WTC attack shattered couple’s enduring love Lawrence Boisseau credited with helping get children to safety

WTC attack shattered
couple’s enduring love
Lawrence Boisseau
credited with helping
get children to safety

Maria Boisseau and her husband, Larry, celebrated Christmas 1999 at Larry’s parents’ home in Long Island, N.Y. Boisseau, a fire safety director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, became a victim of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center tragedy as he evacuated people from his building and helped rescue children who were trapped in a day-care facility.

FREEHOLD — Every story has a hero. This one has two — the man who gave his life to help save children trapped in a daycare center on Sept. 11 and the woman he left behind.

Maria Theresa Boisseau, 42, works in the accounting department of C.F. Rutherford and Associates in New York City. She has been there for two years. Her life was irrevocably altered on Sept. 11, and the repercussions of the World Trade Center tragedy will elicit a domino effect on her life forever.

Lawrence Boisseau — Larry, as his wife calls him — left for New York to go to his job as fire safety director for the Port Authority New York and New Jersey on Sept. 11 as usual. Maria was by his side.

With no children in their lives, the two did many things together, and this extended to their work. They drove to the bus stop together, rode the bus into the city together and spent a little extra time together before they went to their jobs. Larry would then walk to his job at World Trade Center Tower One and Maria to her office two blocks away from the trade center.

She said goodbye to her husband, and they kissed. She told him she would prepare a special dinner that night.

Maria crossed the street, looked back as usual and saw her husband for the last time: Larry Boisseau is among the missing in the World Trade Center tragedy.

From later knowledge and conversations with people who had escaped the collapse, Maria learned that Larry had been on the 91st floor right before a highjacked airplane hit the tower.

She was told that, as she would have expected, when the attack was launched, he put duty above his own personal safety, as did his fellow safety officers, in order to lead trapped employees out of harm’s way and to point the way for arriving emergency crews to do the same.

She said she was told her husband also helped to save dozens of children who were trapped in one of the day-care facilities in the World Trade Center by breaking through windows and carrying them through the shattered glass to safety. He also went back to help evacuate people before the towers collapsed.

Maria still can’t believe what happened on that clear September morning but said she cannot deny the reality of the situation any longer.

She sees it every day — her office faces what remains of the two collapsed towers. The vision of the debris and rubble she sees every day stands before her as a constant reminder of how her life has been turned upside-down.

Maria returned to work at the end of September and continues to get on the bus day after day, the bus she rode with her husband for two years.

Every day, she remembers her husband, she recalls the horror and she relives the tragic series of events that took away the love of her life.

"I smell it. I taste it. I breathe it, every single day. It’s a reminder that I am not dreaming," Maria said.

The couple moved to Freehold from Queens, N.Y., in 1996. Their meeting, according to Maria, was not only romantic, "out of a storybook," but it was fate. She even said they both felt as though they had met each other in another place, another time.

Maria said she and Larry met when she went to Kennedy Airport in New York to see her mom off on a visit back home to the Philippines. Maria was already engaged to someone in the Philippines. Nevertheless, the hand of fate moved in and took Cupid’s arrow with it.

It began with a look, a special glance, and it ended up in a marriage 16 years ago.

"Larry wouldn’t give up," Maria said, laughing. "He called me every day even though he knew I was engaged. We started out just being friends."

Maria said that once her husband concentrated on something, he would not give up until he got it. She said she was absolutely swept off her feet and apparently remained that way for 16 years.

Words cannot express the loss she feels in her heart and the void she now feels in her life.

Maria recalled the everyday life they lived together. Enjoyable, ordinary activities at the time have now become extraordinary moments of beauty she will store as treasures now. She misses the feel of the life they had together, recalling the little things like coffee in the morning together, a fun evening eating pizza while watching television and picnics in Monmouth Battlefield State Park on a fall day with their dog Snuggles, a Yorkie terrier.

"We’re simple people. We were so happy we had each other. We’d always say, ‘We’re all we’ve got.’ Now I am alone," she said.

Maria recounted the details of that day, which is now etched forever on the landscape of her mind. They are memories she will try to eventually put elsewhere to make room for the memory of the beauty of the union she shared with Larry.

"My husband was working on the 91st floor before the first plane hit," she said.

Maria said she was, gratefully, not in a position to see the first plane attack. But she did see the next one. She heard the sirens, heard the commotion and was suddenly watching the scene from her cubicle. She watched as the building where her husband was working burst into flames.

"By this time we realized it was not an accident. My God, we saw people jumping out of the buildings," she said.

When she saw the flames, she tried to call her husband but couldn’t reach him. She managed to reach his boss, who told her he didn’t know where Larry was.

"I told him to tell Larry to call me as soon as possible. I told him to tell Larry to please be careful," she said. "That was the only conversation I had. My Larry never called."

Maria said that although her building was being evacuated, she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t leave without knowing her husband’s whereabouts.

"I couldn’t leave without him," she said. "I had to make sure he was OK."

Maria said her friends tried to comfort her as they were forcing her to come out of the building with them.

"When I reached the lobby, I could see the glass door. All the people were running from the building through the streets. I remember all the black smoke, and behind it, white smoke," she said. "We didn’t realize it then, but that white smoke was the dust and debris from the collapse of the towers. I didn’t see it come down."

She said her hope kept her going as she moved with the crowd down to the basement of an adjacent building to safety.

Finally, Maria walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with the others and managed to get a train to her sister’s house in Queens, where she hoped, where she prayed, where she waited for any information concerning her beloved Larry.

"I still can’t believe he’s not here with me. He wasn’t just my husband; he was my best friend. I didn’t want to leave without him that day," she said tearfully.

More than 300 people attended a memorial service for Lawrence Boisseau on Nov. 10 at St. Rose of Lima in Freehold. One of the mourners was a grandmother of one of the children Boisseau had helped to safety.

"She came to me and said she didn’t know if it would help me or not, but she wanted to thank me because, if not for my husband, she would not have her grandchild with her now," she said. "It helped."

Maria said the couple was so close that each could almost anticipate what the other would do. Consequently, it doesn’t seem surprising that Maria would still now feel the presence of her husband and best friend at times beside her in her home.

"One day I was crying into his pillow. I could feel his presence. I closed my eyes and I felt something covering me in a sudden flash of light. I didn’t want to open my eyes for a long while. I didn’t want to have that feeling go away," said Maria quietly.

"I want to see him again," she whispered. "I want to hold him again. I never had a chance to say goodbye."

Maria Boisseau will not give up hope, but she said reality is beginning to settle in.

"I would dig for him myself if they would let me. It’s too much. How could he possibly survive?" she said.

As Maria sat on her kitchen floor holding her little dog on her lap for comfort, she said she prays for one thing nowadays.

"I hope and pray that God gives him back to me so that I can put him to rest someday. I want to bury him so I can visit him. I need to have some sense of closure," she said.

In a voice barely audible Maria said, "I need to be able to say goodbye."