In the year since his wife died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed at the Pentagon, Stephen Push of Great Falls changed some things. He quit his job and co-founded a national organization to help Sept. 11 families and push the government to change its policies to fight terrorism.
He sold the second home in California that he and Lisa had just bought.
He buried his wife’s remains in a cemetery in Fairfax County and placed a headstone at her grave.
Other things remain the same: he still lives in Great Falls, in the same house he and Lisa bought together. He still has their 12-year-old Shetland Sheepdog, Mickey. He still wears his wedding band.
Quiet anger smolders in his eyes, which fill with tears when he recites the words he wrote for his wife’s gravestone:
“Lisa Joy Raines: Dec. 30, 1958 - Sept. 11, 2001. Her life was a gift to her family and friends, and her death was a sacrifice for her country.”
ALTHOUGH CEREMONIES are planned at all Fairfax County Fire and Rescue stations and a number of local organizations, Push says he has no interest in commemorating Sept. 11, 2001.
“I’m trying to avoid these as much as possible,” he said on Labor Day. “It is much too much.
“It’s understandable that other people want to commemorate the day, but personally, the last thing I want to do is remember Sept. 11.
“I know of other families who are avoiding all the ceremonies, and staying home,” said Push.
One of them is the family of Kevin Long of Herndon, whose mother and stepfather, Diane and George Simmons of Great Falls, were on American Airlines Flight 77 with Lisa Raines.
“The kids [ages 9, 7, and 6] will be going to school and we will be going with them and spending the day,” said Donna Long, Kevin’s wife.
“There is just so much hoopla,” she said. “We feel the best thing will be to be together. We deal with it every day. We don’t need a special day to remember it.
“The people who need to remember it will remember it for the rest of their lives,” she said.
“I’M NOT AWARE that anyone asked us what we wanted that day,” Stephen Push said; “Nobody asked me.”
“If they want to do it themselves, that’s fine. We just don’t want to do it.”
Then he amended his comment somewhat: “Maybe some families want to go,” he said. “But there’s plenty that don’t.
“If they want to do something for the families, they should ask,” he says.
If anyone does ask, Push has a ready answer for what they can do to help people like him, who lost the one person they most loved, on Sept. 11 last year:
“They can call [U.S. Senators from Virginia] Warner and Allen and ask them to vote for an independent commission to study the Sept. 11 attack, and vote against amnesty for illegal aliens.”
Push resigned from his public relations job last December, three months after the terrorist attacks and two months into a leave of absence.
Now, he is a lobbyist for the victims and their families. The organization he co-founded with other Sept. 11 family members has a full-time staff person in Washington and a web site at www:familiesofseptember11.org.
It has two goals, Push said: to take care of the families of those who died, and to write public policy that thwarts terrorists.
Push wants an independent commission to look into the Sept. 11 attacks. He thinks it’s a no-brain imperative that the Bush administration avoids for fear its findings might prove embarrassing.
“To me, it seems doing an independent investigation was completely logical,” he said. But the White House opposes the idea.
“They say they don’t want to detract from the war on terrorism, but the real reason is they don’t want to have anything exposed that might embarrass them,” said Push.
He also wants the government to crack down on millions of illegal immigrants in this country. At least two men with terrorist intentions were swept in with them the last time amnesty was granted to illegal aliens, he says: one engineered the 1993 bombing attempt at the World Trade Center, and another opened fire at an El Al ticket Counter at Los Angeles Airport recently.
“Both [political] parties want amnesty” for illegal aliens, which would provide permanent residency status to such terrorists, Push said.
“The Republicans are worried about cheap labor for business, and the Democrats worry about voters who will vote Democratic.”
“I was always more cynical than my wife about government. I am more cynical now that I see how much politics motivates things in Washington,” he said.
PUSH IS ALSO LOBBYING for better aviation security.
“Despite all the delays and money,” he said, “it’s little better than it was on Sept. 11.”
Because the federal Transportation Security Administration refuses to rely on ethnic criteria to profile air passengers, anyone who pays cash for a one-way air ticket “is just as likely [to be questioned and searched] as a 22-year-old Saudi man who’s been here for six months and took flying lessons in Oklahoma.”
“One of the things El Al [Israeli Airlines] does better than we do is it uses ethnic criteria,” Push said. “If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny.”
“They should have [initiated policies that] matched passengers to bags after Lockerbie,” he said, referring to the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland that killed 259 passengers.
“After Sept. 11, they started baggage matching. Not only was it 12 years too late, but after 9/11, when it became clear [terrorists] would kill themselves, [baggage matching] became ludicrous.
“All you have to do is get on at one airport and change planes. Your bag stays on. Any terrorist knows this. They don’t even have to kill themselves to circumvent the system,” Push said.
Although the technology exists to detect bombs in luggage, Push said, “they just didn’t invest in it.”
Push’s wife, Lisa J. Raines, was traveling on Sept. 11 as part of her job for the Genzyme Corporation in Washington, where she was an effective and well-respected lobbyist, according to her next-door neighbor, John Jackson of Great Falls.
Raines, 42, was a staunch supporter of the Gospel Rescue Ministries, where Jackson is executive director.
Her memory will be honored at a 7:30 p.m. concert on Friday, Sept. 6, at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda.
Push says he will be present for that event.