NEW YORK — A man known as Brother Sanchez approached the men who sat, still in their coats and warm knit hats, at a long cafeteria table at the Help House Love Kitchen, inside the Manhattan Bible Church in Inwood. Very politely, Brother Sanchez, who works as a cook at the soup kitchen, asked for a moment of silence so that he could bless their supper. Part of what he said, in a rapid, almost guttural chant, went like this: "We pray for the tragedy of the trade center, Lord God, all those families who lost people, Lord God, and the plane crash that hurt so many families, Lord God."
There were, in the room, some people whose problems were the same on Sept. 12 as they were on Sept. 10 — disability, addiction, homelessness. There were others who simply had too thin a cushion between them and the hard times that have set in since: a man who could no longer find free-lance work, a woman raising two children on her own. This holiday season, these people, the hungry and the sick, have been eclipsed by the families of firefighters and executives as icons of neediness. But among them, there is little resentment.
In interviews over the past few days, the city's poorest people voiced complex and conflicting opinions about money and who gets it.
If anything, visits to meal programs provided yet another testament to how few people were left untouched by the terror. "My girlfriend is out of work and one of my friends died" in the attack, said a woman in a wheelchair, who gave her name as Carol, at St. Paul the Apostle Church near Columbus Circle. Over stew at St. John's Bread and Life soup kitchen in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Daphne Whidbee, 38, said that her 7-year-old son became withdrawn and fearful after Sept. 11 and is going to counseling at a nearby hospital once a week.
Several people at Part of the Solution, a pantry and kitchen in the Bronx, said they saw nothing wrong with families of World Trade Center victims receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars while people like themselves struggled to get by. "Those are different categories," said Anibal Gomez, 45, while a social worker processed his paperwork. "I think they should take care of those families. Before me."
Edward Kelly, 49, said, "Their families deserve it," he said.
But still, he described a widow whom he had seen on television — she lived in a mansion, he said. He balked at the notion that families of victims could be supported at a level far above the average American income.
"I was out of work before this whole World Trade Center thing happened," said Tamar Watson, 35, who said she had been laid off from her job processing medical records. The families of victims should definitely receive help, she said. But when she heard the sums that some stand to receive, her eyebrows went up in surprise. "I think that's a little much," she said.
No one could suggest a way of determining how much was too much for the families of victims to receive. But the idea that life, even a luxurious life, should go on, held some appeal for those struggling to maintain even the basest standard of living.