25 years after 9/11: Remembering Filipino victims and survivors - INQUIRER.net USA
LOS ANGELES — Twenty-five years after the attacks, the stories of Filipino and Filipino American victims and survivors remain part of the record – in memorials, family histories, and an internet that continues to bring them back into public view.
Search the name of a Filipino or Filipino American who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and the record often extends beyond a memorial inscription. An obituary may appear alongside a family photograph. An old interview may resurface. A newspaper story from years ago can be shared again on social media.
For Filipino American families and community organizations, those records have become part of how the people affected by 9/11 are remembered.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Filipino community organizations and news reports have identified 21 Filipino and Filipino American victims among those killed. Their names are inscribed at the National September 11 Memorial in New York.
The victims included professionals working in the World Trade Center and passengers aboard the hijacked aircraft.
Among them were Maria Theresa Santillan and Judy Hazel Fernandez, 27-year-old first cousins whose lives were cut short at the World Trade Center. Both were inside the North Tower (1 WTC) above the impact zone when the first plane struck. Fernandez was a benefits specialist at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor, and Santillan worked on the 103rd floor for its subsidiary, eSpeed. Neither survived the tower’s collapse.
Portraits of the 27-year-old first cousins, Maria Theresa Santillan and Judy Hazel Fernandez along with digitized clippings of newspaper obituaries tracking the search for them in the days following the attacks, are hosted on the Voices Center for Resilience. CONTRIBUTED
Hector Rogan Tamayo, 51, was a civil engineer and construction project manager working on the 85th floor of the South Tower (2 WTC). When United Airlines Flight 175 struck the building, it impacted floors 77 through 85, leaving Tamayo directly inside the catastrophic impact zone from which escape was impossible.
Ronald Gamboa, 33, a Gap store manager from Los Angeles, was returning from vacation with his partner, Daniel Brandhorst, and their 3-year-old adopted son, David, aboard United Airlines Flight 175. The hijacked plane struck the South Tower.
Archival photos of Ronald Gamboa, his partner Daniel Brandhorst and their young son, David, are preserved by the Voices Center Living Memorial, offering glimpses of their family life in California. CONTRIBUTED
Ramon Grijalvo, 58, an employee of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, was severely injured while evacuating the World Trade Center. He passed away from his injuries on Sept. 15, 2001.
The accounts of survivors provide another vital part of the record.
Ruben Macaraig, a computer specialist who worked on the 40th floor of the World Trade Center, was evacuating after the North Tower was struck when people in the stairwell were told to return to their offices. Macaraig pushed forward, continuing his descent down the stairwell. He successfully escaped the building shortly before the South Tower was struck.
Macaraig and his wife, Loreta, later settled in New Jersey. After retiring, he returned to painting and other artistic pursuits. His experience as a 9/11 survivor has been documented in local and Filipino American news coverage.
Angie Cordova, a Filipina lawyer and New York nurse practitioner, was riding a subway train beneath the World Trade Center when the attacks began. The train was halted, and passengers were evacuated to safety. Emerging above ground, she witnessed the burning towers and their subsequent collapse. In a GMA News interview, Cordova shared that she still preserves the physical train ticket she held on Sept. 11, 2001.
For some families, remembering a victim also became a way of continuing something that person valued.
After Marie Rose Abad was killed at the World Trade Center, her husband, Rudy Abad, donated more than $60,000 toward the construction of homes for impoverished families in Baseco, Tondo, Manila through the Gawad Kalinga framework. The resulting community was named the Marie Rose Abad GK Village.
The Filipino American record of 9/11 exists in more than one place: at the memorial in Lower Manhattan, in family photographs and recollections, in newspaper archives and in digital records that continue to circulate.
Each September, stories of the victims and survivors resurface in community publications, archives and social media. For those who were not yet born — or were children — when the attacks occurred, these accounts offer a window into the individual lives behind the names.
Twenty-five years later, the names remain. So do the stories of the lives behind them.
