On that fateful Sept. 11 morning, as John Winter watched the horrors of the World Trade Center Towers burn, then crumble, he knew his life would be changed forever.
What he didn't know at the time is how it would bring him closer to his own gay community.
Winter, now 49, lived with his lover, Tony Karnes, then 37, in an apartment just three blocks south of the twin towers. Karnes worked on the 97th floor of One World Trade Center, or the north tower. Until Sept. 5 of 2001, Winter worked on the 99th floor of the same tower. In a twist of luck that saved Winter's life, his company relocated their offices from the World Trade Center less than a week before the attacks.
Karnes had left for work at about 8:30 a.m. that fateful morning, minutes before the American Airlines plane crashed into building, turning into a towering inferno. At the couple's home, Winter heard "what sounded like a loud thunder." The curious noise caused him to peek out the window, where he saw several floors of One World Trade Center spewing smoke.
"I looked out the window and realized the smoke was covering the area right where Tony's desk was," says Winter.
Winter grabbed for his cell phone, but Karnes' work line had gone dead. Panicking, Winter rushed out of the apartment and ran toward the building that would become his lover's grave. He was forced to turn back by dangerous flying debris and by firemen who prevented him from getting any closer to the building.
Karnes and Winter had met three years earlier at a technology convention in Memphis, Tenn. In 1999 they moved together to New York City, and Karnes was simply enamored by its glitz and energy. He loved movies and the spicy hot ethnic foods from around the world, especially Indian cuisine. "New York was one big adventure to him," says Winter. "We were still discovering all the different little exciting new areas of it."
Though both men were comfortable with their sexuality, and certainly had other gay and lesbian friends, Winter says that before the tragedy they were "not very much part of the gay scene." They didn't go to bars or pay much attention to gay and lesbian political rights groups or read the gay papers. "It seemed being gay together was enough," says Winter.
It wasn't until Winter lost the man he loved that he realized how much he needed his community, too.
While Winter's company set up bereavement sessions for people who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center, Winter says he felt "isolated and disconnected" at the group meetings. All the other participants were heterosexuals. Winter was the only one who'd lost a gay partner. At times, he says, others acted as if his loss was somehow not as equally devastating as the loss of a husband or wife. "I wanted to talk to people who understood," he says.
So he phoned the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of New York, and began attending a bereavement group there. Ironically, at that group, none of the other surviving partners had lost their loved ones during the attacks on the World Trade Center. Many had lost lovers to AIDS. But how a person lost a lover turned out to be less important than the understanding of what that loss really meant. Winter felt much more at home with the gay group from the Center than with the bereavement group from work.
And that was just the beginning of how Winter would lean on his community for help during the most devastating time of his life.
Several weeks after the tragedy, Winter received a call from the Empire State Pride Agenda, a New York state gay and lesbian rights group. The organization had seen Winter's name in the press as a surviving partner, and called to offer Winter help in applying for aid from relief agencies.
ESPA helped Winter collect all the documents and evidence he needed to prove to relief agencies like the Red Cross that he and Karnes were indeed a couple who were financially as well as emotionally intertwined. "I was numb from the trauma" of losing a lover and witnessing the attacks on the World Trade Center, says Winter. "I wasn't up to filling out forms and going through paperwork."
To help him, a member of ESPA...indeed, Matt Foreman, at the time ESPA's executive director...personally escorted Winter to the offices where he could apply for assistance.
And later, Winter would get advice from the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund about how to settle Karnes' estate, and how he might apply for a settlement from the federal Victims Compensation Fund, the federal fund set up as an alternative to suing the airlines to compensate family members of people who died on Sept. 11.
Gay relationships are not recognized in any legally significant ways by the state or federal governments. In addition, Karnes died without a will, making any claims by Winter as Karnes' lover all the more complicated.
The painful experience of losing his lover has shown Winter, however, that he is not alone. That in the most difficult time of his life, the gay and lesbian community was there for him.
Winter has never considered himself a gay activist, and he still doesn't. But one thing he has learned from this horrible experience, he says, is just how important it is to have organizations that fight for the recognition of our relationships. "It was almost as if my life with Tony was legally invisible," he says.
Today, he has joined ESPA, as well as the Human Rights Campaign, and continues to go to the gay and lesbian community center.
"I've never felt more a part of the community."
MubarakDah@aol.com
