By Brendan J Hennessy

Ironically it was just a few weeks after I returned from a trip to New Jersey and New York where I had met and chatted with some of my American cousins, in the early Summer of 2014, and while furthering my research into a particular branch of my family tree, when I made the startling discovery that one of my distant cousins perished along with so many others in that awful event that we refer to as the '9/11 Tragedy', which occurred at the World Trade Centre (Ground Zero) in Lower Manhattan, New York, on September 11, 2001. No mention had been made of that event or any connection with it during my American cousin chats.

Christopher Robert Clarke of Philadelphia, a 34 year old Bond Trader whose maternal great-grandmother was an Irish emigrant of the 19th century and a native of the parish of Glenroe, Co Limerick, was working at his offices on the 104th Floor of the South Tower on the morning of Tuesday, the 11th September, 2001, when hijacked plane, Flight 175 struck. Death would have been almost instant. What happened on that morning and in the aftermath, has been, and still is, comprehensively and widely covered in all branches of the world media.

No trace of any remains of Christopher Robert Clarke were ever found ...

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