Labor Leader Thanks Heroes

By Katia Hetter | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

Debbie Kowalski's smile lasts only as long as she's tending the sickest of the sick at NYU Downtown Hospital.

"You have to keep positive to keep everyone else going mentally," said Kowalski, whose patients in the intensive care unit include one woman who was hit by a jetliner engine. "After you're done, you realize what happened. When I go home, I do break down."

Yesterday, she was among scores who got a visit from AFL-CIO president John Sweeney on his two-day swing through New York City, meant to convey the labor movement's thanks to the city's firefighters, police officers, health care workers and other working men and women.

Over a thousand union members are thought to be buried in the rubble - food service workers at Windows on the World, office cleaners, construction workers, state employees and tour guides. Joined by their counterparts across the country, local labor unions have begun to collect money and to offer their expertise while still trying to track down missing members.

Sweeney has coordinated efforts by unions from his Washington, D.C., headquarters, but he said he wanted to meet directly with workers. He visited food workers at a grocery store, police officers at a St. Patrick's Cathedral Mass, staff at NYU Downtown and St. Vincents Hospital and Medical Center, and construction workers at ground zero.

At NYU Downtown, workers who pitched in to help during the disaster included doctors grabbing mops to clean up the dust blowing from the explosion, housekeepers moving patients, and cafeteria workers providing food to rescue workers and displaced seniors.

Until he finally slept Thursday night, building engineer Bill Lynch worked through the tragedy to power up an emergency generator, close vents to block out dust from the explosion, dispense oxygen tanks and provide bottled water.

"I just did what I had to do," said Lynch, a delegate of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.

At St. Vincents, Local 1199 president Dennis Rivera told members gathered in the auditorium, "we've had a terrible time, but we've also seen the best of New York."

Among them was Lenny Ardizzone, chief maintenance supervisor at the World Trade Center, who remained in the lobby after the explosion to help evacuate people. Buried for nine hours in the rubble, he can't remember the ordeal, according to hospital staff.

Now hospitalized, an injured Ardizzone did not mention his own pain. His voice trembling, he told Sweeney to "convey what a first-class job" the staff of St. Vincents is doing.