Let’s talk about the other William Wren
September 12th, 2006 by Bill
As interested as I am in myself, I find the other William Wren even more interesting. Perhaps because, being me, I know pretty much all I need to about this William Wren (meaning me) but know all but nothing about the other.
He was born, I calculate, in 1940 - I haven’t been able to discover exactly when. So no horoscope sign for that one (I’m a Capricorn). But the math reveals he was 16 years older than me.
For the record, he died September 11, 2001. He was a fire safety director, 2 WTC. To say it explicitly, he died 9-11. He was a fire safety director at the World Trade Center.
He and I have the same name - William Wren. Not sure about the similarity of our middle names but really, who uses middle names anyway?
Apart from his name and a few scant facts that are pretty much meaningless to anyone but a statistician, I know nothing about this man who shares my name and who left the world because he was at the centre of a horrific event.
So who was he? I mean no disrespect to the tributes to victims of 9-11, but I’m not interested in a name. Who was the man? How did he love? What did he love? How did he laugh? What made him mad as a hatter?
I want to know how William Wren’s friends referred to him. No one calls me William. I suspect no one called him William either. Was he a Bill? A Billy? A Will? Willy? You know, William has a fistful of variations. You never know what your friends might decide they’re going to call you.
Flounder began his 9-11 post speaking of the assassination of JFK. I remember where I was. Having been born in 1940, you can bet your ass the other William Wren remembered where he was. He’d have been 23 at the time. (I was 7.) So for William Wren, I’m pretty sure it was a key and lingering event in his life. He was a young man in his prime when it occurred.
I wonder what William Wren thought of the Beatles? He’d have been about 23 or 24 at the time they hit the big time in the U.S. Did he embrace them? Or did he stay an Elvis guy? (Assuming he ever was an Elvis guy …)
Did he marry? Were there children? My Internet search, admittedly not thorough, revealed no information like this. But having left the world at 61, wife or not, children or not, you can be sure he had his deep and enduring relationships. Maybe it’s best we don’t know. It was his business, and theirs. And read all you want about someone, uncover all the detailed personal information you want, you cannot know anyone that way. You have to live and love and fight and laugh with them. This none of us did, and will not do. Only his friends and family did.
Still, I’d like to know more about who the man was. Of course, for all I know he and I would have hated each other! He might have met me and thought, “Wow! What an ass! I can’t believe he has the same name as me!” And maybe I would have thought the same about him. On the other hand, we might have shared a beer, laughed at everyone else and said, “We William Wrens - we gotta stick together. The rest of the world’s made up of idiots!”
You just never know. Because you can’t know. A name is just a name.
It’s good and it’s right to remember people lost. An event like 9-11 makes it difficult to memorialize them in a way that we’d like, where we can really know who the people were who belong to all those names, but we do the best we can.
Myself, I’d rather see the home movies. Or, better still, hear the stories from their friends. I’m sure there are more than a few that could be told by William Wren’s friends and family.
As it is, I have only a name that, a bit disturbingly, is also mine. I choose to think of him as Bill. Of course, that’s what I am - a Bill. So perhaps I’m biased.
And it’s good to know that there was another person in the world with my name who was a better man than me. It gives the rest of us something to aspire to.
