Every September 11 — and the other 364 days of the year too — countless people mourn loved ones lost on that tragic day.
Others mourn loved ones they never knew.
Gabi Jacobs Dick is a 2020 Staples High School graduate, and sophomore at Purchase College. His father, Ariel Jacobs, was killed in the World Trade Center.
“All crews recovered was his briefcase,” People magazine reports. “Yet it was not all he left behind. Six days later, his widow Jenna Jacobs McPartland gave birth to their son Gabriel.
People has followed Gabi, and others — perhaps 100 — who never knew their parents, since then. Now they’re part of a documentary, “Rebuilding Hope: The Children of 9/11.” It’s streaming on Discovery+.
“I have no tangible memories of my dad, so there’s nothing concrete,” Gabi says, in the current People story. It includes him on the cover.
Gabi Dick, upper right in the group of the 4 “Children of 9/11.”
“I can’t grieve him the way my mother does. She can recall memories. For me, it’s not so much a missing feeling, as a longing. I have questions and ideas. But I don’t ask what-if questions. There’s no answer.”
Gabi recently saw a video of his father. He told People:
Gabi Dick (Photo courtesy of People Magazine)
“Something about being 19 and hearing my dad’s voice for the first time — that pushed an emotional button I didn’t know I had,” he says. “My whole life it was up to my imagination to turn him into a person. There was never anything to go off of except for photos. Seeing him on film with his friends and traveling to Buenos Aires, I was like this is a real person. He’s right in front of me.”
“It was sad,” he says, “but it did not make me sad.
“I think of how he would have wanted my life to be,” he says. “I honor him by being alive, being happy and living a great life
(Click here for the full People magazine story. Click here for People‘s 2016 story on Gabi Dick. Hat tip: Kerry Long)
