There is a street corner in East Atlantic Beach, a hamlet in the township of Hempstead, Long Island, N.Y., sporting a traffic light pole decorated with a collection of pertinent signs. "No Turn on Red" is a throwback to those ancient days when there was no turning on red anywhere in New York. "To Bridge" with an arrow refers to the Atlantic Beach Bridge, built 75 years ago (thank you, Robert Moses) and connecting Far Rockaway with the skinny island stretching eastward to Point Lookout.
The street signs themselves designate the intersection of Beech Street, the main thoroughfare, and Oswego Avenue, a short road that dead ends southward at a sea wall, beyond which lie the East Atlantic Beach Park and the waves of the great ocean. There is a third sign as well, secured just beneath "Oswego Ave" that reads, in full, "9-11 Charles P. Lucania Ave."
Chances are good that flowers and messages have appeared there Sept. 11 in memory of an electrician working on the 98th floor of the 110-story South Tower of the World Trade Center 25 years ago. Charlie Lucania, 34, made one last phone call that morning to his mother, Marie Lucania, known to everyone as "Cookie," alarmed at the sight of a jet crashing into the North Tower and promising her that he was heading for the ground floor. He didn't make it and, as a result, he became one of the 2,753 office workers, visitors, technicians, and first responders who perished after another jet hit the South Tower, and both structures collapsed in a hurricane of concrete, twisted steel, and choking debris.
Richie Migliore didn't know right away that Lucania, first cousin of Migliore's wife, Carmela, had been working in the South Tower. It was a Tuesday—a golden, late summer morning on Long Island—and Migliore was on his way home to Floral Park after working horses at Belmont Park when a friend called to tell him the shocking news that planes had hit the towers.
This week, at the passage of those 25 years, Migliore was asked to go back and then forward, now that time has thankfully absorbed some of the impact of the unspeakable trauma. The racing communities of New York and New Jersey were deeply scarred by the 9/11 attacks. It seemed as if everyone knew someone or was close to a family who lost someone that day.
Migliore, who retired after winning 4,450 races, has become one of racing's most effective communicators as an analyst for the Fox Sports broadcasts of New York racing. He was reached Sept. 10 at his farm in the Hudson Valley.
"Today is a day much like that day," Migliore said. "It's absolutely beautiful outside."
The benign backdrop of bright sunlight provided no distraction from what was transpiring beneath the bright, blue Manhattan sky. The South Tower fell at 9:59 a.m. ET, and the North Tower followed at 10:28 a.m.
"One thing stands out," Migliore continued. "Our neighbors in Garden City were really affected. We lost a lot of people. So many of them worked down there. I don't think I realized it then as much as I do now just how much it changed entire communities. Life was never the same."
How could it be? Nearly 3,000 dead. The remains of more than 1,000 individuals still without identification to this day. The shock waves that rippled across the nation were nothing compared to the impact on New York—its heart, its soul, its very landscape. Coping mechanisms were in high gear.
"Looking back, I remember trying so hard not to let it affect us," Migliore said. "If we did, it was almost like saying the terrorists win. When the Broadway shows started playing again, people weren't going back, and all I could think of was taking my kids to see 'The Lion King.' But really, I was almost in a state of shock."
Migliore was still riding high back then, enjoying what turned out to be the best season of his 22 years in the saddle in terms of purses won by his mounts. He had won two races on Sept. 9, 2001, on his way to 191 for the year. In the wake of 9/11, he tapped the brakes on his competitive passions to reflect on the tragedy in a guest commentary for what was then the weekly Blood-Horse magazine.
"On the morning of Sept. 12, I steered my car to Belmont, where everyone's mood would best be described as both somber and dazed," Migliore wrote in the Oct. 10, 2001, issue. "I went to the roof of the racetrack and gazed out toward where the towers used to stand just 12 miles away. I saw nothing but a massive cloud of smoke.
"Officials of the New York Racing Association made the right move to cancel racing for the next week," Migliore continued. "It was a hard decision, but a respectful one. People in New York, and around the globe for that matter, needed time to heal, to contemplate, to love.
"Since that awful day, living in New York has been different," he wrote. "People think differently. People act differently. People speak differently. Unless you live here, you just cannot completely understand."
In his commentary, Migliore also mentioned the loss of his cousin, by marriage, and that Carmela Migliore had lost another cousin in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
"To have to go through that twice ..." said Migliore, trailing off. "And her family is extremely close—the kind of Italian family other Italian families envy. The way they band together, in good times and bad, has always been something I feel privileged to be a part of."
Charles Peter Lucania was an indispensable part of that family. When he went to work in the South Tower that day, on a job for the electrical firm P.E. Stone, he was seven days away from celebrating his 35th birthday. To read tributes to Lucania, it would have been a rocking great party. His renovated cottage on Oswego Avenue was beach close headquarters for friends and family who took happy advantage of his open-door policy.
"He was such a good young man," Migliore said. "For his parents to have gone for this length of time knowing he perished in the attacks, but not having anything to hold on to, has made it that much tougher. As if it could get any tougher."
There was some solace in the ceremony of June 4, 2011, when family members gathered to witness the name of Charles P. Lucania being added to Oswego Avenue in East Atlantic Beach, just a few doors down from his home. By then, hundreds of streets and a variety of civic sights had been renamed in honor of New Yorkers who died on 9/11.
"It's a great neighborhood," Migliore said. "Great restaurants, the beach right there. From there, (it) was always easy to get to Aqueduct, Belmont, or the city, which are pretty much the only three places you'd want to go. Charlie had moved into his place not too long before, and he was living his life."
Life has gone on. After the close of the recent Saratoga Race Course meet, Migliore has been on a brief holiday before gearing up for the grand opening of the new Belmont Park Sept. 18. In his corner of the world, the 25th anniversary of 9/11 will come and go quietly.
"More often than not, I'm working on that day," Migliore said. "This year, Carmela and I are going to be home together, which is something we don't always get to do. Being it's the 25th, I'm happy about that."
