A year on, the grieving continues
HE wanted adventure overseas, they thought he should come home to art college, so he compromised he returned to his native New York city and joined the Fire Department.
Yesterday, the two Irish sisters who persuaded Christian Regenhard he'd be a great firefighter were torn between pride at the heroism with which he gave his life on September 11 and sorrow that they ever encouraged him to put on the uniform.
Christian, who was 28 when he died in the World Trade Center attacks, was a close friend of Anita Oman-Wrynn and her sister Suhala Oman, for whom New York was their adopted home until two years ago.
The last time they saw him alive was when he came to the airport to wave them goodbye on their return to Ireland.
"He was into everything, rock-climbing, sports, always on the go," Suhala recalled. "He'd been in the Marines and his last job before the Fire Department was as a tour guide at a glacier in Chile. We were worried about him doing that, would you believe? And then for this to happen."
"I'll tell you what kind of guy he was," said Anita. "He was a sergeant in the Marines at 19. You don't have too many 19-year-old sergeants."
The sisters had T-shirts printed with an image Christian, a gifted artist, had drawn of firefighters at work, and they wept as they tied flowers and candles and photographs of their lost friend to the railings of the American Embassy.
They were among hundreds who came to pay tributes, many carrying flowers or flags or wearing the American national colours on baseball caps, souvenir sweaters bearing pictures of the Twin Towers or New York Yankees shirts.
Andrew Woods from Castleknock, Dublin, was wearing a shirt made from an American flag he bought last December while in New York for a family wedding.
"Our relatives in New York said we know you probably won't want to come but I said unless Osama bin Laden's at the airport waiting for us, we're coming. He's not going to stop us enjoying life.
"You have to stand up and show you won't be defeated. That's why I'm here."
That bond was observed with a mixture of sadness and strength at an hour-long ceremony in the garden of the American Embassy where the families of Irish victims of that catastrophic day joined with Embassy Charge d'Affaires Jane Benton Fort, the Taoiseach, members of the Cabinet, garda and defence force representatives, members of the Dublin Fire Brigade and the American Legion in commemorating the dead.
Three wreaths were laid, one in the American colours, one of laurels and one in the shape of a fireman's yellow helmet. A lone piper played a lament, stopping for a minute's silence at precisely 1.46pm, the moment, Irish time, when the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center.
Earlier, Mr Ahern and representatives of the uniformed forces had attended a special Mass in Dublin's Pro Cathedral.
Among the attendance were Finbar Coughlan and his wife Bridget, who brought up gifts in memory of Finbar's brother
Martin Coughlan, a carpenter from Cappawhite, Co Tipperary, who died in the World Trade Center when the planes struck.
At the International Financial Services Centre, work came to a halt as employees gathered outdoors to remember the hundreds of young bankers, financiers and stockbrokers just like themselves who lost their lives in the attacks.
Last year when they gathered, in similar fashion, it rained mercilessly on their sorrow.
This time, they had a late summer sky of rare and piercing blue but it only served to bring to mind more powerfully the beautiful New York morning turned to darkness a year ago.
