9-11: Day of National Tragedy, Personal Loss for Beachwood Woman

Lynn Katz Danzig was throwing things into a suitcase in her Beachwood home, on her way to catch a morning flight to Albany, when the phone rang.

“We don’t want to scare you, but you need to get here as soon as you can,” said her brother from their father’s hospital room. “A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Samuel Katz had been diagnosed with lymphoma in May of 2001 and by early September of the same year, doctors told Danzig and her family that he would live only a few days longer.

Danzig had booked a flight the morning of Sept. 11 to see Katz once more, and, after hearing of the tower strike, a friend rushed her to Hopkins International Airport.

On the way Danzig got a call from her husband with scary news: another tower — one in which her brother-in-law worked — had just been hit by a second plane. Fortunately, he was unharmed because he had gone to vote and planned to go to work late.

Danzig’s car was stopped by a police officer on the exit ramp to Hopkins and told them they could not go to the airport.

“I said, ‘My father is dying. I have to go to the airport,’” said Danzig. “And I’ll never forget what he said to me: ‘I’m sorry. You can’t.’”

That did not stop her from trying. Danzig asked her friend to drop her at the nearest Rapid Transit station so she could take the train to the airport. When the Rapid made it to the airport, however, more police officers were waiting there, telling passengers to get back on the train. All flights had been grounded.

“It was incredible the amount of planes you could see coming in,” said Danzig. She rode back to Tower City in downtown Cleveland, where air raid sirens were sounding, to meet her husband.

Danzig said the sidewalks were crowded with frightened downtown employees. “People just wanted to get out of their office buildings. I think people were just pretty frightened. It was just so scary.”

She and her husband got on a Rapid for Shaker Heights and found a ride home from there. The Danzigs decided to wait until Wednesday morning and make the eight-hour drive to her father's side.

But her father could not wait.

Her brother called Danzig at 5:15 the next morning. “It’s over,” he said.

Danzig does not think her father was cognizant enough to know what was going on that day, but she wonders what he would have thought.

He was in the D-Day invasion in Normandy during World War II. “Imagine what he would be saying if he could have known what was going on: What the heck is going on? I’ve been through World War II, and now this.”

She spent the drive writing her father’s eulogy. “He was a man of few words,” she said. Her brother later told her that on Sept. 11, he and his mother walked into the hospital room and Katz gave them what they believe was his sign that he was content to die. “He gave them this great big smile, like, 'I’ve had enough. Carry on everybody.'”

But Danzig still is not content with the way her father’s last days went. “I’m angry that these people did this, and I’m terribly sad that these people died, and I’m angry that I didn’t get to see my father,” Danzig said. “They’re making a career out of ruining people’s lives. That’s really what they’re doing.”