DAVID GARCIA, 40: A Life Composed of Courage and Passion
Posted on September 7, 2025 Leave a Comment
(May 11, 1961 – September 11, 2001)
David Garcia, 40, loved music: YES, Miles Davis, Acoustic Alchemy, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Debussy. Music underscored his challenges, triumphs, and dreams, a passion he enjoyed sharing with his young sons. “You could almost relate anything to music,” he said. College breaks were spent feverishly recording vinyl albums to cassette, listing the discography on 2×3 cards and arranging them alphabetically in the stereo cabinet he built himself. “I’m just sittin’ here, recording,” he noted, whilewriting song lyrics in letters to me, through the dating years. He built a pair of console speakers and shouldered a 20lb boom box built from car speakers and plywood. In his 30’s, he avidly supported the IMAC Theater (Inter-Media Arts Center) in Huntington Station, NY, friending the owner. We had tickets to see Acoustic Alchemy at the IMAC September 29, 2001.
Born and raised in the mid-Hudson town of Wappinger’s Falls, David graduated from Roy C. Ketcham High School with honors in 1979. Despite receiving devastating news that he was losing his eyesight to Retinitis Pigmentosa two years prior, he left home in the fall for SUNY College at Cortland, earning a B.S. degree in math and computer science, where he met his wife in 1981.
David and Deborah were 25- and 23-years-old when they married in July 1987. They purchased a ‘fixer-upper’ home in the seaport village of Freeport, Long Island, where he went to work replacing plaster with sheetrock, re-wiring, re-plumbing, and building tiered flower boxes along the front of the house for Deborah. This father of two sons put in twelve-hour workdays, taking over childcare after returning home. On the side, he coached his sons in little league, skiing, and building Lego worlds. He also loved spending weekends in his hometown, racing his newly purchased boat along the Hudson River.
He did not let the absence of a driver’s license or employment discrimination due to his disability keep him from moving forward. In 1985, he moved to New York city where he began his professional career as a mainframe programmer. Over sixteen years, this devoted family man carved a robust career as an IT professional and CEO of his consulting LLC, Rapid Business Software, developing a sought-after reputation in software-engineering with leading global financial companies, ultimately bringing him to Marsh & McLennan at One WTC in 1999. He had been planning a career shift from software engineering to web development in the Summer of 2001. Three weeks after 9/11, Deborah discovered a To-Do list on his computer synched from his Palm Pilot on September 9— Send web resume to concentric.net, Morgan Stanley… . A resume was sent 9/10, interviews were scheduled for 9/27. Also noted, Wills – Due Date, 9/10/01: Discuss simple will with financial planner: ask for testamentary trust and guardianship of children.He journaled, “There are many things to do in the time that is left.”
He was always willing to help family and friends with home repair and computer jams. His boys knew that Daddy could fix anything. A basement bench held a rotating supply of broken toys, notably a prized remote control boat that he had stayed up late repairing on the 10th.
David’s enthusiasm for life was not lost to the questionable future of his vision. He moved through the world with such finesse that few noticed his blindness. “The one thing in life,” he wrote, “is to try and get a lot of fun”—a mantra that epitomized his resolve to capture rich experiences before his world went dark.
Portions of David’s remains— recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center— were identified between February and August 2002. He was among 295 colleagues whose lives were taken in the attacks.
© 2025 Deborah Garcia, All rights reserved
BREAKING NEWS: Path Clearing In the 9/11 Case For Kingdom of Saudi Arabia To Face Trial
Posted on August 28, 2025 Leave a Comment
Judge Daniels, of the Federal Court in the Southern District of New, just delivered a decision and order to deny KSA’s motion to dismiss.
This motion was initially brought to the SDNY by KSA in 2004.
Judge Daniels accepted evidence that undeniably links Saudi officials to provide financial and logistical support to hijackers.
