SMITH, A TECHNOLOGY specialist, also ran the office football pool, and Sunday was just five days away. As it turned out, there would be no football that Sunday, but neither Smith nor anybody else had any way of knowing that when she kissed her partner, Elba, goodbye that sunny Tuesday morning.
Smith, 42, and Elba Cedeno, had shared their lives for 6 1/2 years. They loved to travel, shared a home and had recently built a second one, their dream retirement home, on the water in New Jersey.
“Cathy was a breath of sunshine,” Cedeno recalled. “We had so many plans, so many goals.”
Those plans came to a sudden end on Sept. 11, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God’,” says Cedeno, “and when I turned on the TV, I just lost my mind. I saw the whole disaster on television. I feel like somebody took the rug out from under me. I’m still tumbling, and I don’t know where I’m going to land.”
Cedeno is one of 24 women and men known to be same-sex surviving partners of the Sept. 11 attacks. Several New York City-based gay advocacy organizations believe there may be twice that number.

UNNOTICED STRUGGLE
Theirs is a struggle that has gone largely unnoticed. Along with the same shock, loss and grief experienced by every family member and close friend who lost a loved one, same-sex survivors find themselves facing unique legal, financial and emotional obstacles they never imagined.
There are literally hundreds of legal protections and rights for families, but virtually all are based exclusively on marriage, and are not available to same-sex couples, according to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the nation’s oldest and largest legal organization dedicated to gay civil rights.
The main government programs set up as a safety net for situations like the World Trade Center disaster are Social Security and workers compensation, which provide basic support after the unexpected death of a breadwinner. If Cedeno were a legally recognized spouse, for example, she would be entitled to weekly workers compensation checks covering two-thirds of Smith’s earnings, up to $400 per week, or $20,000 per year.

But as a same-sex partner, she is not eligible for workers compensation or Social Security. Unlike husbands and wives, Cedeno will not be able to rely on any of the money that Catherine Smith paid into the Social Security fund over the course of her life.
“These programs provide tens of thousands of dollars annually to families upon the death of a loved one, and yet are not available to survivors in our community because we don’t fit the government’s definition of ‘family,’ ” says Joe Grabarz of New York’s Empire State Pride Agenda, a statewide civil rights and political advocacy organization that recently announced the establishment of the September 11 Gay & Lesbian Family Fund to assist the surviving families of gay and lesbian individuals killed in the terrorist attacks. The fund will be divided equally among the surviving partners and their families.

Catherine Smith did have a will, so Cedeno will be able to inherit whatever Smith wanted her to have. However, she will not get the significant tax exemptions that she would automatically get if she and Smith had been legally married. And, unlike a husband or wife, Cedeno is not entitled to collect a portion of money Smith may have had vested in pension funds. In addition, Cedeno does not have the right to sue for wrongful death in the event that some sort of negligence turns out to have caused her partner’s death.
Life insurance, too, is an issue. Ordinarily, collecting on a life insurance policy is not a problem for a same-sex partner who is designated as the beneficiary. Tom Miller, 51, assumed he’d have no problem collecting on the policy of his partner, Seamus ONeal.
ONeal worked for eSpeed, in a northeast corner office on the 105th floor of Tower No. 1. Miller and ONeal had been together for three years, and ONeal’s life insurance policy named Miller as the sole beneficiary. But when the twin towers collapsed, the company that carried ONeal’s policy was itself devastated, and all the beneficiary forms were destroyed.
Miller was told he would have to prove he had been ONeal’s named beneficiary, and that, if he could not, all benefits would go to the next of kin. “And,” he says, despite their committed relationship, “they didn’t mean me.”
Miller submitted signed, notarized affidavits from ONeal’s family members saying they knew he was the named beneficiary and they had no objections. After weeks of waiting, however, the insurance company informed him that it would not, after all, be able to give him the proceeds. Instead, the insurance money would be given to ONeal’s estate, which Miller has no control over.
“Thank goodness,” he says, “I have a very good relationship with the family, so sometime down the road I’ll get that money. But you can see what could happen to a great many people whose families do not like the fact that their father or their son lived with another man. They’d never get that money.”
Whatever Miller eventually gets from ONeal’s life insurance policy, it won’t have come soon enough to allow him to stay in the couple’s large apartment in Brooklyn. Immediately after the disaster, Miller had to pack up and move; he could not afford the rent on his paycheck alone.

LACK OF UNDERSTANDING
Lesbians and gay men who lost partners on Sept. 11 are facing more than legal and financial burdens and inequities. They are trying to cope with a painful disconnect about their lives.
John Winter’s partner, Tony, also perished in the World Trade Center. Like thousands of other survivors, he sought help from private relief agencies.
“When you go to ask for help and you’re married, all you have to say is, ‘I’m married.’ But how do you think it makes you feel,” he asked, “when you sit down with the first person who interviews you, and you say you lost your partner, and the person says, ‘Were you married?,’ and you say, ‘No,’ and then they say, ‘What was her name?’ It’s the last thing you need when you’re trying to wrestle with the tragedy of this attack.”

Since Sept. 11, the Red Cross, the United Way and several other relief agencies have taken steps to assure that gay and lesbian partners are treated equally.
Also, New York Gov. George Pataki issued an Executive Order on Oct. 11 granting same-sex partners the same benefits as spouses from the New York State Crime Victims Board.
A new federal victim compensation program issued its eligibility rules Thursday, and, while not putting same sex-partners on equal footing with married spouses, it does, for the first time, open the door for same-sex partners to be recognized and compensated by the federal government.
In the meantime, Winter, Miller, and Cedeno have all received gifts of $4,000 from the special fund for same-sex survivors. All say the cash will allow them to pay some bills and buy some time, and they are grateful for it.
“The money will help with my move,” says Miller. “But more than that, it represents to other people that I did not lose a roommate. I lost a spouse.”
But, they say, no amount of money can ever compensate them for the exclusion from the safety net that catches grieving husbands and wives, or for the loss of their partners.
“Terrorists who did this act didn’t discriminate against the people who were in those buildings, the people who were in those planes, the people who were in the buildings in Washington, D.C.,” says Winter. “Yet we who are survivors are being discriminated against.”
As Cedeno says with a slight catch in her voice, “I’d much rather have Cathy.”

Barbara Raab is a producer for the “Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.”