Members of Daniel Trant’s family will gather in Westfield on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Sept. 11, 2001, victim Daniel P. Trant, of Westfield, is shown here with his father, the late William T. Trant, who died in 2002.
As news of Osama bin Laden’s death unfolded a week ago tonight, Sally Trant remembers being “in and out of sleep” in her Tampa, Fla., home when she was deluged with text messages from family and online posts from friends on her Facebook page.
“Are you watching the news? Bin Laden is dead,” wrote her friend Jean Fallon Pescitelli from back in their hometown of Westfield. “It took a little bit for it to sink in, to realize this is real,” Trant said.
She made just one telephone call for a human connection as the news set in about the fate of her brother’s killer. It was to her mother, Mary Trant.
Cleaning up at her Florida home from her regular Sunday night card game with friends, Mary Trant had yet to hear the news. “Oh my God,” is what Sally Trant remembers being her mom’s first words. Mother and daughter reflected together.
Mary Trant, mother of the late Daniel P. Trant, is shown here with her daughters, Sally Trant, left, and Sheila Inserra, right, and grandsons Daniel and Alex at the 25th anniversary of the 1983-84 Clark University men's basketball team's NCAA Final Four in New York.By the time two jetliners were catapulted by terrorists into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, Mary Trant had already buried her eldest son and a grandson. She knew the greatest depths of a mother’s loss.
That day, another son, Daniel P. Trant, would be among the nearly 3,000 who died in the attacks on America which had been masterminded by bin Laden.
By the following April, her husband, William T. Trant, a holder of the Purple Heart who had gone ashore at Utah Beach during World War II’s D-Day invasion of France and survived the Battle of the Bulge, would also be gone. Fighting prostate cancer, it can only be surmised if William Trant’s death was hastened by the traumatic loss dealt his family that September morning.
This Mother’s Day, it is Mary Trant’s lessons of love and the importance of family, as well as her Catholic faith, that help her children and grandchildren carry on, says Sally Trant.
Westfield High School boys varsity basketball coach William T. Daley unveils Daniel P. Trant's jersey during the dedication ceremony in his memory after he died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. Over 600 people attended the event held at Westfield High School, where Trant was a 1979 graduate. Mary Trant is a vibrant 82, always on the go and still spreading attention to all her surviving children and grandchildren.
“When I’m with my mother, I get strength from her,” says Sally Trant. “It’s been real, real hard. What several of us have gotten from our parents is their faith, all of our lives. Watching my mom, especially the dignity and grace with which she handles this stuff, how can you not follow in those footsteps. It’s bad enough (for us) losing siblings.”
The seventh of nine children in a tight-knit Irish clan, Dan Trant, who was working as a bond trader with the World Trade Center-based Cantor Fitzgerald, had made his hometown and his family proud.
“There’s not supposed to be a ‘favorite child,’ but he was a prodigy, if you will. Danny was living the life,” recalls Sally Trant. She’ll even admit that she spoiled her little brother rotten; they were four years apart. “He could just about do no wrong.”
Dan Trant was an accomplished athlete, loving husband, doting father, devoted coach and mentor to scores of young people. As a child, he had an “angelic voice” that was put to good use when he accompanied his mother’s singing group on rounds to perform to gatherings of the elderly.
A graduate of Westfield High School, Suffield Academy and Clark University, where he was a two-time All-American in basketball and had taken his Cougars to the Final Four of the NCAA men’s tournament, Trant was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1984, the same draft that included would-be hall-of-famers named Jordan and Barkley.
Daniel P. Trant is shown here in a 2001 photo with his two nieces, Mary Grace, left, and Katherine. Daniel Trant was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
He went on to play professional basketball in Ireland, then returned home to Western Massachusetts, first as a member of the U.S. Basketball League’s Springfield Fame in their debut season and then to a job as a victim-witness advocate for the Hampden district attorney’s office before heading off with his wife, Kathy, to live on Long Island and begin a career on Wall Street.
A week from Sunday, Dan Trant would have celebrated his 50th birthday. Online tribute pages at legacy.com and voicesofseptember11.org keep precious family photos and written recollections of his life for all to see.
Though she has no children of her own, Sally Trant says she’s learned a lot about “mothering” from her mom, lessons she practices as she tracks the lives of Dan Trant’s three children, Jessica, who’s now 28, Daniel, who is 22, and Alex, 20, and her other nieces and nephews. Her email address is “auntiesally.”