The judge did not buy that the drawing of an airplane with equations related to the height and distance of a plane’s flight path, (found in Omar al-Bayoumi’s London apartment) had any reasonable explanation, dismissing a claim of being his son’s high school homework assignment, asserting the drawing “facially (directly) connects Bayoumi, with knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.” The judge further finds that Bayoumi’s 1999 videotaping casing of the Capitol, supporting FBI documents indicating him as a Saudi intelligence asset. Additional evidence proved he had frequent contact with consular official and Imam Fahad al-Thumairy, employed by KSA’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs (MOIA), also alleged to have direct links with two of the 9/11 hijackers with whom Bayoumi lived in California. Thumairy was chief Imam at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California and a diplomatic employee at the Saudi Arabian Consulate General in Los Angeles. The judge finds that “KSA sent Omar Al Bayoumi and Al Fahad Thumairy to the U.S.,” as government employees, concluding that “Plaintiffs have shown that Bayoumi, Thumairy, and KSA knowingly, or at least with deliberate indifference, supporting the hijackers’ terrorist activity,” by “providing assistance to the hijackers” in the U.S.
Much of the evidence presented had been turned over to the FBI in the early weeks after the 9/11 attacks, by the British police force, and questionably mishandled by the FBI and CIA, downplaying the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s ties to al-Qaeda plotters and their role in the 9/11 attacks. Here.
Further, The court asserts, “Plaintiffs present sufficient facts to support a reasonable inference that their claims satisfy the JASTA exception.”
The years of investigation and arguments that this ruling builds upon, has been bolstered by the efforts of 9/11 families in the 2016 passage of the Justice Against Sponsor’s of Terrorism Act (JASTA- Public Law No. 114-222). JASTA law amends the Foreign Soverign Immunities Act, Anti-Terrorism Act, and the Effective Death Penalty Act. It allows all victims of international terrorism to file suits, holding foreign governments not designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism, accountable when providing support to terrorism acts inflicted upon American citizens. The act waives soverign immunity for foreign states casuing injury or death in the United States by an act of international terrorism in the U.S. or tortious acts of agents of that foreign state while in office or employed regardless of where the the acts occurred here, and here.
Promise of Justice demands transparency and accountability. We will not stop until every line of truth is unveiled and every path of justice is secured— for generations to come!
© 2025 Deborah Garcia
VOICES 2025 NYC Symposium
Posted on August 27, 2025 Leave a Comment
9/11 Victims, Families, Responders, Survivors, and Providers are invited to attend FREE of charge, September 10th at the NY Marriott Downtown, in-person or virtually.
Meet members of VOICES Center For Resilience. Engage with 9/11 community members who witness the Military Commission proceedings at Guantanamo Bay. Get live updates from attorneys on the Multi-District (MDL) legal proceedings regarding Saudi Arabia and the USVSSTF. Get updates on the VCF from the fund Special Master, and more.
Lunch is included with registration.
ON RESONANT LOVE
Posted on August 1, 2025 Leave a Comment
Deep within the fifth-floor galleries of MoMA, a modest-sized shadowbox frame contains the hypnotic canvas of limp pocket watches draped over figures objectifying time and life’s impermanence. The three prominent dreamlike figures appear fluid and denuded, are fixed in a surreal minimalist landscape stroked in soft hues of blue-grays and golds resemblant of dawn’s wakening glow. Equally as iconic as the flowing drapery in Ruben’s allegorical painting of the Three Fates (housed in the Louvre), are the melting clocks that captured Salvador Dali’s imagination in The Persistence of Memory (1931). The imagery blends politics, symbolism, and metaphor to confront notions of cosmic order, temporal guise, and destiny that embodies the melancholy caused by time and space.
A leafless tree limb supports a slackened timepiece, pointing toward the horizon beyond a sea flanked by a golden empty terrain of possibility. A soft pocket watch, visited by a fly, bends over the sharp edge of a wood mantle, facing upward to reflect the blue-gray firmament and the winged shadow of perseverance and transience in a new dawn. Cast in contrast, a locked timepiece is fixed beside the melting mantle clock, covered in ants imbibing on the decay of time. A pillowy-white figure with dark lashes, resembling a partial human profile, floats in the unconscious darkness— a clock blanketing the tenderness drapes over the softness as though saddling the cusp of becoming.
