General | 9/11/2016 4:30:00 PM
EDITOR'S NOTE: On September 11th, 2001, Ralph Pacifico, then a wide receivers coach with the Montclair State football team, and his wife Amy welcomed their third daughter Geena into the world. It was to be a joyous day however the events that took place changed everything. This story below recounts what took place that tragic day and several days afterward and appeared on the MSU website one Geena's first birthday (2002). Today she turned 15 years old.
"A Bright Light on a Dark Day"
Before the flames and smoke, before the unceasing newscasts, before the heartbreak and tragedy, Montclair State University assistant football coach Ralph Pacifico and his wife Amy walked into Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, NJ expecting their world to change. What they didn't know was that in a mere few hours not only their world, but everyone's world would be forever different.
Their day, like so many others, was going to be a joyous one.
Expecting to be born on September 6, the Pacifico's third child was past her due date and it was decided that Amy would have her labor induced early on the morning of September 11. They arrived at Mountainside around 7:15 a.m. ready for what they thought was going to be (or hopefully not be) a long day.
It was sometime after eight-thirty in the morning and Amy and Ralph sat in the birthing room waiting and watching television. While his wife sat on her hospital bed in preparation to deliver her third child, Ralph was in a nearby chair catching a segment on NBC's Today Show, finding out what the weather would be for the day. The forecast actually called for a beautiful late summer day. Temperatures were in the mid to low 80's, the skies were as pure a blue as they had been in quite sometime. The day was perfect. But as he watched the TV screen, Ralph saw that something was wrong.
"I'll never forget watching Matt Lauer and hearing him say that we have reports of a plane that had struck the World Trade Center," he recalls. "I thought like everyone else did that it was a small plane that somehow veered off course. But then it was reported that it was a jetliner and up on the screen came the first pictures of the Trade Center with all of the smoke pouring out."
American Airlines Flight 11 had barreled through the North Tower of the World Trade Center and suddenly there was something terribly wrong on this early September morning. Now husband and wife were both watching in amazement, although as they both recall, Amy was still very focused on her breathing, but soon even she became transfixed by the images that were unfolding on the screen. At 9:12 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower and again like so many others had figured, this was not a coincidence. Something terribly wrong was happening. America was under a terrorist attack.
Quickly things changed dramatically at Mountainside Hospital. With its close proximity to New York City (about 12 miles), the site became just one of dozens around the Tri-State area that would expect injured victims from the attack. The hospital went on a sort of "Red Alert" or disaster emergency mode – something it had not experienced since the days of the Vietnam War.
"What impacted me the most was when they brought in the fetal monitor and had it hooked up to a backup battery pack," said Ralph. "I was becoming angry because I didn't know what was going on or what was going to happen." Their thoughts also turned personal as they began to think about those they knew that worked in the World Trade Center.
Both Ralph and Amy are teachers in local school systems - Amy in West Orange and Ralph at Montclair Kimberly Academy, and they knew that there were children whose parents worked in the lower Manhattan area. They would also have a difficult time trying to reach their own parents although they knew that everyone was safe. Amy's mother was watching the couple's other two children, Paige and Emma, while her father had left a business lunch. Meanwhile, more reports were coming in of more planes, one that crashed into the Pentagon in Washington and one that had gone down somewhere in an open field over Pennsylvania. And there were still more planes yet unaccounted for. By 10:30 am, the both towers of the World Trade Center had collapsed leaving hundreds of people missing.
The tragic day continued to move forward and by late afternoon, Amy was all ready to deliver her third child. But the events of the early morning had already managed to get a hold of the nation's consciousness, which caused the expectant father to worry about something he never had to during his first two children's births. "I was actually worried about how this would affect the doctors that were delivering the baby," said Ralph. "The television is on and it captures your attention and you think that maybe their attention is not all there."
But the delivery occurred without any problems and at 4:45 p.m., seven-pound, four-ounce Geena Pacifico was brought into the world, healthy, happy and obviously unaware of the events that will be forever remembered on her birthday. "So many people I think were just so happy to hear that she was born," says Amy. "After everything that happened during the day, and all of the death and destruction it was good to finally hear a piece of good news."
"Unfortunately, her birth took a back seat to what happened. But when you saw her life begin, you forgot what happened whether it was for a brief moment or a little while," said Ralph. "However, you then reflect and think 'Did this really happen?' It was a very surreal day."
A few days later, Amy and Ralph brought their new daughter home. But with a nation still grieving and asking the question "Why?" the homecoming was not the joyous occasion it was supposed to be. "I was actually depressed when we brought her home," recalls Amy. "Mostly because I was thinking 'What kind of a world is she going to grow up in?' What is going to happen in her lifetime? These weren't things we had to think about before." Things like a separation from one another at a time when people just wanted to be close. For years, Ralph had coached football and that weekend the Montclair State team was scheduled to go to Brockport, NY, a game that almost didn't happen.
"I thought the best thing was getting away," recalled Ralph of his trip. "I knew that Amy and the kids would be safe. It wasn't about being needed at home, it was about getting back to the normal routine of things."
And for that period of time, especially the four hours on Saturday, things were normal – almost. There on the sidelines was Ralph in his role as the Red Hawks' receivers coach. "It helped me tremendously," says Ralph. "They say that the best thing to battle depression is to go about your routine and I think it was important that we played." But the game, which Montclair State won, 35-14, did give him a sense of reality and how important family and the people you care about the most are. Inside his hat, Pacifico always carries a picture of his wife and kids that he would look at occasionally. "That day, I looked inside my hat an awful lot."
On the day she was born, Ralph and Amy thought a lot about how their daughter being born on that day would be a negative, that her birthday would always be associated with the most tragic day in American history. But as time passed, they realized that the opposite was true.
"I kind of made it a point to tell people everywhere we go that she was born on September 11th," says Amy, who tells the story of how she met a woman who lost a brother in the World Trade Center attack. "She began to cry because while she had suffered a loss, she was happy to see that something good came out of that day." Over the past year, the Pacificos have talked about how they will one day tell Geena about the day she was born. Amy has saved copies of Time and Newsweek and a few other pieces of memorabilia to mark the events. They will tell her what transpired that day and maybe able to explain why it happened. They've already started to teach their other kids. In fact, six-year-old Paige asked last December if "(Osama) Bin Laden was going to get any Christmas presents?" Ralph and Amy hope that someday Geena would organize a group of people born that tragic day so that they can share their thoughts and feelings and perhaps even have a birthday celebration. "It was a great day for us, Ralph says."
"I know that she was born on that day for a reason, and I want her birthday to be an inspiration for her, says Amy. "I want to make sure that it's important for her to know that on the darkest day in this country's history, she was one of the bright lights.
