Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

World Trade Center Victim's Family Struggles to Move Forward

Aired November 15, 2001 - 05:56   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: We have a story of one of the many families who have been changed forever by the September 11 attacks on New York. Like a ship without a rudder, the Gomez family has had a difficult time finding direction without the head of the house.

CNN's Maria Hinojosa brings us their story now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For 22 years, on the sixth floor of this lower east side Manhattan tenement, lived Jose Gomez and his four girls in an apartment tiny beyond words.

(on camera): And you actually have your -- you actually have your bathtub in the kitchen?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

HINOJOSA: Can you show me? Oh my god.

(voice-over): Jose used to be the biggest presence in this apartment, six feet tall with his big job in a prestigious restaurant above the World Trade Center.

(on camera): What did it mean for you that your dad worked in the Trade Center?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was nice because you know that was like -- that one thing was like so famous and stuff like that, that my father works there, you know.

HINOJOSA: It was a big deal?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

HINOJOSA: You were proud of him.

(voice-over): Now I was in the company of the family Jose left behind, his twin 13-year-old daughters, Joanna (ph) and Joanne (ph), and his baby, 10-year-old Melissa, along with his wife, Blanca (ph).

These women are all immigrants, Latinos, they weren't necessarily taught they could be strong. But they've lost their man and are being tested and tested hard.

So have you been crying a lot?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I've been crying (INAUDIBLE).

HINOJOSA (on camera): Does crying help you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that crying helps me because sometimes when I try to hold -- like not to cry, I feel like a pain like if it was in my heart.

HINOJOSA: So it's harder to stop yourself from crying.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

HINOJOSA (voice-over): There isn't anywhere to go in this tiny apartment to escape the sadness. Blanca reveals the window that used to be her sanctuary, the skyline, the sounds of the street, but that's where she watched the towers and her life crumble before her eyes.

"I knew Jose's brother was with him," she tells me.

Her husband worked side by side with his brother, Enrique (ph), who also died that day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My father had plans for us (INAUDIBLE).

HINOJOSA: Jose always told the girls to study hard, become professionals, so maybe one day they could afford a place where everyone had their own room.

So now a candle flickers in a lonely room for poppy. But for a mother left without a husband, she reaches for the strength, the forca (ph) she never thought she had, struggling against her will at times to move forward.

"When I feel like I'm going to crumble," she says, she tells herself to get up. She has to for her girls. "We will never forget," she tells them. "We will never forget him, but," she says, "we have to go on."

Maria Hinojosa, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com