One of the great joys of doing book talks is the opportunity to meet new people with fresh insights into your story. In turn, these talks sometimes can spark members of the audience to have new insights into their own lives. Both are gifts to the writer.
And sometimes I learn something related to my story but completely new altogether.
That was the case at a book event held this spring in Florida. My friend and Marblehead neighbor invited me to a condo association fundraiser and arranged for a local TV investigative reporter and anchor to moderate a Q&A session about “On My Watch,” the memoir I first published five years ago.
The reporter, Dave Bohman, was standing just inside the door as I entered the event space. We’d only exchanged emails and texts leading up to the book talk but we embraced warmly. I find that upon meeting people who have read my book, a couple of things typically occur. One, the person often immediately shares their own painful stories, which I feel is a generous response to my own offering of personal vulnerability. And also, given the nature of the memoir genre, many strangers feel like they already know me — a shortcut to immediate connection.
Thus, Dave told me in the first few minutes of our meeting, of the sad, premature passing of his wife. And we connected on the fact he was a graduate of Syracuse University, as is my son, and chatted about how our now adult children are doing.
Dave then told me that one of the reactions he had after reading my book was how different my story was from a man named Rudi Dekkers.
“Rudi,” he explained, “was the owner of the Florida-based flight school where three of the 9/11 terrorists learned to fly.”
My shoulders tensed a little as he continued, and I wondered where this story was going.
It turns out no place good.
The notoriety of being the terrorists’ trainer, despite their paperwork and credentials being in order, caused Rudi to lose customers and ultimately to have to close down the flight school that was his life’s joy. Dave said that Rudi then turned to installing pools, a business that also went under with the 2008 financial crisis. Along the way, Rudi tried to tell his story and clear his name in the media. He published a book entitled “Guilty by association” in 2011. His 20-year marriage didn’t survive the strain.
At some point, and presumably under financial pressure, Rudi got involved with ferrying drugs on his airplane until he was caught in an undercover operation. He served time in federal prison and after he was released, moved to the Philippines where he died in 2024. He was only 67.
Dave commented that the different path of my life from what befell Rudi was a surprise to him, given the similar burden of being unfairly blamed in connection with the horror of 9/11.
Trying to take in Rudi’s story, I managed to respond with a comment once made to me by someone hearing my own — that tragic events and trauma have ripples that affect many more people and in different ways than you can ever know.
Since meeting Dave and learning about Rudi Dekkers, I’ve tried to articulate a simple answer to what I feel he was asking — “Why not you?” As I say in the epilogue to my book, the journey from my 9/11 experience has sometimes been arduous, and sometimes full of grace. And that I’ve learned the quality of resilience is more complex than the societal encouragement to “be strong” and “move on.”
Certainly, luck, love, family, faith and fate played central roles in my (still unfinished) story.
But weren’t those supports present at least a little in Rudi’s life, too? I feel sad having learned about his pain and struggle. And I feel a renewed urgency to continue, as I sum up when asked why I tell my story, to do something good with something bad. To be a ripple for hope.
Virginia Buckingham is a member of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
Virginia Buckingham
Virginia Buckingham is a former president of the Marblehead Current board of directors, a frequent commentator on WCVB’s On the Record and author of “On My Watch A Memoir.” She is working on a second memoir, “As This Mountain” in her newly empty nest and writes a biweekly column for the Current.
