Friends Help 9/11 Widow Heal

Sept. 11 -- When Jill Gartenberg lost her husband, James, in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, she was suddenly a widow, the single mother of one child and three months pregnant with a second.

But she was not alone. Two of her girlfriends raced to her side and stayed there.

Jacqui Schein, a new friend whom Jill Gartenberg had met in temple the year before the terrorist attacks, stayed with her the night she lost her husband and was at Jill's side the day she gave birth to her new baby girl.

A childhood friend, Jill Poznick, flew to New York from Chicago every month to visit in the year following Sept. 11.

"Jill and Jacqui have been there for me," Gartenberg said. "They help me share happy and sad memories … It was just being there, not just for the big things, like cleaning out Jimmy's closet, which Jill did, or being there at the hospital like Jacqui was. It was the everyday things that they were there for."

When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, James Gartenberg, a 35-year-old commercial real estate developer, was trapped in his office on the 86th floor of Tower One.

"Jill, there's a fire at work," he said in an initial phone call to his wife. "I love you. Tell Nicole 'I love you.' I don't know if I'm going to be OK, so I love you so much. Goodbye."

As smoke filled the office, he spent the next hour on the phone, talking to his wife, his best friend, another friend and a colleague across town. His friends and family watched on television as the tower where he worked collapsed.

Friends Keep Her Smiling

Two years later, their daughter, Nicole, is now 4, and the family of three is doing well.

"The girls are wonderful and keep me smiling," Jill Gartenberg said. "I am lucky. Nicole is at the age where she is asking about her father. In a way it is a relief since it's not a topic we have talked about. She said this week, 'Daddy died. That means he is never coming back.' She got it right away that he was dead, but now it is at a different level."