It’s that powerful, and you can’t let go that easily.”
“My mom was always hardworking, but her family came first,” he said. “She was happy, cheerful. I never saw her cry. I never saw her upset.”
Chris still keeps a picture of his mother in his Rockville Centre room and is always “looking to do better, trying not to forget, trying to fit in” for her.
But when times are tough, he finds himself reaching out to his mom, especially when a big test is involved – like a Regents math exam. He said he asks for her help, making a promise that begins, “If I don’t fail, this I swear . . . ” and “it works 90 percent of the time.”
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In the past five years, Ashley Herold has had a Sweet 16, graduated high school, bought a customized purple Mustang and recently begun her freshman year at Towson University in Maryland.
Still, “there’s that empty spot where someone’s supposed to be there, and they’re just not,” she said.
The last Easter that her father, Gary Herold, was alive, he gave his daughter a stuffed bunny doll.
And every night since 9/11, Ashley, 17, tells the doll, “Goodnight, Daddy. I love you.”
“I just make sure I think about him every day, no matter what,” she said of her father, a former risk-management supervisor with Aon Corp.
Ashley’s older sister, Jennifer, 21, a senior at SUNY Stony Brook, said so much has happened to her in five years.
“Time flies. I went to school, joined a sorority. I started a whole new life,” she said, adding that she is thinking about tying the knot. “It’s hard going through the milestones of life without having someone so special to share it with you,” Jennifer said. “It takes some of the joy out of those things.”
Lyndsey, the youngest Herold girl, is 13, and her memories of her father are sparse.
But at least she remembers when her dad made her laugh after she fought with friends at one of her sleepovers, and how she and her dad used to watch movies on Channel 11 every Sunday.
“I’m doing better than I was, but it’s still hard,” she said.
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Lauren Erker is already on her second memorial bracelet that bears her father’s name – the first one cracked from so much wear.
“Things get harder to remember, but I think I remember most,” said Lauren, reminiscing about her dad, Erwin Erker, a vice president with Marsh & McLennan.
“He was more easy to give in to. You’d always go to Daddy,” said Lauren, who remembers her father bringing her to the movies, going miniature-golfing and taking the family on vacations.
Outside of school, Lauren is tap dancing, playing her trombone and baritone and working at a local pharmacy to pay for her car.
Lauren said she’s trying “to live life to the fullest – get everything out of it that I can,” for her dad.
Lauren’s brother, Drew Erker, is 14 and now in the ninth grade at the same school his sister attends.
Drew loves sports – whether playing the midfield during soccer games or dribbling a basketball as a guard.
And he relished playing sports with his father.
“I don’t always think about my dad, but when I do, I get sad,” he said. “Once in a while, he comes into my dreams. I talk to him, and then I go get my mom, and when my mom’s there, he’s not there anymore. He left.”
Those dreams bring some comfort to him, he said.
Drew said he won’t go to Ground Zero today, but tonight, he’ll say a couple special words to his dad.
He’ll start off, he said, with a simple “hello.”