Patricia Smith, whose NYPD mom was killed on 9/11, shares grief for the mother she never knew

For nearly 25 years, Patricia Smith has been frozen in time as the little girl in the red dress.

She wore it on Dec. 4, 2001, when she was 2, as she toddled across the stage at Carnegie Hall, holding her father's hand, and accepted the Medal of Honor for her late mother.   

Nearly three months earlier, NYPD Officer Moira Smith died while rescuing people from the World Trade Center. She was the only female NYPD officer killed while responding to the terrorist attacks.

The image of Patricia in her dress at the ceremony was published by news outlets worldwide and instantly became a symbol of the tragedy; one that resonates to this day. 

As each anniversary passed, she became accustomed to the lights of cameras and questions from journalists.

"What do you remember about the day?"

"What do you remember about your mom?"

Smith, now 27, is pursuing a law degree from Fordham University. She's wrestled with the complicated feelings of losing her mother before she was old enough to remember her. She's confronted her guilt for not knowing the woman who repeatedly rushed into the south tower to rescue others. Years later, she's come to terms with the truth that her relationship with Moira Smith is difficult for some to understand.

"I lost something different than what everyone else expected," she said.

Patricia was among about 3,000 children who had a parent die on Sept. 11, 2001. Another 100 babies were born in the months after their fathers perished in the attacks.

As Patricia grew older and experienced other loss, she realized that what she had lost 25 years ago was the mom that Moira would have been: The confidante; the one to talk to about boys, about doing her hair.

"I have been to funerals, been through the grieving process. I understand what it feels like to lose someone that I knew personally, and I was close with," she said in a phone interview. "And once that kind of hit me, I realized that that was not how I was grieving my mom, and it was a completely separate entity in itself — I was grieving a mother."

James Smith, her father and a retired NYPD officer, said he's watched his daughter grow up as an independent thinker through a childhood that came with challenges. 

"She was forced to grow up very early," he said in a phone interview. "She was under a microscope for a large part of her life and people always watching and wondering what she was up to."

Moira Smith was 38, and a 13-year veteran of the NYPD assigned to Manhattan's 13th Precinct when planes struck the Twin Towers.

Just miles away from the chaos, Patricia was watching "Winnie the Pooh" at her home in Queens with her father.

A reckoning 

Patricia and her father moved from Queens to East Hampton after she finished preschool. James Smith remarried in 2006. 

As she approached her teenage years, the questions that came with each passing anniversary and the emotions they carried became difficult to reconcile. 

"I remember saying things that — maybe not that I necessarily thought people wanted to hear — but stories that were told to me or characteristics that I learned from other people," Patricia said. "But they were never really my answers because I don't have those answers."

She went to East Hampton Middle School and the college-preparatory Millbrook School in Dutchess County for high school. 

She wrestled with the normal pangs of growing up. She credited her close family — especially her father — with stepping up when she needed support. But she still felt a longing for her mother.

For James, single parenting was sometimes daunting. 

"Normally with kids, you'd have the good cop and the bad cop," he said. "I had to be both."

'Missed conversations'

Patricia went to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and earned a bachelor's degree in athletic training and later a master's in sports studies from Tulane University. 

When she went away to college, it was a time for her to reflect. She was far from New York City and thought about her role and the need to speak out about 9/11. It pushed her to again take on the task of preserving the memory of that day, and the lives lost. 

"I put a lot of pressure on myself to hold the memory alive and almost try and educate people on what's still going on," she said. 

That pressure came atop those of daily life — the milestones and the hardships — that had to be navigated without her mother.

"I wish she saw me graduate and was there for birthdays and me moving out," she said. "But honestly I think what I miss out on the most is conversations for the days that are really hard.

"Obviously, I have my dad, but there's some things that a girl is not going to talk to her dad about," she said.

'Under control'

Martin Glynn was one of the last people to see Moira Smith alive. 

He entered the south tower just before the north tower was struck. He was on an elevator to the 78th floor sky lobby when panic started to unfold around him. He remembers coming down the steps of the tower and the first time he looked out the window to see the chaos below. When he finally stepped out of the building's staircase, he met Moira. 

"She had this whole thing under control. She had her game face on," Glynn, 82, of Ossining in Westchester County, said in a phone interview. She told people not to look at the horrors in the plaza of the buildings. 

Glynn tried to look past her once, and Moira moved her face.

"For a moment, her game face cleared away," Glynn said. "I was looking directly at her, and she said, 'Don't look,' but in a different tone of voice." 

He kept going and escaped but can still remember that moment.

Moira Smith guided dozens of people to safety and was last seen evacuating people out of the south tower. She died when it collapsed. 

Glynn recognized her face while scanning the news coverage of the attacks.

'Forging a new path'

Patricia Smith is working through the typical decisions many in their late 20s face. After graduating with a master’s degree, she worked in sports medicine but felt unfulfilled. 

"I just felt like I wasn't doing enough," she said. 

In a pivot, she turned to law school and is now in her second year at Fordham. 

She’s not sure what kind of law she plans to practice. Right now, she wants to experience the different lanes of the field and follow her intuition.

She has had an unusually personal and close look inside the criminal justice system.

In May 2017, she went with her father to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There, they watched pretrial hearings for detainees that U.S. officials have accused of coordinating the attacks.

She felt a flood of emotions on that day — anger, sadness. 

Now, years later, she said, frustration is what she feels most. 

The long-running prosecution has been marred by delays. In 2021, a trial for the men, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered by authorities to be the mastermind of the plot, was canceled. A federal appeals court last year threw out a plea deal that would have spared execution for Mohammed and two co-defendants. 

Then, last month, the judge handling the case set a trial date for the four men for June 2028 — 18 months later than prosecutors requested. 

"That was 10 years ago now," she said of her visit to Guantánamo Bay, "and still not a single thing has progressed." 

"I get really angry about it," Smith said. 

The lack of progress leaves her open to returning to the prison one day. She has more questions for prosecutors and defense lawyers. It also serves as an impetus for her to advocate that despite a quarter century of time, there are still unfinished chapters to reconcile.

James Smith said he's disappointed the trial will have to wait until 2028.

"I want justice. I want to see these guys convicted," he said. "I can't move on with my life yet."

As the 25th anniversary of the attacks approaches, Patricia wants people to remember the heroes like her mom, who gave their lives to help others, and the victims whose families were forever altered. But she also wants there to be frustration that the cogs of the legal system have moved too slowly for too long. 

"It seems like things only start really moving when there’s outcry, and not even around Sept. 11 is there any outcry anymore," she said. "I want people to want justice that my family and I want."