Dali’s clocks are blurred, near opaque. Light reflects on the face’s curvy metallic edges, like the burnished glint on tarnished spoons, the white-gold band I wore as a bride in my twenties, or the silver Mercy Band I’ve worn on my right wrist since entering Ground Zero on September 11th, 2002. Anniversaries have rarely brought joy. The bend of time has sculpted a groove beneath the gold band.
The evening of July 25, 2001 was a balmy 95 degrees, like our wedding day fourteen years before. Enjoying our first meal at our new patio dining table on the deck completed two weeks prior, evoked an atmosphere of triumph and contentment. Aside from the milestone time stamp, a trip to Fehn’s Bakery (formerly Gersts, where our wedding cake came from) in Seaford, Long Island, and the diamond-flanked ruby necklace wrapped in gold foil, it was an ordinary Wednesday— Dave worked a full day, I wrote reports, the boys chased each other with water guns. It was too late and humid to consider hair and eye shadow, and in everyone else’s case, shirts. While David grilled the steak, I hurried to toss potato salad and squeeze a red #14 atop the ceremonious carrot cake, the edge marred from racing around a corner. The effect of squeezing a gelatinous ribbon of color from a plastic tube rendered an imprint that looked elementary— wavy bands with globby orbs— as though there would be more anniversaries to hone the lines. By the time the cake blessed the table, our 4-year-old had passed out, legs draped over the arm of a chair.
On the table was a whimsical card with a pink cartoonish rose on the cover. Inscribed inside— “Dew me,” Dear Still going after 14 years! With Love and Affection, your Husband. Though this instance of dew was a playful twist of glistening beads on morning petals and action, the tropes of love I’ve carried into courtrooms, memorials, and conference rooms have defined my life since the closing of that sappy sentimental fold.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes the word husband as first used in 13th century Old English as a noun meaning master of a house, to dwell as in— remaining for a time, also akin to the Old Norse etymology meaning to inhabit as in— to be present in any manner of form.
* * *
I’ve learned over the years that it is not presence alone that inspires connection, but something much more elusive, some kind of cosmic alignment between a personality and an imprint.
Recently, someone asked, How do you know?” Having been in a few long-term relationships they said, “I never had that level of connection.”
“The relationship is easy, I said— It just is.”
48 days after our 8-year-old lit our faces in the flash of a joyful moment, the image would remain on a negative ribbon rolled tight in a date-stamped cartridge until time developed and slipped it into the frame positioned behind a candle across from the chair where I ponder poetry.
Glowing in the eternal flame is a resonant love, an energy intensified by triumphs, failures, and adjustment, that expands beyond what is tangible.
Contrary to unrequited love, where love returned hardly ever resembles love given, resonant love is a synchronous relational vibration. Some people describe it as soulmate love. Like violins made by the Italian master Stradivari, the vibrations possess a quality of resonance that later violinmakers can never precisely duplicate.
When I stepped out onto the front porch of our Long Island home— waiting for my 4-year-old’s school bus— after witnessing the sudden death of my husband, my world shifted. Everything familiar of my physical surroundings was unfamiliar. It was as though I had died and re-awakened into a distorted universe with my senses misaligned, the world muted— the sky had no color, words lacked meaning, and air scorched my skin. I stumbled against the force of gravity.
The moment David left the World, the shadow of time halted then cleaved into simultaneous instruments of time— a durante vida and a post mortem— the shrinking span of existence and the expanding arc of surrealism, reflecting a collapse of a perceived fixed cosmic order. Like Dali’s melting timepieces, the rigid clock that holds hands over to-do lists, Day-Timers, and wealth plans softens to a fluidity of time that bends and warps certainty, memory, and the subconscious. A state of confusion bending reality.
In a chaotic world fraught by continuous discontinuity, the evolution of relationship sundered by the black flower of death, unfurls into the chrysanthemum of continuity. The resonant love becomes vibrational echoes, a slow incantation that shapes the landscape of what endures. An ache to reach toward what is known, a homeland grounding in the surreal and familiar.
