Loss of thousands reaches far beyond next of kin
Because Jim Walsh didn't come home Tuesday night, a PeeWee flag-football team in Westfield, N.J., played their game over the weekend short at least one teammate and their regular coach.
Because Jim Walsh didn't come home Tuesday, Verizon's head of security will not be available to help federal investigators wiretap suspected terrorists in South Florida this week.
Because Jim Walsh didn't come home, Caroline Walsh blew out the two candles on her birthday cake Tuesday night without her daddy.
Jim Walsh, 37, was a regular guy who lived in suburban New Jersey and worked at the World Trade Center.
But his disappearance under the unspeakable mountain of rubble that was the World Trade Center will continue to affect an ever-widening circle of people for days, weeks, months and years to come.
It is the ripple effect of death, one that is magnified thousands of times for every life stolen in the terrorist blitz of New York and Washington.
The changes will be subtle but profound. Consider the case of this one man.
Jimmy Walsh was an unassuming guy who loved to make pancakes and read to his daughter. He was the favorite uncle, the one who made everyone feel better, and the kind of man who stayed close to his high-school buddies 20 years later.
"Jimmy didn't care all that much about work; he didn't even finish college until after he met Kate and wanted to be able to support his family," said Walsh's sister, Kathleen Walsh Karlen, a Virginia lawyer.
Walsh met Kate Webster, then a young au pair from Nottingham, England, in a Westfield, N.J., restaurant, almost a decade ago.
They were married in 1994. Walsh finished college and got a job as a computer programmer for Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, where he worked on the 104th floor of the North tower.
Shortly after their daughter, Caroline, was born, they bought their first house, a bungalow in Scotch Plains, N.J.
Jim's brother, Tom, lived in Westfield with his wife, Diane, a reporter for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., and their young son. Jim's sister Carol lived with her husband, Verizon security executive Tim Murphy, and three children in Florida.
The first ripple started just after 9 a.m. EDT Tuesday, when the second plane hit the World Trade Center and Tom Walsh knew the disaster was no accident.
A lawyer like his sister, Walsh was starting a trial in Hackensack, N.J., while frantically trying to reach his brother on the phone. It was impossible. He told the judge he had to leave to help his family, a mission he realized was doomed when he got on the New Jersey Turnpike in time to see the first tower collapse.
"I pulled to the side of the road, crying and screaming, 'Please God, No!' I yelled it many times in a row as the terrible feeling that Jimmy had just died passed through me," Walsh said.
Tom Walsh's client won't have his day in court right now. Neither will Kathleen Walsh Karlen's client, a Virginia roofer with broken legs seeking worker's compensation.
Karlen's sudden trip to New Jersey left ripples throughout Woodbridge, Va., where she taught Sunday school, coached the swim team and helped organize the youth orchestra.
The next day, the ripple expanded. Tom Walsh scoured hospitals, aid stations and morgues.
By Thursday, Carol Walsh Murphy was on the road from Florida with her three young children and husband, who is in charge of wiretaps and other internal security for Verizon. By then, the hunt for terrorists in Florida was in high gear.
Everyone converged on the Scotch Plains house, the place "Jimmy was so proud of." They cried and told stories about Jimmy. Inside the house sat a stunned Kate, who is to give birth in March.
Because Jim Walsh didn't come home, Kate didn't go to work as an actuary in Jersey City last week.
She doesn't know if she will be able to afford to keep their beloved little house on one salary. She knows Jim didn't have a will.
Perhaps the single most difficult moment since the towers collapsed was Tuesday night, Kate said. It was when Caroline blew out the candles on her cake.
Caroline got a new book, "Go, Dog, Go!", a present from her father. But she'll never hear him read it to her, because Jim Walsh didn't come home.