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Michael Quackenbush, a designer of greeting cards, can't say for sure where the
impulse came from to print out the banner and stick it in his front window.
He just did it.
Neither can Alice Ammerman say why she and the rest of her Westwood
neighborhood in Chapel Hill responded the way they did to the words in the
window.
They just did.
It was nothing fancy. There was no time for that. The eight words strung out
across 11 sheets, less a message than a plea for strangers to join hands and
grope in the dark for hope.
"PLEASE PRAY FOR MY BROTHER CHRIS AND ALL"
If everyone could pray for Chris to still be alive, maybe Michael could go on a
little while longer believing his brother was.
Michael put the message up on the Friday after Sept. 11 when he and his niece,
a Carolina sophomore, drove to New York City and to the place where they would
find out if his prayer had been answered. The place where Chris used to work
that was now "Ground Zero."
Ammerman's little boy noticed the big sign in the window and told his mom about
it. Before Sept. 11, Michael Quackenbush was just the guy who lived around the
corner. After Sept. 11, she couldn't get him out of her mind. We need to do
something for him, she thought, but what?
She left messages on his answering machine, and he left messages on hers before
they finally connected. "They couldn't say he died, but they didn't have much
hope, either," said Ammerman, an assistant professor of nutrition at
Carolina.
When Michael returned home to Chapel Hill, the sign was still in the window but
all hope for his brother was gone. Now, her prayers were for Michael.
"I really didn't know him," Ammerman said of Michael. "In fact, I didn't know
him. I made a new friend."
An office on the 104th floor
Christopher Quackenbush was 44 the morning he died.
A Carolina alumnus, he was the executive in charge of investment banking for
Sandler O'Neill & Partners, a firm housed on the 104th floor of the south
tower of the World Trade Center.
The firm employed 167 people. Christopher was among the 67 still trapped inside
when the tower fell.
He had a wife and three children. He had two sisters and another brother in
addition to Michael.
But the facts of his life don't reveal the kind of man he was, Michael said.
What people need to know about his brother was not that he was a good man, or
that he was a man who made good. What they should know was that he was a man
who thrived on spreading goodness.
He had a gift for making money and a penchant for giving much of it away,
Michael said of his brother. And he did it, not to look good, but to feel
richer inside.
Consider the Sept. 17 story in the The Los Angeles Times titled "Banking
Firm Struggles with Loss of Key Leaders: With a third of its staff missing, an
investment company that prides itself on being `family' begins its difficult
recovery."
The writers of the story quote Jimmy Dunne who was among the few surviving
principals of the company, and a boyhood friend of Christopher's back in Bay
Shore, N.Y. The two met when they were 14, Dunne said. They picked up a few
bucks as caddies at a country club. In college, they painted houses and tended
bar during summer breaks. They roomed together after college. And they both
ended up going to work for Sandler O'Neill, the founder of the company, and the
man Christopher was believed to be with when the second tower began to sink
from the sky and left a churning cloud of powdered concrete in place of its
walls.
The story describes the two men this way: "Sandler, who stood more than 6 feet
tall and shaved his head, was a man of electric drive and vision, prodding the
firm to success, a take-charge, stand-up-and-talk-to-the-room kind of guy.
Quackenbush was a quieter force, a savvy handler who knew how to earn trust in
a world where business turns on personal relationships. What he gave the
office, some say, will be the hardest commodity to replace: its soul."
This was a company where people knew the names of each other's children, a
place where generosity was the rule, and "Quackenbush was often credited with
engendering that sensibility."
Dunne said in the Times story that both men had shared a trait that he
must now try to learn. Both of them got nicer as they got more successful,
Dunne said.
Michael was quoted in the Times story as well, telling about how he and
his brother and two other family members went to the seventh game of the 1986
World Series where his beloved Mets would triumph over the long-suffering Red
Sox. But Christopher had a fifth ticket, a ticket that he could easily have
sold for $500. Christopher disappeared with the ticket and returned with an
11-year-old boy named David holding it. Christopher gave the ticket to him.
Treating kids to Mets games was a habit of Christopher's. Every year, he took
600 poor children from Long Island to a Mets game and a hot dog and a chance to
meet the players down on the field. Christopher counted Mets Manager Bobby
Valentine among his friends.
The Times story told, too, of how Michael sat with his brother's
colleagues in a hotel in Manhattan, listening to tales that allowed him to see
his brother through their eyes. A few days before the tragedy, one of them
ordered lunch from a steak house. When the food arrived, one of the partners
prepared to tip the two waiters but hesitated when he pulled out his wallet and
all that was inside were two $50 bills. The partner paused, the story went,
then said aloud, "What would Quack do?" He gave each man a bill.
Days later, Michael was back home, sitting across from reporter Susan Broili
from The Herald Sun recounting the family's visit to "Ground Zero" the
week before. Michael told how his brother Brian collected dust and bottled it
for each family member. Broili's story tells about the blue glass bottle set
next to a tattered piece of paper, burned around the edges, that Michael picked
up at the site. They are the two things he returned home with in place of his
brother.
But the Broili story also tells of two potholders, wrapped with a note, gifts
made for him by children in the neighborhood. "They learned I liked to cook,"
Michael told Broili in her story.
The children were Ammerman's two little boys. They had planned on bringing him
food until Michael's next-door neighbors told them that wouldn't be necessary
-- Michael could fend for himself in the kitchen. That's when the boys got the
idea for the potholders, Ammerman said.
She remembers the conversation she had with her youngest boy, who of her three
sons had the hardest time comprehending the enormity of what happened Sept. 11.
