Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Changed in a Moment: Through Pictures, People Hoping for Word of Loved Ones

Aired October 04, 2001 - 09:51   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The pictures from the terrorist attacks will likely remain in our minds forever, but families of the victims want the world to remember other pictures, the human pictures.

MILES O'BRIEN CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Gary Tuchman reports now on the people hoping for word of loved ones.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Outside the nation's busiest train station and one of the loudest parts of Manhattan, New Yorkers try to spend a quiet moment looking at the missing posters that have each become remembrances of a life, and also in some cases, even three weeks later, the first notification that a friend is presumed dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He told me he wanted to workout because he wanted to be a fireman. So he got built up, and then he become a fireman.

TUCHMAN: His friend was Karl Bidigone, a 35-year-old member of the New York City fire department.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He got two kids and a wife. He's a nice guy. I used to go to his house to eat Italian food and everything after work, and then we would hang out together.

I don't want to talk no more. I'm sorry, OK.

TUCHMAN: They are the most simple of memorials, the posters and papers put by relatives hoping loved ones would be found. But no one has been found alive since the day after the disaster, and the smiling faces remain on buildings and walls throughout New York City.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know if it to comfort me to look at them. I know I feel extremely helpless and terrible that, you know, these are every day people.

TUCHMAN: The faces are haunting. The images come from some of the happiest moments of their lives. The college graduation. The portrait from the new job. This man dancing with his mother at a wedding. And the images remain chilling. Mayra Valdez (ph), whose family wrote, "was last seen screaming to her coworkers to get off the floor, to get out because of the fire."

Many New Yorkers are now making their own simple memorials, this women taking comfort in what she reads, and wanting to help others in what she writes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's like reading poems, you get a sense of what people are feeling, and it's clarifies to me that my feeling are real, and there's other people feeling the same way.

TUCHMAN: Three weeks later, some are torn, others have fallen, but they have become part of the fabric of a grieving city.

Gary Tuchman, 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