Bin Laden Death 'Moral Victory' for 9/11 Widow

There is no way to describe him.

That is what Susan Rescorla, a former Morristown resident and widow of Rick Rescorla, said Monday of the retired U.S. Army officer who was one of about 3,000 people that died on Sept. 11, 2001. As a security chief with World Trade Center tenant Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter at the time of the attacks, Rescorla has been credited with saving many lives through the anticipation of the attacks, by implementing evacuations from the building. He was 62 years old when he died.

The phone at Susan Rescorla's Mendham Township home rang a few minutes before 11 p.m. on Sunday night. "It was one of Rick's OCS Officers that he went through school with down in Atlanta," she said. "And, he told me what happened and I was hysterical crying. I was joyous. I am elated, elated, OK. I am in joy at what has happened that I don't care how much time it took them. They got him."

While Rescorla, 69, was impressed and proud of the work of the Navy Seals that carried out the mission in Pakistan, as well as President Barack Obama who did "a fabulous job of speaking to us, to the nation in a careful way, I was especially impressed with all the side views of the people who were suddenly outside of the White House, and in West Point and in Manhattan," she said. "And, I heard a fire truck with lots of flags on it was out in the middle of the night in Manhattan.

And, I thought, 'that's what it's about,'" Rescorla said. "It's about Americans coming forward, and young people holding up 'V' signs. That's the moment I stopped crying. That, to me, brought such joy. It reminded me of the Second World War. I was actually born during a black out that was going on in New York. And, my father was overseas from three-months to three-years-old. As I got older, they always told me about 'V Day,' about Victory Day. I thought, 'this is the 'V' Day for us.'

"I put all the lights on in my house, and outside my house" after hearing about bin Laden's death. "And, I thought, 'this is what I did when my husband was murdered.' And, I felt like taking the flag out of the flag pole and marching down the street. I wanted people to wake up."

It was a far cry from how she felt immediately after the attacks, nearly 10 years ago.

"I wanted to die in the beginning," she said. Yet, the people she has met since, from other members of the military, to strangers that have learned of her husband's heroism, be it in the World Trade Center, or in the Battle of the la Drang, in Vietnam–as told in books like Heart of a Soldier, by James B. Stewart, and We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young, by Gen. Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway–helped Rescorla as she continued to "put one foot in front of the other."

On early Monday afternoon, Rescorla, who met her future husband in Morristown in 1998, had been "inundated" with calls from the media about her husband, and her reactions to the news that Osama bin Laden, the architect behind the attacks that killed her husband, had finally been killed, in Pakistan. As she spoke with Morristown Patch, Rescorla was preparing to head to New York, for an interview with CNN.

But, all this attention was OK, she said, because she wants to tell the world about the man she met on Madison Avenue in Morristown 13 years ago, running barefoot outside. She has wanted to tell the world of the man she fell in love with almost immediately after meeting him, and the impact his life, and his death, have had on her.

That is why she decided she also had to write a book about her husband, "because I didn't want to forget anything." That book, Touched by a Hero, is expected to be released in mid-August. "I wanted to thank everyone for this journey, I wanted to thank everyone."

An opera also is expected to premiere in San Francisco later this year about her husband, his best friend, Dan Hill, and herself.

While Rescorla said she is happy bin Laden is dead, she called it a "moral victory.

"The war on terrorism is still going on, and we have to be on alert more than ever before," she said.

Yet, whether Rescorla thought Osama bin Laden would ever be brought to justice or not has not consume much of her life, she said. She has work to do, mostly work that tells the world about a man she called a warrior, poet, writer, intellect and a man of wisdom.

"He was a gentle soul who loved dancing and singing," she said. "He just was everything. He was his own man, that's what he was."

For more information about Rick Rescorla, visit www.rickrescorla.com.