Remembering 25 Year’s On

A Cork brother remembers his beloved sister Ruth and his four-year-old niece Juliana, whose lives were taken on September 11th — 25 years later, the pain remains as raw as ever

There are some losses that time simply cannot heal.

Twenty-five years after September 11th, 2001, Mark Clifford still carries the pain of losing his sister Ruth and his four-year-old niece Juliana.

I sat with Mark in his home in Cork as he remembered the two people he loved so dearly.

There was an unmistakable tenderness in the way he spoke about them.

For Mark, they are not simply two names among the thousands who died that terrible day.

They were his family.

Ruth Clifford McCourt was a proud Cork woman who had made a successful life in America. She had worked as a model, appearing in magazines including Vogue and Cosmopolitan, before building a successful career in the beauty industry.

But sitting with Mark, it quickly becomes clear that her career is not what matters most when he remembers her.

He remembers her personality, her warmth and, above all, the love she had for her little daughter.

“Juliana was a magnificent little four-year-old child, just full of life,” Mark recalled.

“She was totally the apple of Ruth’s eye… absolutely inseparable.”

Those words perhaps capture the deepest pain of all.

A mother and daughter who were inseparable were taken together.

On the morning of September 11th, Ruth and Juliana boarded United Airlines Flight 175 at Boston Logan Airport.

They were travelling to Los Angeles for a holiday and a trip to Disneyland.

They never reached their destination.

The aircraft was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Centre.

Julianna’s Godmother was on the second plane, she too perished when the aircraft ploughed inti the other tower.

Unbelievably Ron Clifford, Ruth and Marks brother was at a meeting in one of the towers at the time, miraculously he made it out alive.

Mark was in Dublin that morning attending a funeral when the first images of the attacks appeared on television.

At first, he wondered if he was watching a movie.

Then came the horrifying realisation that Ruth and Juliana were on one of the planes.

The journey back to Cork became a desperate attempt to establish what had happened as communications with the United States became increasingly difficult.

Then came the news no family should ever have to hear.

Ruth and Juliana had been killed.

Two weeks later, the family travelled to New York.

They crossed by ferry towards Ground Zero while the site was still smouldering.

The devastation was almost impossible to comprehend.

But for Mark, somewhere within that enormous landscape of destruction were his sister and his little niece.

Nine months after the attacks, Ruth’s remains were identified.

She was cremated in New York and brought home to Cork.

Around three months later, Juliana’s remains were recovered.

Finally, mother and daughter could come home together.

They were laid to rest in St Finbarr’s Cemetery.

A quarter of a century later, Mark still thinks about the life Juliana never got to live.

Today, she would be 29.

He thinks about what she might have become, what she might have achieved and what Ruth would have thought of the woman her little girl had grown into.

“If Ruth were here today, we would just be probably sitting down, enjoying the fact that Juliana has grown up and has become a beautiful 29-year-old woman,” he said.

It is a heartbreaking thought.

Because there should have been 25 years of birthdays, Christmases, family occasions and ordinary everyday moments.

There should have been conversations between a mother and her grown-up daughter.

Among the possessions recovered from the wreckage was Ruth’s wallet, remarkably intact.

When Mark eventually held it, the significance was overwhelming.

“Ruth was an extremely organised person,” he remembered.

“I wept.”

That simple sentence says more than any description of grief ever could.

Twenty-five years have passed ,the world has changed.

A new generation has grown up knowing September 11th largely through history books and television images.

But for Mark Clifford, it is personal and it always will be.

He does not want Ruth and Juliana remembered only because of the terrible circumstances in which they died.

He wants them remembered because they lived, they loved and they were loved

And because, within the Clifford family, they remain very much a part of their lives.

“Ruth’s family would just adore to have her back,” Mark said.

“But we have fabulous memories of Ruth. And that’s the most important thing to us.”

Ruth and Juliana may have been taken from their family on one terrible morning in September 2001.

But they have never been forgotten