In the US, Charles Wolf recounts 25 years of losing his wife after the September 11 attacks
In New York, United States, Charles Wolf, whose wife Catherine was killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, spoke about living with loss 25 years after the tragedy. Catherine Wolf worked as an assistant on the 97th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where the first plane hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists crashed at 8:46.
According to YLE News, Catherine arrived at work at 8:30 that morning — half an hour early at her manager's request. She was 40 years old. She was born in Wales, studied piano in London and moved to New York for her American husband.
The morning of the attack
Charles Wolf recalls making tea for his wife before she left for work, while she ate toast. Later, he heard the noise of a passenger plane above the building and, almost immediately, a powerful explosion. Wolf ran outside in his pajamas and saw that the top of one of the towers was on fire.
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In the first minutes, he tried to understand exactly which tower his wife worked in and why she was not answering his calls. Later, Wolf received confirmation that the plane had struck the very floor where Catherine was. According to him, this information brought him some comfort, as Catherine might not have had time to realize what had happened.
Remembering the victims
After the attacks, Wolf became an activist: he pushed for a clear process for relatives of those killed to seek compensation and supported the creation of a memorial at the site of the destroyed towers. Memorial pools are now located there, with the names of attack victims engraved along their edges. Every year on September 11, relatives of those killed gather there to read out their names.
Wolf still lives in the apartment where the couple lived before the attacks and has not remarried. He described anniversaries as especially difficult, but stressed that prolonged pain should be accepted and that people should allow themselves breaks from grieving. He also voiced concern over the spread of conspiracy theories about the attacks. At the memorial, he occasionally comes to Catherine's engraved name to kiss it.