Young Daniel Trant, now a student at Indiana University, spent his fall semester living with his aunt in Florida, where she moved in November 2002 to be close to her mother. Alex is a student at Loyola University, and Jessica lives near Boston.
Sally Trant was among a cadre of the Trant siblings who were living in the Washington, D.C., area when the terrorist attacks occurred. Her brother Timothy, who is legislative advisor to the chief of naval operations for the Navy Department, was working in the Navy Annex, and his building felt the reverberations that morning when a third jetliner crashed into the Pentagon nearby.
Another brother, Matthew, and two other family members were working in offices within a three-block radius of the White House, which had been the suspected target of a fourth airliner that crashed in Shanksville, Pa., when passengers overtook the terrorists.
Sally Trant, right, sister of Daniel P. Trant, who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, shown with Jeff Cox, an Eagle Scout from Windermere, Fla., who built a memorial to 9/11. They are shown at the memorial's dedication in 2010Sally Trant followed her father, who served as Westfield’s postmaster, into a career with the U.S. Postal Service and is soon to retire. She fills her time with community volunteer work, some of it, like that with the American Red Cross, is tied to the loss of her brother and remembrances of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to ensure memories of him and the other victims live on.
Other work involves support of the military, past and present, like Honor Flight (www.honorflight.org), a non-profit group that works to ensure World War II veterans get to see the national memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Patriot Guard Riders .
“It’s my passion; it’s where I spend my time when I’m not at work,” Sally Trant said. As her May 31 retirement approaches, she added, “I can’t wait to do more of this. (Dan’s) what made me aware that this is what I need to be doing. I’ve met so many people (through the years since 9/11), and we all have this same feeling that God put us in the right place at the right time to be doing what we are doing.”
Last Sunday, Sally Trant had spent her day attending a Florida state crew meet for a 16-year-old Eagle Scout, Jeff Cox, who earned Boy Scouting’s highest award by building a 9/11 memorial in the small town of Windemere, Fla.
“He’s just an amazing kid,” Sally Trant said of the young man she’s befriended. “He has kind of what I remember of Dan at that age, just a great kid.” The memorial he created, she said, “made a difference for me and a huge number of (9/11) families who live (in Florida) now. It’s a place for the families to go.”
In a photograph from before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, members of the Trant family gathered at the Foster House in Westfield for an anniversary party for Mary C. and William T. Trant. Mary Trant is standing third from left, and William Trant is third from right. At upper left is Daniel P. Trant, standing next to his wife Kathy. His brother Timothy, standing second to right, was working at the Navy Annex when the Pentagon was struck by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, and Matthew, kneeling with toddler, is one of three other family members who were working in Washington, D.C., that day.Here is the text of the statement given by the family of Daniel P. Trant about the May 1 death of Osama bin Laden:
“We are relieved and gratified that the United States has brought Osama bin Laden to justice.
The fact that this has taken nearly 10 years is actually testament to the resolve and focus of the U.S. government, military and intelligence community, which has never wavered in their pursuit of the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took the life of a member of our family.
Despite a change in administration, locating bin Laden has clearly remained a top priority of our government, and as American citizens we are very proud of our government and our troops for bringing about a very just resolution. The universal pledge of the American people and our government to ‘Never Forget’ was not a hollow one.
This will not bring Dan back nor heal the very deep scars that our family has suffered. But, the fact that the person ultimately responsible for his murder has been brought to justice is certainly something for which we are thankful.”
She returned to the Windermere memorial on Monday with three motorcycling friends and called the mother of another 9/11 victim; she said a prayer and left a photo of Dan and balloons with American flags for what she now calls “Osama bin Laden is Dead Day.”
This Sept. 11 will find the Trant family gathered back home in Westfield, a place they find solace among friends and where a memorial to Dan and two other Westfield natives, Brian Murphy and Tara Shea Creamer, who died at the trade center, stands tribute at the Sons of Erin Irish club.
On Sept. 10, the annual Dan Trant memorial golf tournament will be held, raising money for two scholarships to help a new generation of young people continue their education.
Mary Trant and her daughters traveled to Ground Zero in New York City in March 2007. Although it was a “very emotional” experience, Sally Trant recalled, her mother found no comfort there, she says.
So, there are no current plans to be in New York for the 10th anniversary. That feeling could change once a permanent memorial is erected in remembrance of the victims, Sally Trant said.
In the meantime, this anniversary will be marked back in Westfield where there are friends, family and memories of happier times. “That’s where we go to find comfort,” Sally Trant said.