New Victim Added To Sept. 11 List

By AMY WESTFELDT The Associated Press

Published: Sep 10, 2007

NEW YORK - Joseph Jones marks his wife's death on two days each year.

Every Feb. 10 - the day she died of lung disease - Jones lays flowers at her grave in Staten Island. On Sept. 11 - the day the World Trade Center collapsed and she inhaled the toxic dust cloud that enveloped lower Manhattan - Jones watches television at home, listening to 2,749 names of the financial workers, firefighters, parents and children who were killed in the attack.

For the first time on Tuesday, Jones is going to a small park southeast of ground zero, where he will stand for hours with those victims' families marking the sixth anniversary and hear the name of his wife, Felicia Dunn-Jones, who died five months after the towers fell. He is not sure how he will feel.

"It's just a sense of sadness, really," he said. "It's just a sense of acknowledgment that ... her death was caused by events happening that day."

The addition of Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old civil rights lawyer, to New York's Sept. 11 death toll occurred in a year that sharply focused on post-Sept. 11 illness - and the legacy of the cleanup of ground zero - more than ever before.

"I don't think anyone's questioning anymore how many thousands of people are sick," said David Worby, who represents nearly 10,000 plaintiffs suing the city and contractors who oversaw ground zero's cleanup. More than 100 of his plaintiffs have died, he says.

City officials have argued that more research is needed before the true health effects of Sept. 11 can be proved. But they significantly changed their position this year, commissioning a health panel that concluded in February that treating the ailments of exposed workers could cost close to $400 million a year.

"We are not about to abandon the men and women who helped lift our city back onto its feet during our greatest time of need," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the time.

Three months later, city Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch surprised many by adding Dunn-Jones' name to the official Sept. 11 victims' list.

Citing "accumulated scientific research" that linked sarcoidosis to ground zero exposure, Hirsch wrote in May, "the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has thus concluded that Mrs. Dunn-Jones' exposure to World Trade Center dust on 9/11/01 contributed to her death and it has been ruled a homicide."

His ruling did not bring her husband money - he had already received more than $2 million from special master Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the federal fund that compensated Sept. 11 victims. Jones just sought recognition that her death was caused by Sept. 11 to allow him to hear her name read at anniversary ceremonies and etched onto the Sept. 11 memorial.

"Feinberg said she was a victim of the terrorist attacks. If she was a victim of the terrorist attacks, her name should be on the list," said Jones, 55, although he said he understands why more people haven't waged similar fights. "Sometimes people just don't want to get involved. It's hard enough losing somebody."

On Sept. 11, while Jones watched planes hit the towers from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, Dunn-Jones tried to escape her office a block from the north tower. She put a piece of clothing over her face but couldn't keep the choking, white dust out of her lungs, Jones said.

She developed "just this crazy, persistent cough," mostly at night, Jones said. She was diagnosed with asthma and kept working at the U.S. Department of Education, going on a four-day field trip to upstate New York the weekend before her death and keeping up trips to the gym three times a week.

She woke up tired on the morning she died, barely ate and died that afternoon in her teenage daughter's bed after asking her husband to bring her some tea. An autopsy later found she had had a heart attack brought on by sarcoidosis.

"It wasn't a familiar term to me," Jones said. His attorney learned that sarcoidosis had been linked to toxic exposure and appealed to Feinberg, and then to the city medical examiner. Three years ago, Hirsch denied the request to change her death certificate.

After receiving letters from Feinberg, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney and others, Hirsch reached a new decision on May 23.