Diamonds from the Rough

Chris and Dana Diamond had danced around each other for months. They first met at a Kruder & Dorfmeister concert in May 2001 through mutual friends. They shared a cup of tea at Burning Man that August. But it was a only few weeks later when they finally found each other.

"How am I going to be?" Chris, 44, asked himself in the wake of 9/11. "What do I want to make of this?"

Chris was at LaGuardia Airport the morning of September 11th for a 7 a.m. flight to Kansas City that was cancelled because the plane had mechanical problems.

He said he walked off the jetway just after the first plane hit the towers.

"People were freaked out," said Chris, who would go on to spend time working as a site safety engineer down in the burning pit that had been the World Trade Center.

The answer to his question started to become clearer the Saturday following the attacks at a small gathering at a friend's place in Williamsburg where he once again ecnountered Dana, 41. They talked through the evening, shared a subway ride back to Manhattan and eventually fell in love.

"It's a big reality check of your life and what's important and what matters," said Dana as she craddled her youngest son, 10-month-old Gael, in their Prospect Heights apartment as the pair's 2-year-old boy, Adrian, played nearby.

For Chris, who starkly remembers walking south through Manhatttan, seeing what he described as "ghosts", the numerous dust-covered shell-shocked people walking about, the answers to his questions became clear.

"It was profoundly saying 'yes' to life."

"Our relationship has been about supporting each other to realize what is important to our lives," he added.