"The only time it got through to my 7-year-old was when we were just talking
about Michael and his brother," Ammerman said. "He could grasp it at that
personal level and he sort of burst into tears thinking about that."
Learning from Dickens
Where all that goodness came from Michael can't say.
His parents? His faith in God? Or just the good heart he was born with?
All of the above, Michael said.
"I wouldn't say Chris was outwardly religious, but he was a religious man,"
Michael said. "He went to church. He was a very passionate man, very energetic
and full of life. And he didn't like to say no to people who were in need."
When they were growing up back on Long Island, one of the family rituals was to
go to midnight Mass and then come home and watch Charles Dickens' The Christmas
Carol on TV.
"It affected everybody but it affected him specifically," Michael said. "He
took it to heart."
When he became successful, he acknowledged that responsibility that Charles
Dickens wrote about.
"He dressed as Santa Claus and you don't do that if you are looking for a tax
break," Michael said. "He sat in Shea Stadium with those 600 kids. Whatever
thing he was doing he was there."
He did a lot for Carolina, too. The family's connections to the University go
back to their grandfather, Albert Ray Newsome, who was a North Carolina and
Southern historian who chaired Carolina's history department for more than a
decade.
In December 1996, Christopher established the Albert Ray Newsome Distinguished
Professorship for the Study of the South with what would end up being a
$333,000 gift.
The family has a long history with Carolina beyond Newsome, who died in 1951.
When Christopher died, he was a member of the University's Board of Visitors.
Their father was born in Brooklyn but came to Chapel Hill during World War II
for Navy preflight school. It was here their father met their mother, who grew
up in Chapel Hill. She graduated from Carolina, as did their father who
completed the two-year medical school program here before going on to Harvard
Medical School.
Of their five children, four would attend Carolina and three would graduate.
Michael attended Carolina but ended up transferring to Pratt Institute not far
from his father's old neighborhood in Brooklyn.
And now, Michael's niece is attending Carolina.
Finding the proper way to remember
Christopher did not talk about doing good things.
He just did them.
That is what Michael wants people to know about his brother. That is what makes
him worth remembering.
In an e-mail exchange with Michael, Ammerman learned about the Jacob Marley
Foundation that Christopher established and how he used it to raise funds for
underprivileged children, to support an after-school program and to fund an
organization called "Mercy Haven" that houses mentally ill outpatients as well
as the elderly.
Who was Jacob Marley? Scrooge's partner in The Christmas Carol. And Chris
captured the spirit of Marley for his own partners.
As the founder and sole member, Christopher used the foundation to pay for the
600 Mets tickets each year.
After Michael e-mailed information about the foundation to her, Ammerman wrote
him back: "Multiply the loss of someone like this who gave so much by the
numbers lost, and the impact is unfathomable."
And that is why Ammerman contacted the Gazette with the idea of doing something
to honor Christopher.
For Michael, there are still too many levels to all this to explain them all.
It is still hard to talk about his brother. Maybe it always will be.
He chooses to do so, anyway, maybe for the same reason Ammerman thought to
contact the Gazette and he thought to post that message in his window more than
a month ago -- because he knew the events of Sept. 11 fused people together in
a way that can be powerfully felt but not fully understood.
"It's like electricity," said Quackenbush, seeking a way to capture the surge
of emotions that seemed to turn the whole country into one big family with a
gaping hole at its center.
Strangers care about Christopher because of the way he died. Michael
understands that, accepts it, embraces it. If Christopher had died in a car
accident, it would have been different. There would have been no need, or
compulsion, to stick that sign in the window so others could know. "I felt a
need to do it. Why? Why are people sticking American flags in their cars? It
was very personal, yet it affected all of us. I tell people if it hadn't
personally affected me, I would have been devastated all the same. I'm grieving
my brother's loss and what happened to a lot of other people. It's bigger than
just my brother."
What Michael finds so eerie about it is that Christopher was a person who would
have known exactly what to do in a situation like this, not to make it all
right, but to find a way to make sure something good could come out of
something so bad.
He wants, most of all, for people to know his brother's life amounted to more
than a number to add to the body count.
Ammerman can't put her finger on it, either, but she came close. "One thing I
told Michael -- in a sense he, by so graciously accepting our outpouring of
concern and our attempts to find some way to help him, offered an outlet for us
as well."
Is it possible to plug into somebody else's pain and by sharing it take some of
it away?
Maybe so.
Or maybe, as Ammerman and her boys found out, helping others is a way of
uncovering the hidden joy of being needed.
And maybe that is what kept Christopher Quackenbush trying to be the ghost of
Christmas to so many for so long.
None of us will ever forget that day. Still, what Michael hopes for now is that
his brother be remembered not for the way he died, but for how he chose to
live.
That, his brother said, is what counted most of all.
The Gazette would also like to acknowledge these other alumni who were victims of September 11:
* Karleton Douglas Beye Fyfe ('92 AB), of Boston. He was a senior analyst with John Hancock and a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11.
* Mary Lou Hague ('96 BSBA), 26, of New York. She was a research analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.
* Andrew Marshall King ('83 AB), from Princeton, N.J. He was a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center.
* Ryan Ashley Kohart ('98 AB), of New York. A former men's lacrosse co-captain, he, too, was a trader with Cantor Fitzgerald.
* Dora Menchaca ('78 MSPH), of Santa Monica, Calif., was an associate director with Amgen Inc. and a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77.
Christopher Quackenbush made a generous donation to the Memorial Hall renovation project. Employees who would like to honor him by giving to the project can find out how to do so by calling George Ann Bissett at 843-5112.
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