Mineola Residents React to Bin Laden’s Death

Sunday night Kevin Owens was at home watching “Celebrity Apprentice” when the network news broke into the broadcast. Believing it to be about Libyan leader Mummar Gaddafi, Owens was shocked when he heard that Osama bin Laden, the man whom had killed his brother Peter Jr., was now dead.

“Initially the news was most welcome,” Owens said in a telephone interview from his brokerage firm in Williston Park. “We believed that some day we would get him.”

Owens hasn’t gotten much sleep in the past 24 hours since he has been watching the news cycle, with this latest chapter of the lives of the families of 9/11 victims.

That Tuesday morning nearly 10 years ago, felt both anger and frustration at the attacks, seeing Ground Zero and the rubble of the World Trade Center up close as a first responder.

Incredibly, the two men managed to turn on the same broadcast of Fox News host Geraldo Rivera to get the full story and hearing that the al-Qaeda leader was dead at the hands of a United States missile attack and subsequent Navy SEAL incursion.

“I was pretty happy, I have to say,” Strauss said Monday morning. “Although we will never be able to go back to September 10 but this is certainly a great day for the United States of America.”

With the terrorist leader now dead, Owens feels that justice was served “to a degree,” but that it still will not bring closure to the loss his family feels and lives with each day.

“The fact that bin Laden’s gone doesn’t change that, but does it make us feel good? Yes,” Owens said. “Does it make us feel proud of America? Yes. We do feel that justice has been served, but closure? You’ll never have that.”

A trader at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower, 42-year-old Peter Owens Jr. had just moved to Mineola that same week of 9/11. His wife and their three children still live in the village, and all are graduates.

“You never get over that loss, you live with it everyday,” Kevin Owens said. “It’s strange because it brings up a lot of that sentiment and feeling that we had right after 9/11; it makes you just immediately think of my brother.”

Those sentiments were fully on display last week during the wedding of Pete Jr.’s youngest son Thomas. “It’s a bittersweet moment when you have to have a momentous family events like this without Pete there,” Kevin said.

Of the three Owens children, Thomas, now 24, graduated from Notre Dame while their daughter Maryellen is graduating this week from C.W. Post. Joe holds masters from Columbia and Adelphi.

Watching the broadcast, Strauss observed that the majority of revelers were young people, being about 10 or 15 years old on 9/11, and it was said that many of those in front of the White House were students from nearby Georgetown who came over during finals week.

“They understood the gravity of the situation and they haven’t forgotten it,” Strauss said, adding that his own sons felt a “sense of relief” at the news. “Those kids they didn’t forget, they realized what happened 10 years ago,” he said. “On 9/11 we came together because of a tragedy, now thankfully its part of a celebration of some sorts.”

Despite their loss, new family bonds have been forged with the relatives of fellow victims. 

“We’ve kind of forged friendships over the years,” Owens said of 9/11 family members from Washington, D.C. that he became close with during commission hearings in late 2001 and 2002. “It was those people that I talked to and immediately heard from when the news broke.”

Now the Corporate Director of Security and Emergency Management for the Health System, many of Strauss’s coworkers are members of his NYPD unit who went down and worked at the pile pulling survivors out.

“We all have the same sentiment – it’s a good day but the war’s not over,” Strauss said.

One of those survivors was officer Will Jimeno, whom Strauss immediately heard from once the news broke.

“He’s pretty happy that the coward was finally caught,” Strauss said. “I’m sure he would have like to have been there to do it.”

Of the special forces unit who eventually killed bin Laden, Strauss said that he doubts their names will ever be released and expressed concern that “there might be” retaliation for the killing.

“We have great pride in the military and they did a fantastic, fantastic job,” he said, adding that any “inconvenient” security procedures in a post-9/11 world are preferable to potential attacks.

“It certainly beats having another 9/11 happen,” he said.