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For Edna Cintron and her husband, William, every
evening fit into a comforting routine. "She had everything prompt,
clean, neat, organized," Mr. Cintron, a 44-year- old doorman, said
of his 46-year-old wife, an administrative assistant for Marsh &
McLennan. "She would come out of work, come home, cook, make sure
that when I would come out of work there was food on the table and
everything. And every night we would have ice cream and we would
watch TV."
That simple routine in their home in East
Elmhurst, Queens, was remarkable, Mr. Cintron said, because they
each had been homeless, and in their 12 years of marriage they had
struggled with his alcoholism. "We started from the bottom," he
said, "and we worked our way all the way up to the top," even
opening a florist business, Sweet William's, in East Harlem.
Mr. Cintron said that his wife had given him the
courage to go to detox and that last January he celebrated 12 years
of sobriety. "She made sure that she kept me in check," he said.
"She made sure that I did the things I was supposed to do. She was a
very, very strong woman because she would put her foot down.
"She was more like a mother to me. She would make
sure that I would eat right and she would make sure that no one
would manipulate me. So she was also my backbone. She made me
strong. She made me who I am today."
The Independent (London)
September 15, 2001, Saturday
SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 1537 words
HEADLINE: THE WEEK THAT SHOOK THE WORLD:
A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN THAT ENDED IN HELL.
BYLINE: Russ Baker
BODY:
EDNA CINTRON was a perfect wife. Other than that, she was an
ordinary person: a prototypical New Yorker of modest means and
education, without powerful friends, glittering assets or a
thrilling day-to-day life. She had her job, and she had her husband.
On Wednesday of this week, her husband, William, was wandering the
streets of Manhattan, carrying her photo, trying to get information
on her whereabouts and condition. Edna, an attractive 46-year-old
with long, curly hair and prominent green eyes, worked in One World
Trade Centre, the North Tower of the gargantuan complex, on the 97th
floor. When the first plane hit, its primary impact was on the 93rd
to 100th floors. Mr Cintron seemed aware that, with the combination
of the low live-body recovery rate and the location of his wife at
the time of the attack, the odds of his ever seeing her again were
infinitesimally low. Nevertheless, he kept looking.
Mr Cintron, a lean 44-year-old with short, dark hair, had been to
several locations, including St Vincent's Hospital, a key treatment
centre in the Greenwich Village area, hoping against hope that she
might have been brought there. They had no record of her. He had
also tried to get to lower Manhattan, to help out on the disaster
scene, but was turned away. "They said we'd interfere. We can't just
be in the way."
On Thursday, he was at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue,
looking for the correct line to file a missing person's form. The
Armory, just south of midtown and several miles outside the disaster
zone, had been designated as the key processing centre for missing
person information. Although used for years primarily for arts and
antiques exhibitions, the Armory is a fortress-like structure with
gun bays overlooking Lexington Avenue. It is inscribed with the
names of some of America's greatest battles: Antietam, Gettysburg,
Bull Run.
With a small entourage (a son from a previous marriage and two
friends), Mr Cintron wandered amid the huge crowd gathered on all
four corners of 26th Street and Lexington - the law enforcement
personnel, the volunteers, the media, the onlookers - then was
directed by traffic officers past canvas-covered military vehicles
and through a crazy crosshatch of moving ambulances, and marked and
unmarked police vehicles, to one particular corner. A long queue
went up Lexington and turned down 26th Street. "Wow, is that the
line?" he asked. "That's a long line."
A police officer approached Mr Cintron, who was wearing jeans and a
yellow polo shirt with a Puerto Rican flag keychain in the breast
pocket, and asked if he had completed a form yet. He had filled out
questionnaires at other locations, but they couldn't be certain it
had been the correct official paperwork, so they gave him one of
theirs. It was seven pages long.
Mr Cintron borrowed a pen and began to write. He entered his wife's
name, checked the box for female, noted their address and various
contact phone numbers, then stopped to see how much more details
were required. The authorities needed what looked to be hundreds of
pieces of information. A detailed physical description. Medical and
dental profile and history, blood type, doctor contacts. Had she had
any surgery? Were there any old fractures? Did she have any steel
plates in her body? Identifiable scars?
Volunteers passed, some wearing signs saying "counsellor" or
"chaplain", others offering a steady supply of nourishment: apples,
energy bars, McDonald's hamburgers, bagels, glazed doughnuts, and
orange juice. "New York City's a powerful place," said Mr Cintron.
"The response has been wonderful." He glanced again at the sheaf of
papers. Clothing she might have been wearing. Type and description
of dress, blouse, hose, slip, girdle, bra, skirt, belt, belt buckle;
whether she wore her watch on the right or left wrist. Mr Cintron
glanced over the pages, and stopped. Then he began talking about his
wife.
