Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Family members of victims reflect, remember

To help

To make a pledge or donation to Jayne Furman's Oct. 13 Chicago Marathon charity run or Oct. 19 two-mile Las Vegas charity walk, send checks payable to ALS Nevada to Jayne Furman, 10210 Juniper Creek Lane, Las Vegas, NV 89145 or call 248-4507.

After rising early, she will head out to run in the predawn cool of Las Vegas, training for her first marathon -- a tribute to her younger brother, Steven Furman, who died a year ago at the World Trade Center.

Don Cherry, a local entertainer and pro golfer, will spend the day driving to a charity golf tournament in Texas, remembering his son Steven Cherry, who also lost his life in the terrorist attacks in New York.

The two, like many who lost family members that day, have spent the year struggling to return their lives to some semblance of normalcy.

It was a difficult task for Furman. Only three months after losing her brother, a stock trader for Cantor Fitzgerald, she suffered a second loss: Her mother, Joyce Lilie, died of cancer on Christmas Eve.

"I was in a funk for so long," said Furman, a Las Vegas stock trader who used to work in the World Trade Center and was on the first floor when a car bomb went off in the underground parking garage in 1993.

"The whole world changed on Sept. 11. I had stopped running and doing a lot of things I normally did," she said. "Sept. 11 will never be normal for me again."

After Steven Furman's remains were recovered in May and laid to rest, Jayne found some degree of closure. A casual jogger for about four years, she had stopped running after her brother and mother died. Suddenly, her interest in running was rekindled and she found a new devotion to charity work.

"My brother wasn't a rich man, but he gave a lot of his income to help others," she said of Steven, who died two days shy of his 41st birthday, leaving a wife and four children. "Steven was just so generous, and I couldn't understand why he gave so much time and money until just recently."

Furman decided to enter her first marathon. She will compete in the 25th annual LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon on Oct. 13 and hopes to raise $5,000 for the local Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis chapter in memory of her brother and mother.

Six days later Furman, 44, plans to participate in the two-mile Walk to D'Feet ALS at Metro City Park in Las Vegas.

"I have learned what Steven long knew -- that helping people makes you feel good," she said. "I feel I'm doing something worthwhile and I think Steven would be proud that I am doing my small part to help raise money to help people afflicted with Lou Gehrig's disease."

Donations have been slow. So far she has received about $600 in pledges.

"I hope that when more people realize what I am trying to do, more people will make pledges," Furman said. "I'm optimistic."

Furman will wear a T-shirt featuring the photos of both her brother and mother to inspire her to complete both events.

Her training schedule to get into shape to run the 26.2-mile relatively flat course has been rigorous. She is logging between 20 and 25 miles a week. So far she's made an 18-mile run and said she felt great doing it.

"In June I started reading marathon-training guides," she said. "The task was daunting. The mileage for the once-a-week long runs -- the key to training for a marathon -- increased from nine miles to 14 miles.

"Then I looked down the schedule and saw I would have to do 17, 18 and 20 miles. I wondered if I could do it. But now I look forward to running each day."

She will run again Wednesday morning, and later visit Red Rock Canyon, where two stones in the walkway to the visitor's center are dedicated to her brother.

Cherry, 78, will spend Wednesday driving to Texas with the person who most helped him through his grief -- his wife, Francine. The trip to compete in a Thursday charity golf tournament is a quiet tribute to his son: It's a return to a normalcy that Steven, a father of four, would have wanted.

The grieving process "took a while," he said. But now he is able to maintain a schedule of golf tournaments and singing gigs.

During performances Cherry dedicates his rendition of the song "Green, Green Grass of Home" to the memory of Steven, a Cantor Fitzgerald stock trader who had a knack for singing. Steven had performed that classic at his grandmother's funeral.

"I see a lot of Steven in the faces and actions of his four boys."

Just after the attack, legendary pro golfer Jack Nicklaus called his longtime friend and offered to help the Cherry family by making sets of golf clubs for Steven's two older sons Jeremy, now 15, and Peter, 13.

"I was so tickled I called Jeremy and told him that Jack Nicklaus was going to make him a set of clubs," Cherry said. "So Jeremy, who has his father's sense of humor, says, 'What, you don't know Tiger Woods?' "

Both Cherry and Furman say they do not want Sept. 11 to become a national holiday.

"I don't consider the action we took in the war in Afghanistan as any type of victory or closure for me and I do not want to see them make a holiday out of this whole thing," Cherry said. "Holidays are a time for celebration. There is nothing to celebrate over this."

Furman said Americans have enough holidays and "we don't need another day of nonproductivity. We just don't need a holiday to remember Sept. 11. Nobody will ever forget this date."

One of Jayne's other brothers, Andrew Furman, a New York stock trader, said by phone that he is proud of how his sister has dedicated her time to running and charitable work.

He, too, is moving on from his grief, and was able to talk last week to his congregation for the Jewish new year of Rosh Hashanah about the events of Sept. 11.

"The minute I heard the building collapse, I knew Steven had died, though you always hold out the slimmest of hope for survival," he said.

"I accepted in November that Steven was gone at the memorial service. But with my mother's death a month later it was really difficult for all of us. It wasn't until February that I was ready to go forward with my life."

Steven Furman left another brother, Michael Furman of Las Vegas, as well as a father and stepfather; a wife, Chavi; two sons, Nathan, 12, and Menashe, 6; and two daughters, Rachel, 11, and Naomi, 9.

Cherry, who would have turned 42 last September, left a wife, Mary Ellen, and two other sons, Brett, 5, and Colton, 2.

His remains were never recovered from ground zero.

Andrew Furman, who also opposes Sept. 11 becoming a national holiday, says it is his desire that the site of the World Trade Center be turned into a city park, a place where adults can solemnly reflect and children can play.

"This is sacred space," he said.

archive