Poet David Whyte writes about unrequited love in Consolations (Many Rivers Pres, 2016); “… a love returned rarely ever resembles a love given, but unrequited love is the form that love mostly takes. Requited love may happen but is a beautiful temporary… an aligning of stars coming only once every long cycle. The great discipline, he writes, seems to be in giving up control in how we are requited.” I don’t know which specific elements of our relationship depart from this wisdom. Dating game aside, there were no severe elements of unmatched wanting, need, or control in our marriage. Movement mirrored need.
Perhaps it was the unique bond formed as a response to his blindness, a practical need and trust described by Andrew Leland in Country of the Blind, as though we were “a single human blanket organism.” David and I checked in with each other several times on workdays, planned individual activities together, and shared clearly defined roles in childcare and life management. Our schedules were intricately synched— boys in tow, we navigated the hardware store, car tune-ups, and eye appointments. The four of us moved through life with the “full intimacy and unmeditated experience” of being like a single organism with four voices and eight legs.
Maybe, our love was predestined in the alignment of the cosmos, an energy which bumped us together on a campus sidewalk and thrust us apart in a twenty-year span framed by a single calendar page— September 11th. Is it possible that we embody a meta-human quality of affection that is un-measurable and transcendent— a resonant love, a radiant ethereal energy inhabiting the afterlight?
Perhaps it is pretentious for me to assert that Whyte’s meditation on love contradicts our own truth. Throughout the twenty years of our relationship, David and I had become best friends, each other’s cheerleader, confidante, shoulder. Meeting at 17 and 20, we sculpted adulthood together, four hands on a lump of spinning clay, pushing towards a center, shaping something functional. I was the fire on the stove, the eyes on the road, the hand in the dark. He was the bread on the plate, the point of interest on the map, the embrace in the night. He needed my sight, I needed his vision.
* * *
Since David’s departure I have worn and tossed another’s ring, moved the deck chairs to another home, and perfected the lines and edges of hundreds of celebratory cakes. At this thirty-eight-year mark of our marriage, we have been physically apart more years than together. Throughout the twenty-four years of his absence, I have raised our sons, championed for justice, and rooted in the world the legacy he never got to carry forward. What I have learned in the shifting landscape of intimate remembering is that love is the throughline upon which transformation occurs. Evolution bends the lines forward. Continuity holds its shape. No measure of time diminishes the persistent resonance of memory.
This July 25th, I honor our anniversary with reverence to the requited love we share. Seated alone at the table, I fork a single slice of carrot cake in a take-out box, raise a martini glass to the cosmos, and toast—
“Dear, with love and affection, your wife X/O!”
© 2025 Deborah Garcia, all rights reserved
Image by Deborah Garcia
Card by Hallmark
UPDATE ON MILITARY COMMISSIONS AT GUANTANAMO BAY
Posted on July 7, 2025 Leave a Comment
Presented by: John Ryan, Colleen Kelly, and Deborah Garcia — Wednesday, July 16th – 7:00 PM EST
Join the Voices Center For Resilience in a conversation about the experience of attending Military Commissions hearings with Lawdragon journalist John Ryan, and September 11th family members Deborah Garcia and Colleen Kelly.
This presentation is intended as an overview of the history and experience of attending proceedings, and will not discuss viewpoints about the potential outcome.
Upon FREE Registration, a Zoom link will be sent to your email.
WHO IS THE REAL ENEMY? Justice how and when for 9/11 victims and families?
Posted on May 12, 2025 Leave a Comment
Terrorist states that hate America and Israel. Deals with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to extridite Omar al-Bayoumi? Misguided executive orders and the DOJ, gifts from financiers of terrorism equals distractions. This administration is not paying attention.
Omar al-Bayoumi is not the path to 9/11 justice. He is the newest distraction, one flying monkey delaying transparency in the case against the Kingdom, trebbling at the Southern District Court in New York. The Cold War simmers on. Nuclear escalation continues amid rising regional tensions. States with little knowledge and scruples in nuclear material management have capacity for building weapons of mass destruction. Deals? We are not safe.
