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Helping families heal
For a generation of children who lost a parent on 9/11, the heartbreak has forever changed their lives. FOX 5 NY speaks with Tuesday's Children, a non-profit that has been providing help and healing to families affected by the terror attacks for the last 20 years.
NEW YORK - Dan and Mike Friedman were just 11 years old when their father Andrew Friedman was murdered in the 9/11 terror attacks.
"He was the best father, he was our coach, he was our mentor, he was our role model, he was our best friend," said Dan.
The twins say they remember September 11th clearly. The night before, the New York Giants had played the Denver Broncos, but they were not allowed to stayed up to finish watching the game. However, their father left them a note in their bedroom with the final score.
"So we wake up that morning, see the score from the night before, see the Giants lost, figured he was upset the entire night, but it was just who he was, went to school," said Dan.
Their father worked on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center's north tower. He had just started a job there two weeks prior.
"I felt something was wrong," said Mike, Dan’s twin brother.
On that fateful morning, the pair's lives would change forever. Their father, their hero, would never return home again.
Dan said he could not accept it. In the days after the terror attacks, the twins and their mother went from hospital to hospital, from firehouse to firehouse with missing posters and clean socks for the first responders.
"Now we are in a state of uncertainty, we don’t have our hero, our dad our role model to be there with us as we go through life," said Mike of the days after the terror attacks.
But during that difficult time, a time of grief and pain, strangers came to their aid.
The nonprofit organization Tuesday’s Children, founded in the days following the attacks had one mission, to make sure 9/11 families would not be forgotten, especially the children.
"We knew that these kids needed special attention, they needed a group to look after them over the long term," said Terry Sears, executive director of Tuesday’s Children.
3,051 children lost a parent on 9/11. For two decades the nonprofit has been serving not only 9/11 families but communities affected by terrorism, military conflict, and mass violence.
"They would step up and do programs with us not to fully replace things our dad did but to fill the void, they did a thing like take your kid to work day, kind of what we did with our dad," said Dan.
Meanwhile, Dan and Mike became business partners. In 2017, they started their sock company, Tall Order. The brothers have not forgotten who was by their side when they need it the most.
To date, they have donated over $40,000 to Tuesday’s Children. Giving, they say, was what their father was all about.
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