07/02/2017
This is a post by Gerard Crowe about the events following the tragic days of 9/11
Thank you Gerard for putting it so eloquently and making it such a great testament to the great Clipper family we all were back then we stuck together through all those sad sad days and nights ❤️
On 9/8/01, I spent the night there with my buddy Mike Lynch. A Typical Saturday night, with his fiancée Stephanie bartending, shots of Jager being ordered between Bud Lights by Mike via microphone. Mike"s usual playlist setting the backdrop, 50 of our closest friends milling about ... a regular Saturday night like so many others before. I vividly remember standing with him at the corner of his DJ booth at the front of the bar, listening as he talked shop about "the job", and laughing that he had to pause and think when he had last worked. I remember saying "what a racket ... wish I had to think about when I last worked" , busting his chops about the relaxed schedule and extended time off that the FDNY guys had by trading mutuals. While all in good fun, he reminded me that it all comes with a price (pointing to a FDNY memorial shirt he was wearing), and how I wasn't risking my life going to Court each day. Who knew how prophetic that statement would turn out to be just 3 short days later, when he gave his life doing the job he loved. In the weeks that followed, the Clipper was like a home to us all. It was a place we would gather, get updates, remember our friend, drown our sorrows, and be there for our friends and their families. It was more than a bar, but a place of therapy, support and friendship. After every memorial mass, and every funeral when the boys bodies were found, we met there, raised a glass in their honor, and toasted their memory and heroism. This was our place, our people, our neighborhood and our common loss. When Mike's body was recovered in early 2012, we gathered there again after the wake, walking down from Schuyler Hill. As I sat at the end of the bar near the kitchen, as some friends were throwing darts, I looked in the pocket of my suit jacket, and pulled out the memorial card with Mike's probie pic and a prayer that I had taken from the wake. I removed it from my pocket, and placed it in the corner of the frame of the nautical painting at the end of the bar, next to the dart toe line where he had stood many a night before. Who knew, 16 years later, that same memorial card would still be hanging in that same spot. Was I surprised to see it there last year when I stopped in? No ... because that is the type of family oriented, TN proud, one hurts, we all hurt aura that the clipper evoked for so many. It wasn't just a bar ... it wasn't just a restaurant. To us, it was so much more. Thank you Eileen and Peader Tierney. The place may be closing, but it's aura will live on in our hearts forever. Thanks for 20 years, and thank you for your support of the TN Community. .