I’m not a Fox News minion however, Mark Levin is on point.
https://youtu.be/ONnMgYod4nQ?si=yyXLhDhi47doPBYq
This? Happy Birthday dear David. Not 😡
I respect and understand the collective frustration. I want this human (neutral term to not be banned from FB) to be incinerated. But…
1. The US does not have an extradition agreement with Saudi Arabia. (We’re) howling into the wind for something that just is never going to happen and even if it did justice would never come from it. This push is serving no purpose. It’s not the way to needle into negotiations with the Saudi government, which does not admit Bayoumi was a government employee. An ‘extraordinary’ deal to extradite him could incite the Kingdom to say, “sure, take him, now we’re done,” compromising our MDL case that we’ve spent a decade building. If our government is going to negotiate with Saudi Arabia then they negotiate with Saudi Arabia, with a deal to admit complicity and settle with the families.
2. This will cost $Millions and take FOREVER. Justice will NEVER be rendered in US courts. Even if he’d be found “guilty”, he’d never be nor live long enough to endure a day of sentencing in Neverland. We will be doing Saudi Arabia’s and al-Qaeda’s work, further victimizing ourselves through generations. Look at GTMO. $13 million per year, per detainee – 21 years! And we have to bloodlet for every percentage point of our USVSST judgements for 20 years with warnings there could be nothing for us in any year.
Saudi Arabia should admit complicity, compensate the families and sentence their own nationals in their own country.
3. Cantor Fitzgerald did good for Families. Not new news for me however, this NYT report digs into the wound, highlighting the early disparities of compensation. My husband, a high-earning three-year IT Contractor for Marsh and McLennan, just four flights below Cantor, received miniscule company benefit, no health insurance, etc. Congress confiscated that and our privately funded life insurance policy, and pre-calculated Social Security Survivors benefits in VCF Offsets!
I don’t wish to rant about dollars. I’ve managed to survive it all. My son did not. Justice is about more than money and trapping one escape-artist goat. It’s about full accountability, time-honored restitution and finality, prioritizing the victims, and awarding the victimized peace and grace from all of the madness.
Importantly, in our case — the largest MDL (Multi-District Litigation) in history, the landmark event of our lifetime — holding the Kingdom, Sudan, et. al. accountable is about National Security.
My current reality, I really need to get to mopping floors before my house guest arrives.
Have a nice day!
© 2025 Deborah Garcia, all rights reserved
PLEASE DO NOT WISH ME ‘HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!’
Posted on May 11, 2025 Leave a Comment
This Mother’s Day is May 11th. It also happens to be David’s 64th birthday. Chat GPT says it’s a rare occurrence happening in intervals of 5, 6, and 11 years. He has missed 24 birthdays and Mother’s Days. My mother has missed 43 Mother’s Days. She never met David.
The last Mother’s Day when Dave blew out candles (36) occurred in 1997. Davin was four weeks old. His actual due date was May 11th. We were building our little world, manifestiing our dream. The next time Mother’s Day fell on May 11th was in 2003, Davin was ten, Dylan was six. We sent balloons to Daddy in heaven.
The last time that May 11th fell on Mother’s Day was 11 years ago. Davin was away at College in Wellesley, MA and Dylan was a high school junior. Fulfilling the dream, our world was re-building
This time, neither Dave nor Davin are in the world. It is the 4th year of this Hallmark betrayal. Dylan is living in Brooklyn, NY. He is a wonderful human and I am blessed to be his mother. I’m publishing this post from my Vermont home where I live with my cat – Jimi, and border collie – Stevie.
1’s litter my spiritual landscape, doubled. In numerology, if you keep encountering 1’s — whether in readings, patterns, or personal experiences—it often signifies a fresh start, personal empowerment, and the need to take initiative. Some believe that repeated ones are a sign from the universe or guardian angels urging you to stay positive and take action toward your goals. Though you may need to focus on self-reliance and confidence, your thoughts and intentions are shaping your reality.
If my thoughts and intentions do not shape a reality which seduces the nigredo, (Latin meaning blackness) then how to carry the amassed tragedies to the fated dawn? The nigredo, used by Carl Jung as a metaphor for the dark night of the soul, is a phase where an individual confronts their shadow self before transformation. Jennifer Leigh Selig, PhD states that when we’re at the bottom of a well, and start to pull our heads away from the darkness to envision a pinhole of light on the wall, we imagine that there could be a healing way out of this darkness that we’re in. It is a form of alchemy known as resilience. One that I am intrinsically wired for.
