A September 11th Memory

Every year when September 11th rolls around, I recall not only the attacks that occurred on that date in 2001, but my mind also goes back to the memory of the passing of my friend and co-worker from William Penn House, Barbara Silverman.

The first time I met Barbara was the evening I showed up at William Penn House for my interview for the Interim Executive Director position.  I rang the doorbell of the 1920’s Capitol Hill row house, was buzzed in, and at the top of the front stairs a small person peered around the corner.  “Can I help you?” 

I explained I was there for the interview, and she told me to come upstairs.  Barbara, who was the Acting House Manager at the time, was four feet ten inches tall, had jet black hair, and was wearing a robe over a night gown.  She displayed no self-consciousness as we sat at a table and spoke for a few minutes before I was called downstairs to the conference room to meet with the board members.

I was hired, and Barbara and I quickly became friends and colleagues as we spent the first four years or so of my tenure at William Penn House working together.  (My nine-month “interim” status just kind of disappeared and I kept Barbara on in the House Manager role.)

We had some adventures.

For instance, the morning after a group from Russia, sponsored by American University, checked in, I showed up for work and Barbara was waiting for me at the front door.  “This can’t be good,” I thought as I bounded up the front steps.  It wasn’t.

Barbara told me that a number of the Russians were drunk during the night, wandered into rooms occupied by other guests not associated with their group, and made suggestive overtures toward Barbara and others.  She was very upset, and I asked her to point out the miscreants to me.  I cornered the offending Russians and gave them a very loud and explicit earful.  Then I threw them out.

Barbara and I were questioned at one point by the FBI about a representative from the Soviet Embassy who came to William Penn House a couple of times to speak to student groups.  We suffered through the suicide of another staff member, and selected interns for each year.  In between there always were blown boilers, lightning strikes on the building, strange people showing up at the front door, a two-and-a half-year zoning wrestling match with the D.C. government and more.  She was a good partner as we sorted through it all.

Eventually, Barbara went back to school (she already was a graduate of American University and Earlham School of Religion) earning a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  She returned to Washington and became the House Manager at the Ronald McDonald House. 

We kept in loose contact, and I truly felt she was fulfilled in her roles as head resident, counselor, chaplain, manager and everything else she did for the young patients and their families that spent time at the Ronald McDonald House.  And in a shift for her that I never fully understood, Barbara left the Quakers and converted to Roman Catholicism.

              At the end of the week preceding the September 11 attacks I received word that Barbara was in the hospital.  She had a severe reaction to a prescription medicine and was experiencing kidney failure.  I was taken aback when I first saw her at the hospital, as she was very bloated from her condition.  She displayed the same lack of self-consciousness about her appearance as she did the first time I met her at William Penn House.

               I checked on her at the hospital just about every day.  Her condition quickly worsened.  As the news of the attacks filled the television screen in her hospital room, she barely seemed aware of what was happening.  Each day brought new complications and narrowing hope for recovery.  Her elderly father was in town standing by, as was her brother and family.  I spent time with all of them apart from the hospital.  It was a very intense week, and finally the day we dreaded arrived.  Barbara died.     

         When I received the phone call I hurried to the place where her family was staying.  Barbara’s father, a tiny, fragile man with a variety of health issues of his own, appeared in the lobby, slowly walked over to me, sat down, and simply said, “Today we have fresh evidence that life isn’t fair.” 

          Afterwards, I went to Barbara’s room in the intensive care unit.  Surprisingly, no one at the nurses’ station stopped me. All of the monitors, intravenous tubes and dialysis machines were gone.  I stood looking at Barbara for a moment trying to make sense in my mind of what my eyes were seeing.  She was just two weeks shy of her 41st birthday and a medication error took a caring, helping person from the world.