9/11 - Prelude

With my Project 2996 tributes to Michele Ann Nelson and Michael John Cahill still being edited, as I don't feel that I have done them enough credit, I've decided to take a bit of a break from their research and tried to see if I could find a list of LGBT victims of that terrible day. I managed to find a site (angelfire.com) which had such a list, though I'm not sure how comprehensive the information is.

Almost anyone who knows names from the tragedy will have heard of Mark Bingham and Father Mychal Judge, both of whom died heroes that day, as did several hundred of others. But I was certain that there would be others who had died who were also gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual. Probabilities almost guaranteed it.
The generally quoted figures for the percentage of the population who are LGBT is between 6-10%. If I take the most conservative of these figures and apply it to the 2996 victims, then this works out that there should be around 180 LGBT victims from the combined attacks. I know of 24

Following is a list of those whose names I know, who are known to be LGBT:

• Mark Bingham
• Father Mychal Judge
• Carol Flyzik
• David Charlebois
• Graham Berkeley
• Pamela J Boyce
• Ronald Gamboa
• Dan Brandhorst
• James Joe Ferguson
• Jeffrey Collman
• John Keohane
• Sheila Hein
• Philip Paul Ognibene
• Eugene Clark
• Wesley Mercer
• Luke A Dudek
• Michael Lepore
• Tony Karnes
• Seamus O'Neal
• Catherine Smith
• Patricia McAneney
• Waleska Martinez
• Renee Barrett
• Eddie, a firefighter and partner of Francis S Coppola

I was considering giving this group of people a collective name, like "the Twenty Four," but then realised that I would be excluding all those victims that were not known to be LGBT, those that were "in the closet." So I shan't be giving them a title.

If anyone knows of anyone I have missed, who should be included on this list, then please contact me with the details. I would also appreciate dates of birth, occupations and nationalities if you know them (only one person on this list is not from the US as far as I know). Any help you can provide would be gratefully accepted. I would also like to apologise for not entering all the above names in the Labels section, I truly wanted to but it has a limit of 200 characters and so I would have to leave some names out. Therefore the only names I included were those that I mentioned in the actual text. Each of those on my list, along with all the other victims, should be mentioned, remembered and honoured. As should all those who have died since because of that awful day. I wish I could do that here.