On a hot Monday afternoon, as a wind blows through the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, the American flags on Hausman Street gracefully flap. The flagpole rings, rattling against the metal, sound almost like a wind chime. Ten years after Hausman Street resident Catherine Fagan was killed in the terrorist attack, her neighbors still fly the Stars and Stripes in her honor. Their persistence has led the street to be called “Brooklyn’s Block of Flags.”
Most of the people on this block have spent their entire life living in the same home. The avenue of two- to three-story duplexes is mainly occupied by generations of Polish, Irish and German-American residents, spanning several generations. Young girls ride their scooters past elders telling stories on a bench, while a woman walks out of her home holding her newborn baby.
Virtually all of them have joined in honoring Catherine Fagan – not a first-responder but one of the thousands of everyday working people to perish on 9/11. By flying dozens of flags, and even having the block renamed Catherine Fagan Street, a group of friends and neighbors have made sure an otherwise private, even obscure, life will not be forgotten.
Sarah Fagan, 37, was also born and raised on Hausman Street. After Fagan’s father died in 1985 her mother Catherine worked long hours in the financial industry in order to provide for the family. “She wasn’t there a lot, she was always working,” Sarah recalls. “But my mom always knew one of the neighbors was watching me.”
In addition to many close school friends, Sarah’s aunt and several cousins lived on the block. Sarah remembers spending most of her childhood at various neighbors’ homes. They were like her family, a family that she leaned on more than ever on September 11, 2001.
Sarah’s mother Catherine had promised to take her granddaughter to school on that Tuesday morning. Sarah, a pastry chef, had arrived back home from a business trip a few hours earlier. “I was exhausted, but my mom told me she had to go into work for a few hours so I needed to take my niece to school,” says Sarah. Catherine worked as the assistant vice-president to communications for Marsh and McLennan, located on the 95th floor of Tower One. By the time Sarah had returned home, the first plane had hit. “I called her cell phone and office phone, but got no answer,” says Sarah. “I knew that if she was in that office, she was gone.”
When Sarah’s family and friends on Hausman Street did not hear from Catherine by nightfall, they, too, assumed the worst. Sarah’s cousin Richard Fagan, 44, says that a few hours after the attacks, he began visiting hospitals across New York City, searching for his aunt and putting up missing posters. “We all took it bad,” Richard says. “She was a great person, funny and very independent.”
One month later, with no remains found, relatives and friends held a memorial for Catherine. “They asked us for pictures of my mom,” says Sarah. “We realized we didn’t have any pictures of her, because she was always the one behind the camera.”
After the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Catherine’s company moved her to another building. “My mom worked in the World Trade towers for almost 20 years, she loved it there,” says Sarah. “She fought to go back, then they put her in a cubicle in the center of the floor. But then she fought to get her window seat back.”
Sarah says she sometimes thinks that if she had not agreed to helping out her mother that fateful morning, her mom would still be alive. “A part of me wished I had been a witch and made her take my niece to school that day,” Sarah says, her voice trembling. “She had a bad back and wanted to stay home that day. Another part of me hated her boss for making her go into work…” Sarah’s voice trails off. “But I guess it was just her time.”
On the Marsh and McLennan memorial page for Catherine Fagan, a friend, John Meeks writes: “I often dwell on the thought that Catherine and I had arranged to have lunch on 9/11/2001. She had stayed home from work the previous day because of a nagging back pain, and I remember talking with her on 9/10, and she says she wanted to head into the office a little early the next day to ‘get a jump on the backlog.’”
Sarah’s most fond memory of her mother was her ambition. At the time of her death, Catherine was enrolled at the University of Phoenix for an online master’s degree program. “It’s hard, I watched my mother lose her husband with four children,” she softly cries. “I only saw my mom cry once.”
Soon after the news of the attacks, Bob McErlean and other neighbors on Hausman Street started displaying American flags outside their homes. “After 9/11, everybody wanted a flag,” says McErlean. “It was for Catherine Fagan and for all the hometown heroes.” Since then, McErlean has taken on the task of replacing the flags on an annual basis. “I am more religious about this flag than my own religion,” says McErlean. “The flag means everything to me.”
Around 70 of the 73 homes on the block have a flag outside their front porch. McErlean says in the decade of the flag program, only one neighbor has made a complaint. “I had one person say they thought the flag made their house look ugly,” says McErlean. Hausman Street resident, Daniel Woodruff, 69, feels the flags that perfectly line both sides of the street are inconvenient. “If the wind is good, you get smacked in the face with a flag because they are posted so low,” says Woodruff.
Over the years, the street has also been hit with a number of flag thefts and cases of vandalism. Even an 88-year resident of the block, Catherine Flynn, had her flag stolen “At one point we had 21 flags destroyed,” says McErlean. “But we just put them right back up.”
For years, the residents held an annual end-of-summer block party. After 9/ll, the neighborhood decided to move the party closer to September 11. “It’s a happy day, the children get on the rides, the fire and police department comes out and everyone brings food,” says Flynn. “The party is in remembrance of the people who died. They weren’t sad people, they were happy people.”
Still, on this 10th anniversary of the attack, sadness is unavoidable. This year’s block party will be held on September 10, since most of the neighbors will be visiting the Ground Zero on 9/11. Most of the homes on Hausman Street will be donned in red, white and blue lights. A candlelight vigil will also be held on a corner of Catherine Fagan Street.
Flynn says she felt personally affected by the events on September 11. Her husband, Irving Flynn worked as a pile driver during the construction of the World Trade Centers. He broke his hip in an accident on the construction site and retired on disability. Eleven years after his death, the same building that Flynn helped lay the foundation, was brought back down to ground.
For the first time after the 9/11 attacks, Sarah plans on visiting Ground Zero on September 11. “The saddest part for me is that I have two children who will never know her,” Sarah sighs, “She was a great grandma.”
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