Edna Cintron was born on October 14, 1954. She was 46 years old. She
was born in Puerto Rico, and brought to New York by her mother when
she was about five. They were poor. A clerical worker for the New
York City board of education, mami used to take two boiled eggs to
work so she didn't have to buy lunch. She gave Edna a weekly
allowance of several cents. Edna had an older sister, Myrna, who now
lives in New Jersey, and a long- estranged brother.
Edna's family lived in lower Manhattan, on Delancey Street, in a
neighbourhood famous for waves of ethnic immigration. She was very
private about her childhood, didn't like to talk about it. "She
experienced a lot of stuff," her husband said. She made it through
the 11th grade, but did not graduate from high school. (Recently,
she was going to school to prepare herself for a GED, a test that is
the equivalent of a high school diploma and is crucial to career
advancement.)
Edna and William met in 1987. William had gone to visit his brother
at his brother's girlfriend's house in Upper Manhattan. He walked
into the kitchen, and found Edna sitting at the kitchen table,
chatting with her friend. "I asked my brother who this young lady
might be," he recalls. Edna, who retains her attractiveness in
recent photos, was a knockout back then. William was immediately
smitten, and sat down to talk. "I was charming at that time; I wore
cashmere," he said. He remembers finding her intelligent. William,
then 30, had been married briefly, years before, and had two
children who lived with their mother. Edna, who was 32, had never
been married.
"We started spending quality time," Mr Cintron said. Although both
had been seeing other people when they met, they soon were an item.
Every morning he would drive from his Brooklyn apartment all the way
up to the north end of Manhattan where she lived, pick her up, and
bring her to work in midtown. Then he would head to his own job.
Given New York traffic, it was a Herculean commute, rare as a badge
of commitment even for the most romantic couples. He has a simple
explanation. "When you're in love, this is something that's
important." A couple of months after they met, they moved into an
apartment in Brooklyn, and were married two years later.
Edna was not able to conceive, so they did not have children. They
talked about adopting, but never did, usually delaying the move for
financial reasons.
Like a lot of resourceful couples, they juggled jobs and
entrepreneurship to handle their bills. In recent years, Edna worked
at Manhattan's southern tip, first in the World Financial Centre
(which was also damaged in Tuesday's attack) and about two years ago
took a job in the World Trade Centre with the computer support
section of Marsh McClennan, a large insurance broker, where she was
the billing administrator's assistant. It was a hectic job, and
often tiring, but no harder than William's. He worked as a doorman
in an apartment building on the swanky Upper East Side, five days a
week, from 7am to 3pm. Then, each work day after three, he drove to
the Harlem flower shop they jointly owned, Sweet William's Florist,
where he laboured until 8pm. He was at the florist's on Saturdays,
and Edna joined him there often on Sundays. "She was good with
people," he said.
Mr Cintron, speaking in a soft voice with an urban Hispanic tinge,
described his missing wife in very simple, very stark terms. "She
was a good wife," he said. "She took care of me like I was her son.
She would get out of work and go straight home and start cooking and
cleaning, getting things organised. She was a very special wife."
Although she took such care of him, and made him feel protected, she
was no pushover. "She spoke her mind," he said with quiet
admiration.
Much of their existence revolved around home life at the apartment
they lived in for nine years, in a quiet Queens neighbourhood. For
fun, they liked going on cruise holidays, and had been to Bermuda,
Mexico and Jamaica. They would drive several hours upstate to Bear
Mountain State Park for barbecues with friends and relatives. Edna
also enjoyed trips to the casinos of Atlantic City. "She'd play a
little, then we would go to the buffets and eat," said Mr Cintron.
"It's good to get out of New York."
Basically, Edna and William were each others' hobbies. When they
weren't at work, they spent all of their time together. "Fourteen
years with her, that was my life, my world. I knew when I went home
I was in the best of hands, loved, cared for."
Now, as the Armory line moved forward, a volunteer came over to help
Mr Cintron complete the identification form. "How would you describe
her body type, her build," the woman asked, uttering a small,
nervous laugh intended to comfort. "Her eye colour?"
"Did she have her hair coloured? You know, did she have any
highlights?"
Edna Cintron's hobby, it seems, was collecting angels. The Cintrons
are Catholics, but only went to church occasionally. Nevertheless,
she had a lot of angels, in all kinds of forms, framed paintings
depicting them, little porcelain angel figurines.
"Long fingernails? Were they painted?"
It was time to get out of Mr Cintron's way. He thanked me for my
interest. "She was a good wife," he said.
Link to original photo
http://hereisnewyork.org/jpegs/photos/5088.jpg (photo 6f)
Original photo for photo 6d is available on the 'Advanced' button on
the link above.
Photographer unknown
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