“I came away from that meeting quite
dumbfounded, actually. I thought, ‘ That’s
great, they took an interest, but now
they’re going to have to call me about all of
this paperwork.’”
That call never came. “They never
actually asked me too many questions
about that. They were more interested in
what I had lost. Not in a monetary sense,
but what I had lost in my life and how my
life had changed,” Celic says. “Yes, he was
probably going to be worth X number of
dollars, but they wanted to know how my
missing him, how my loss was going to
affect me more than how the money issue
was going to affect me.
“It was such a personal touch with them
that it almost wasn’t even a legal issue,”
she continues. “There’ll always be a special
place in my heart for them and what they
did for me.”
On Dec. 10, 2002, just two weeks
before Christmas, the first hearings for the
fund were held in front of Special Master
Kenneth Feinberg, who would determine
the amounts each applicant would receive,
in his office in New York City. Bunn,
representing Celic, was there. “It was such
an amazing energy there,” Bunn says. “You
had the leadership of ATLA there, and you
had these five or six families that were
there that day, really trying to pave the way
for everybody else.”
The hearings left no one unaffected.
During a Saturday hearing, with Bunn
present, Ken Turek, a partner at Endeman,
Lincoln, Turek & Heater, presented the case
of Lt. Peter Martin, a rescue firefighter out
of Brooklyn who had died while trying to
help after the attack. “The rescue firemen
are kind of the Green Berets, the elite, if
you will, of firefighters in New York that
responded,” Turek says. “He was up in the
first tower that fell.”
Turek gave his presentation as the
lieutenant’s wife, Alice Martin, and her
three sons, aged 6, 9 and 13, looked on.
“I hope I can be that strong in moments
of grief,” Turek says of Martin. “She just
said that, ‘We always kind of prepared
ourselves for this, both Peter and me, that
there could be a time when he doesn’t
come home and we lived our lives that way.
And it came true and I just have to deal
Turek, left, gave the presentation for rescue firefighter Lt. Peter Martin before Bunn (back, middle),
Special Master Kenneth Feinberg (back, right), Martin’s widow, Alice, and her three children, in
December 2002. “It was one of the most powerful things you’ve ever seen in your life,” Bunn says.
with it.’ And she was just very strong and
the boys were … They had these haircuts,
just combed over on the side with a little
wave in front. … They all had jackets on and
ties. Just thinking about it brings tears to
my eyes. They were just so well-behaved.”
The scene was moving for everyone.
“It was a very poignant moment when I
finished and [Feinberg] turned to the boys,”
Turek says.
“He just looks at those boys,” Bunn,
picking up the story, remembers, “and he
said, ‘Your dad would have been so proud of
you for being here today.’ … He gave these
boys such a beautiful little talk and he says,
‘This fund is for this family. We’re going to
take care of you guys.’ Everybody is bawling
at this point. It was one of the most powerful
things you’ve ever seen in your life.”
Bunn estimates that about 30 San
Diego lawyers took on 40 total clients or
cases. The average result for the San Diego
claims was approximately $2.5 million.
The effect of the experience went
beyond just the practice of law, says
Turek. “It affects your life. Because it
does a couple of things. Number one,
it helped me become a better father. …
It just showed to me the impact that a
person can have on their children’s lives,”
Turek says. “And I think it made me more
look at the practice in a human way
than before. … The practice of law can
get very analytical and cold sometimes.
Law school doesn’t always bring out
the human in us. It sometimes does
the opposite. So I think it just made the
practice of law come a little bit more from
my heart than from my head. And that
still remains to this day.”
“I don’t want to make it sound like they
were angels sent from heaven,” Celic says
of Bunn and Hulburt, “but in a way they
were. They took all the burden off of me,
who was still in shock, and I’m sure [off
of] the other people they worked with. We
didn’t have to deal with all this paper and
all these questions. It was a blessing—it
really was—to have that.”
