Making a special delivery

Hightstown postal carrier Carlos Colon lost his wife in the terrorist attacks Sept. 11. Two Twin Rivers residents decided to lend him a hand to help recover.

By: Scott Morgan
   It was a poignant moment last week when two East Windsor residents delivered a bundle of mail to their mail carrier.
   The role reversal grew from neighbors’ feelings for the man whom residents have come to know as a fixture on their street.
   Up until Sept. 11, the days seemed like any other on Twin Rivers Drive. Residents ate breakfast, watched television, cleaned their dinner dishes and had their mail delivered to them by Carlos Colon.
   On Sept. 12, residents still ate breakfast, still watched television and still cleaned their dinner dishes.
   But their mail came from other hands that day. The hands of Carlos Colon were busy praying for his wife’s return. She had gone to work in Manhattan the morning of Sept. 11, but did not come back.
   Last Friday, Sept. 28, Linda M. Colon of Millstone Township was among 292 Marsh McLellan employees "lost in the atrocities of Sept. 11" who were remembered at a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. The financial firm where she worked was formerly housed in the north tower of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.
   Two days prior to the Mass, Nora Horn and Elaine Goldberg of Twin Rivers Drive delivered a parcel of their own to the Hightstown Post Office in the name of Carlos and Linda Colon. The parcel, the result of an effort engineered by Ms. Horn and Ms. Goldberg, contained nearly 40 letters, cards and checks collected from other residents of Twin Rivers Drive for the Colon family.
   That so many neighbors from Twin Rivers Drive gave to help the Colons attests to Mr. Colon’s character, said Ms. Horn. Both she and Ms. Goldberg described Mr. Colon as a warm, friendly man — "a good person" — with an ever-present smile and an easy manner. Ms. Goldberg said her neighbors simply felt they needed to do something.
   "We all feel terrible," Ms. Horn said. "There’s so little you can do, but to help makes you feel better."