Ten Years Later, Parents Of Sandy Victims Fear Children Are Forgotten

NEW YORK CITY — Because of Hurricane Sandy, the children of Fran Streich and Marcia Sikowitz children will forever be 24-years-old.

Streich and Sikowitz are the mothers of Jessie Streich-Kest and Jacob Vogelman, two friends who lost their lives ten years ago when the superstorm slammed into New York City and, on Oct. 29, 2012, toppled a tree in Ditmas Park.

Every year, the anniversary raises questions for the two moms: Would Kest still be working with kids in Bushwick? Would Vogelman be designing sets in an Upper West Side theater? Would they still be friends?

But — as Sandy becomes a symbol for the need to update New York City infrastructure in the wake of worsening climate change — perhaps the most painful question is this: have their children been forgotten?

“Houses can eventually be repaired,” Streich told Patch. "I just think the story about people who died, and our kids, keeps getting lost.”

Both mothers say the city ignores those 43 lives lost during Sandy and wish, instead of overly fixate on the property damage, it would help mourning families express the pain and loss many still feel a decade later.

“It's not like New York City has a memorial to the lives lost in Hurricane Sandy, you know,” Streich said, “they're just going to be talking about property.”

But at this 10-year anniversary, Streich said it’s important to think about Jessie and Jake, the other 41 lives lost, “and the impact that they would have had over the last ten years."

'That Was My Daughter'

Streich recently texted the her daughter's former principal at the Bushwick School for Social Justice to ask a question: would Streich-Kest have been a principal by now?

"I don’t think so," the principal replied. "She really, really loved kids and loved working with kids and that would have taken her away from them.’”

Streich-Kest was the graduate of several New York City institutions, including Brooklyn Friends School — where she met Vogelman in the sixth grade — Murrow High School and Hunter College, where she completed a teaching fellow program after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania.

Before Streich-Kest found teaching, she followed in the footsteps of her father Jon Kest — a social justice advocate who died from cancer a month after his daughter's death — and worked as a local activist.

Streich-Kest worked with former President Barack Obama's campaign in 2008, Eric Schniedierman's Attorney General campaign in 2010, and New Yorkers For Clean, Livable And Safe Streets in 2011.

The local news site DNAinfo interviewed Streich-Kest that year her work with NYCLASS and the poor conditions faced by carriage horses in Central Park.

"We're not an outrageous group," Streich-Kest reportedly said. "We're just trying to show what's going on."

Streich-Kest only worked at the Bushwick School for Social Justice for a few months, but she made a deep impression on the school principal, who keeps a photo of her on his desk in Washington, her mother said.

When people ask if the young woman is his wife, he tells them about Streich-Kest and how much she cared for her students.

Another teacher, who Streich met last year, said he takes his students to Jessie and Jake’s tree, where the families laid a small memorial plaque, and he talks about their lives.

But if the people who knew Streich-Kest can't help but remember her, Streich fears the city at large has already forgotten.

Streich — who goes every week to Green-Wood Cemetery to visit the grave of the daughter and husband she lost in a single season ten years ago— says sometimes feels like people avoid talking about Jessie.

“It's just really hard to feel like they're forgotten, except once a year,” Streich said. "I know it's probably not true, but that's what it feels like because people are afraid to talk about [her death]."

"People would say: 'Well, I don't want to bring it up because I don't want to make you sad,'" Streich said.

"We're already sad, you bringing it up, is not going to make us sad."

“Maybe more people think about them than we know,” Streich said. “But it's just hard every day to feel, for me, anyway, like she's being forgotten.”

Walking with a friend in Park Slope, Streich, who lives in Flatbush and has worked with both the United Federation of Teachers and the labor union 32BJ, recently struck up a conversation with a stranger.

“There was this woman who used to be an organizer who lives in Ditmas Park," the woman said. "And I think her daughter was killed by a tree."

Chills went all over her body.

“That was me," she told the stranger. "That was my daughter.”

‘He Was My Only Friend'

Sikowitz learned the extent of her son's kindness in a way no mother should: from neighbors who came to his shiva. A Park Slope neighbor had a stroke, they told Sikowitz, so Jake took it upon himself to shop for her for weeks afterward.

“I had no idea. He didn’t talk about it,” Sikowitz said. “It was just how he was as a person, to stop and think about other people.”

“He knew everyone in Park Slope — the neighbors, shopkeepers, the homeless people, the people who just hung out on the street,” Sikowitz said. “He was just a really kind, sweet person."

Sikowitz, a retired housing court judge, said as time goes on, more and more of her son’s impact on others is revealed to her. To this day, Sikowitz still gets notes from people from SUNY Buffalo or the uptown theater where he used to work.

"Jake would have loved this," they tell her. "Jake would have done that.”

What Sikowitz remembers is the rides.

She'd be waiting for him to drive home from Buffalo and watching the clock tick past when he was supposed to have returned to their home in Park Slope.

Finally, Sikowitz would call.

"How come you're not back yet?"

"Well," he'd reply. "I'm dropping somebody off in Suffolk County."

Sikowitz would note, "You don't go from Buffalo to Suffolk County to get to Brooklyn."

Suffolk County was the least of it. Sometimes, Vogelman would stop in Philadelphia to pick Jessie up from UPenn.

“I try to focus on being grateful for having been his mother for 24 years,” Sikowitz said, “but that only gets you so far.”

For years, it was difficult for her to even walk down the street in Park Slope.

“Sometimes I would literally put my hands up," she said. "Because I couldn't talk to anybody."

As years have passed, Sikowitz has found it easier to share the memories of her son with the people who love her and still honor Jake at Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Glendale.

“Usually in a Jewish cemetery it is very gray because you don't bring flowers,” Sikowitz said, but friends have been creative over the years by colorfully painting rocks with things that remind them of her son.

“His grave is a really happening place."

And if Sikowitz needs reminding why they still honor her son, she can recall the day soon after Jake’s death when an autistic friend of her son's came to pay her a visit.

“He came into our house and burst into tears,” Sikowitz said. “He said to me: ‘He was my only friend.’”

Love In A Horrible Place

Ten years after their children’s deaths, both Streich and Sikowitz fear the city won't acknowledge what it lost when it lost their children.

“They’re gonna talk about the damage,” Sikowitz said. Added Streich, “And FEMA.”

The political grandstanding also rankles with the two women — an activist and retired housing court judge — because they fear their sad sorority of mourning mothers will only continue to grow as the city fails to prepare adequately for climate change.

They also know their children would have been among those fighting for change, and helping victims, had they lived.

“Jessie would be concerned about climate change,” Streich said.

“They were both people who completely directed their energies outward, to their community, to other people, to people who needed some kind of assistance," Sikowitz said. “What they could have added to the community."

The city may forget, but those communities still remember.

Every year, on Oct. 29, police close a part of Ditmas Avenue for a memorial. Those who attend leave candles and chalk memories on the pavement where the two friends, who'd been out walking a dog, died.

“There have been years where people come from Buffalo who have happened to be in New York, or Jake's friends I haven't seen for a long time,” Sikowitz said. “They show up and they share stories.”

“I don't love being on that street, because there's nothing about my son, except for the day that he was killed there,” Sikowitz added. “But it's very meaningful to sort of just put it out there in the world.”

"It reminds us that other people remember our children," Sikowitz said, "and that is a good feeling, right? To know that they're remembered."

“I kind of like the idea of reclaiming the street," added Streich, in an activist-minded way her daughter would surely appreciate.

“[It] feels like putting some love into this place that was a horrible place.”