Joseph Sabino Mistick: Doing right by the victims of 9/11

Mike Comber was a young associate with a big law firm in Pittsburgh on Sept. 11, 2001. Like many Americans, Comber was changed by what happened that day. He decided to enter public service. Within months, he was appointed an assistant U.S. attorney.

Not long after Comber changed jobs, Congress created the Victims Compensation Fund to handle thousands of death and injury claims resulting from the attacks. It was a way to get some compensation and justice for the victims.

Comber represented the Western District of Pennsylvania as a hearing officer along with a small group of other assistant U.S. attorneys — one from each district that had terrorist activity on 9/11. After a quick orientation, they began taking testimony in Virginia and Manhattan from the injured survivors of the attacks.

For six months, each attorney conducted six interviews every day. The job was to determine the facts of each victim’s case and eventually recommend a fair award. And as bad as you can imagine that the descriptions would be of those horrible days in September, they were worse.

Each case by itself was enough to knock them back emotionally. Taken together, the cases were overwhelming. And while there was a common mix of physical injuries, emotional injuries and survivors’ guilt, each claim was unique to the individual victim.

Many of the claimants were police officers and firefighters and, because these interviews were private, it was often the first time they had spoken freely of what they had seen on 9/11. Because of that, Comber and his colleagues got to see the events of that day through fresh eyes.

“These were people who saw it, lived it and, for better or worse, survived it,” Comber says. “And just the retelling of it took courage.”

Away from their families for six months and immersed in the details of endless suffering, Comber and his colleagues had to lean on each other. They came to know things that only they would know.

“We were given the opportunity to serve those who had served all of us. As we sat with them, we all knew that some of them would be gone in months because they stepped up and did their duty for the rest of us, for the country,” Comber says. Sadly, they were right, as hundreds of police and firefighters have died from illnesses related to the attack.

In time, the Victims Compensation Fund completed its work, and the small corps of assistant U.S. attorneys returned to their families and regular assignments. They have stayed in touch over the past 20 years — taking annual trips together or meeting for family cookouts.

As Comber, now back in private practice, tells it, “Listening to the victims describe their actions that day, their loyalty, their sense of duty, we all knew then that we would never again do anything as meaningful and important. What we heard from them changed us forever.”

Only Comber and his colleagues know what they talk about at their reunions. But we do know that they came together during the last period when Americans were really together and united. And they work to keep that feeling alive.

We should remember that the next time we allow ourselves to be diverted or entertained by those self-serving talking heads or politicians who make money or garner fame by widening our divisions.