Changed by 9/11: Funeral for a Friend Gets Put on Hold

Durell Godfrey didn't know anyone who died on 9/11, but a funeral and grief for a friend had to be put on hold due to the terrorist attacks.

Godfrey grew up and lived most of her life in New York City. A friend from her seventh grade schooldays at Grace Church School had died weeks before in a car crash.

Without anyone to plan his funeral, "The huge collection of friends were pulling together a funeral at the church we're we had gone to school," Godfrey said.

It was planned for Saturday. 9/11 happened on Tuesday.

Godfrey had only recently retired from Glamour Magazine, selling her apartment on 22nd Street and First Avenue, settling into her home in East Hampton Village.

She and her husband watched the events unfold on the morning news from their living room. "That day was: paralyzed, sitting on the couch," she said.

But two days later, she got herself on a Hampton Jitney and into Manhattan to pull together the final details for her friend's funeral.

"You could see the smoke trail . . . long gray lines," from Ground Zero from the overpass that leads into the Midtown Tunnel, Godfrey said.

"Trying to design a funeral anyway is horrible. Then Tuesday happened and nobody knew what to do," she said.

They weren't aware that the international flights still weren't allowed into New York City; The deceased's twin brother was to fly in from Paris, but couldn't get in. No one could even get downtown to 11th Street and Broadway, where Grace Church was. They decided to call it off.

Already in the city, Godfrey walked with a childhood friend to Union Square. People playing guitars and holding candles -- complete strangers gathering together. "You felt as though there was so much outpouring of emotion at this center. Everyone was just looking south. You'd go from cluster to cluster of candlelit people. There would be sign and messages," she said. "You felt enveloped by the raw emotion of those of people that came to the square."

Godfrey later took up photography and works for The East Hampton Star. She carried no camera back then.

Several hours later, she and her friend walked back Uptown, passing the 28th Street Armory. Hundreds of pieces of papers attached to the walls and fence, with photographs, asking if a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a husband, a wife, a daughter, a son had been seen.

"It's the small things that get under your skin," she said. "I don't think the brain can take in the hugeness at looking down the street at what you've always seen and having it not be there, visibly not be there in the landscape."

She's not sure she would have gone back to the city had it not been her friend's funeral.

"I am very grateful to have shared a sociological moment because everybody knows where they were," she said.

Months later, there was a funeral for their friend. He had worked on Wall Street and knew almost everyone at Cantor Fitzgerald, which was ostensibly wiped out by 9/11. It was a loss she was sure would have broken his heart.