June 26, 2021

Bill Harvey is the husband of Sara Manley Harvey, who died at the age of 31 on Sept. 11. Sara Manley Harvey worked at Fred Alger Management, 93rd floor, WTC Tower One – the North Tower. Bill and Sara lived at their home in Manhattan. 

An obituary published in the New York Times in February 2002, recalled the kind of person Sara Manley Harvey was.

 “When she was in the fifth grade, Sara Manley Harvey turned a school fund-raiser into a mini-M.B.A. lesson. While her classmates went door to door selling oranges and grapefruits, she used the phone book to call the people who lived on the wealthiest street in the next town over, and broke all sales records. 

That early lesson in gumption served her well. After graduating from Georgetown, she advanced steadily in financial circles, putting in long days as a telecom analyst with Fred Alger Management. ‘People would see how pretty she was, but they wouldn’t know how seriously she took her job and how hard she worked at everything,’ said her sister May-Lis.  

On Aug. 11 [2001] Sara Manley married Bill Harvey at a storybook wedding in Chapel Hill, N.C. Mrs. Harvey, 31, oversaw every detail, down to the magenta-colored napkins that matches the roses the flower girls carried. She took as much time planning the menu for three guests who were vegetarians as she did for the other 120 invitees. ‘That’s the kind of person Sara was,’ Mr. Harvey said. ‘She wanted to make sure everyone was happy.’

Mrs. Harvey also found time to volunteer for various charities, including the Fabretto Children’s Foundation. [Fabretto Children’s Foundation, a charity that seeks to enable impoverished children and their families in Nicaragua to break the cycle of poverty through education, health, and community involvement]. In April [2002] the foundation’s new multiuse center in the rural community of Somoto, Nicaragua, will be dedicated in her name.” 

Bill Harvey became a member of Voices of September 11th. He became one of the dozen members of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission. In June 2003, the 9/11 Commission was getting little cooperation from the White House and already Family Steering Committee members were discouraged by the foot dragging by President Bush and others. They felt they were in a battle against time in an effort to get answers from the Bush-Cheney White House. “There’s a very, very small window to effect changes,” says one 9/11 widower, Bill Harvey. “And unfortunately, that window is closing.” Harvey said “Bush has done everything in his power to squelch this 9/11 commission and prevent it from happening.”

 With growing alarm at the continued slow pace of progress with the 9/11 Commission, Bill Harvey, on October 30, 2003, was interviewed by the McClatchy Newspaper. He said that he was a registered Republican and had voted for the President’s father George H.W. Bush twice, and for George W. Bush in 2000. But, said Harvey about the younger President Bush, “He’s obfuscated this investigation from Day One. I just don’t understand why, as commander in chief and the person in charge of the security of this country, he’s not interested in investigating how this was able to happen.”

 With the 9/11 Commission running out of money and out of time to complete their inquiry, Bill Harvey was stupefied by the White House’s reluctance to grant an extension for the investigation. He told Salon.com in January 2004, “I can’t for the life of me understand why they don’t ask for an extension,” says Bill Harvey, a member of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission. “Without more time, the quality of the final report will be diminished.” Though its mandate was to follow the evidence wherever it led to find the truth of what happened on September Eleventh, Harvey and other Family Steering Committee members found the 9/11 Commission had “become wrapped up in an election year debate.” Harvey said, “It’s Washington, D.C. politics. Everything is wired.” Harvey told Salon.com he was pushing for a six-month extension for the 9/11 Commission to complete its work. But the Bush White House ended up only giving it a few more months.

When he learned that fellow Family Steering Committee member, Beverly Eckert, died on February 13, 2009, in a small commuter plane crash near Buffalo, Bill Harvey told the press “She would never shy from the good fight or negotiate what she knew to be right.”

Ray McGinnis

References:
“Sara Elizabeth Manley Harvey – World Trade Center – Month-Old Marriage, “ New York Times, February 10, 2002.
Eric Boehlert, “Bush’s 9/11 coverup?: Family members of victims of the terror attacks say the White House has smothered every attempt to get to the bottom of the outrageous intelligence failures that took place on its watch,” Salon.com, June 18, 2003.
James Rosen, “White House Stonewalls Relatives of 9-11 Victims,” McClatchy Newspapers, Sacramento, CA, October 30, 2003.
Eric Boehlert, “Playing Politics with the 9/11 Commission,” Salon.com, January 25, 2004.