By Molly Longman, Refinery 29, 2020
Shay Mahon used to spend every September 11 with her family and her father’s old friends in New York. They’d eat takeout and tell stories about her dad, Tom Mahon, who died 19 years ago during the attacks on the World Trade Center. He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm with offices in the North Tower, the first to be hit on the morning of 9/11 in 2001. Shay was just 21 months old at the time, and one of more than 3,000 children who lost a parent due to the unthinkable tragedy, which took 2,996 lives in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.
During their 9/11 memorial dinners, Shay and her loved ones wouldn’t dwell on Tom’s death. Instead, they’d talk about his life. He was the friend you could call to help you pack up a moving van at 5 a.m., they'd say. He wouldn't just show up; he'd stay all day, loading and unloading boxes — even if the weather was hot and he was wearing corduroy. They'd reminisce about how he loved riding his bike around his Long Island town, his baby daughter Shay in a booster seat on the back.
Like so much in 2020, this anniversary will look very different than previous years. Currently a junior at the University of Miami in Ohio, where she studies finance like her dad, Shay says she can’t leave campus due to COVID-19 restrictions. In fact, she recently recovered from the virus herself. So, she won’t be with family this 9/11. “My mom will definitely call me like four times on Friday, I know that,” she says. “It’s just so weird not being able to physically leave my school and not going home.”
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