While writing this, I asked Chat GPT to draw a digital Tarot card for me. They drew a Sun card: meaning the Sun always follows darkness and that I am stepping into a brighter, more abundant chapter of my life. Alchemy.
Child loss, whether through death or estrangement is a maternal devastation which tints everything, like looking through night goggles, especially those prominent days in the calendar—birthdays, holidays, Mother’s day. And in my case, Father’s day and anniversaries. It’s everywhere all the time. When you have conceived, birthed, and/or raised a child who is no longer in this world, you are a mother every day. However, this Sunday the calendar tolls the nigredo. My son’s suicide punctuates the inescapable sense of maternal failure. What makes Mother’s Day, as well as other notable days, more ignoble are the platitudes, which deepen the well – “Happy Mother’s Day!” “Have a wonderful day.”
I do appreciate the intimacy of those who take a minute to reach out. To know they are thinking of me is the light on the wall. Yet, the ask is to not bid me to feel happy, wonderful, or joyful, because I’m struggling to turn lead into gold. The ask is to neutralize the sentiment by dropping the adjectives, allowing space for emotions and reverence – thinking of you today, sending kind thoughts, “Mother’s Day greetings, or simply send a flower emoji.
A warm Mother’s Day nod to all mothers, mother-figures, and fur mamas.
© Deborah Garcia 2025, all rights reserved
Photos by author: First Mother’s Day as “Mommy” with Davin – May 11, 1993 / 1991 – David’s 30th.
OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD!
Posted on May 1, 2025 1 Comment
Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda and key mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, was killed on May 1, 2011 during a U.S. military operation known as Operation Neptune Spear. The raid was carried out by Navy SEAL Team Six at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, marking a significant moment in the fight against terrorism. President Bush stated, “this momentous achievement marks a victory for America and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.”
The Headlines read: ‘OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD!’ Celebrations erupted in the streets of New York City and in cities across the world reminiscent of May 8, 1945 when Hitler was killed (April 30th), Germany surrendered, and President Truman declared “Victory in Europe,” bringing WW ll in Europe to an end. Crowds joined in jubilatory displays of patriotism, waving American flags and cheering, “USA, USA!”
My phone and email flooded with congratulatory messages from friends and family, “I’m so happy for you, now you have the closure you’ve waited ten years for.” “You and Dave finally have the justice you deserve, now he can rest in peace.” The outpouring of excitement over the latent capture of a single iconic terrorist who murdered my husband was overwhelming. Added to the media trumpets, phone calls, text messages, and emails flooded the placid space of my Vermont home. I had turned everything off for several days and when I re-opened it all, I was hit by the howling wind of messages. The feelings that swept through me were a surreal paradox, like when the wicked witch of the west was killed and Dorothy’s safety was avenged, however upon returning home she discovered that nothing could ever be what it was before the tornado. My husband is still dead.
From the East Room of the White House, President Obama declared that “justice has been done,” in his address to the American public. Yet, although May 1, 2011 lives in infamy in the shadow of the attacks bin Laden ministered in September, 2001, 9/11 victims and family members are no closer to justice fourteen years after The Star-Spangled Banner chorale has faded. It took another eleven years and a split-second decision to find bin-Laden’s co-architect and successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri to be killed in a Hellfire missile attack. It’s taking forever to bring to trial and lock away the four (five) accused al-Qaeda 9/11 planners and agents, leafing through issues of Car and Driver at the U.S. Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
From 2011 forward, on this day, Americans will open a paper or a broadcast and hear Osama bin Laden’s name. When, Mr. President, will the Military Commissions, the Department of Justice, and the confessed accused, languishing in Constitutional purgatory on America’s dollars, hear my husband’s name at a sentencing trial, and now my son’s name, with the names of the 2,976 civilians murdered by this cabal of evil?
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is-killed.html
© 2025 Deborah Garcia, all rights reserved
