On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Maria McHugh saw her husband’s name light up her phone and let it go to voicemail.
She assumed that her husband, Michael Edward McHugh Jr. — a Cantor Fitzgerald employee, a board member of their village just north of Manhattan and a first-time political candidate — was just calling with errands. But McHugh, 35, never called back.
His office was in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the first tower struck by a hijacked airliner in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people that day, including victims at the Pentagon and the flight that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The nation is again holding remembrance ceremonies Friday to mark a quarter-century since the attacks.
Now remarried, Maria Sayegh eventually served on the same local board as her first husband. She watched her oldest son — who was 6 years old on that infamous Tuesday morning — become a U.S. Army Green Beret.
Ms. Sayegh said the loss of her son’s father on 9/11 impacted his decision to serve his country. He is married and is now serving in the National Guard.
“He wanted to serve his country. He wanted to fight,” she said.
As the anniversary approached, she reflected on the attack that claimed her first husband’s life and changed her life profoundly.
Hours before the terrorist attacks, Ms. Sayegh had blown a kiss to her husband as he made his way out the door to catch a Metro-North train to work.
“My boys were 6, 3 and 1 — at the time of Michael’s passing. I woke up. He left the house prior to me getting up. I was still nursing our third child,” Ms. Sayegh said.
“And sadly, as he was about to leave our bedroom on his way to the train, he motioned that he was going to come over, but I knew he was running a little late. He was going to come around the bed to give me a kiss goodbye. And I said, ’Go ahead, don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to you later,’” she said.
“And so, we sort of blew a kiss. And then he ran to the train to make like a 7:10 train.”
While her husband was working for Cantor Fitzgerald at the time, he was also running for county legislator in Westchester and serving a second term as a Tuckahoe Village trustee.
After McHugh had left for work, Ms. Sayegh’s children woke up, and she fed her 6-year-old son Michael and took him to the bus to go to school.
According to Ms. Sayegh, McHugh had gotten into a dispute with one of his constituents the night before at a village meeting.
“I called his campaign manager’s wife to sort of discuss what was happening, what had happened the night before. And we were chatting on the phone for a little bit while I had an eye on the kids at the dining room table,” Ms. Sayegh said.
Ms. Sayegh, who was not near a television set, said she missed her husband’s last call when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m.
“And Michael was calling in, and I knew it was him because no one would ever call me at 8:35 or 8:40 in the morning. And I just figured, ’Oh, he’s just calling me to tell me that he needs me to do some errands for him,’ so I never picked up the phone.”
But Ms. Sayegh said the woman with whom she was speaking on the phone kept getting calls from her brother at the same time. She asked Ms. Sayegh to hold while she took his call.
That was when Ms. Sayegh learned about the first plane hitting the North Tower.
“I said, ’That’s where Michael works.’”
And immediately, she said, “’Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.’”
Ms. Sayegh hung up the phone and started to call her husband incessantly, but he never picked up.
“That’s one of the saddest stories of my whole life,” she said.
Later that day, when she picked up Michael, he had realized that his father was in one of the buildings “and that there was a very big accident.”
“His question to me was, if Daddy dies, who’s going to come to my soccer games? And it was just so difficult. He’s 6 years old and he was always a mature kid,” Ms. Sayegh said.
“I did have to tell him that we would always be at his games and cheer him on and be there for him, but I don’t recall there being a one moment when I told the other kids because it was just part of their life.
“They grew up knowing that their dad died in the World Trade Center on 9/11,” she said.
The family held a memorial service for McHugh at the end of September in 2001.
In the aftermath of the events of 9/11, Ms. Sayegh was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
She went on to serve as a Tuckahoe Village trustee, the first elected position McHugh had held, and has been involved in her four sons’ education, serving as a member of the Tuckahoe PTA and president of the Mothers’ Auxiliary at Iona Preparatory School.
She married Tony Sayegh in 2007 and joined the advisory board of Tuesday’s Children, which supports children of 9/11 victims.
As for Ms. Sayegh’s son Michael, he graduated from the University of Michigan and worked in the financial district, but then decided to enlist in the U.S. Army and become a Green Beret.
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