Grieving mother tells of her 9/11 heartache

Patricia Bingley, 77, says she wants a final chance to talk to the boys, who are now 16 but were only six when she last had contact with them.

Her son Kevin Dennis, 43, died after going to work on the 101st floor of the World Trade Centre’s north tower when terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the landmark New York skyscraper on September 11 2001.

Mrs Bingley, from Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, says soon afterwards she had a row with his widow Debra and lost contact with her grandsons, Ryan and Elliot.

“She just cut me off completely. Lots of people have tried to get through to her but she has changed her phone numbers many times,” she said.

“All I want is to talk to the boys on the phone. That’s the only thing I want before I die.

“My son would have been gutted had he known that she had stopped me from contacting them.”

Mr Dennis was brought up in London’s East End and started working in the City of London at 17 before being moving to the United States to work for Chase Manhattan aged 22.

He and Debra came back to Britain after getting married, but he was headhunted by New York-based financial company Cantor Fitzgerald and the young family returned to America shortly after the twins were born in November 1994.

Mrs Bingley said the impending 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks had brought home the scale of the loss of her “Cockney kid living the American dream”.

“This one most probably will be the worst one because I’m older and I know I’m coming to the end. I just wish he was here so I could say goodbye to him,” she said.

“I don’t know how he died. We have no body. I can’t go to the graveyard.

“I find myself saying, ‘please bring him back’ but I know he won’t come back.

“It’s very very hard for parents who lose their child without expecting it.”

She added: “It doesn’t get any better as the years go on and you get older. It just makes it worse for me because I’m getting older and older.

“It’s times like these I miss my son really dreadfully. He always advised me on everything and he would have looked after me if anything happened.”

Mrs Bingley added: “He was a good son, such a good man, very successful. He wanted to have a good life but he knew he had to work hard for it.”

A British broadcaster is flying Mrs Bingley out to New York in the week before the anniversary of the attacks, but on the day itself she will attend the ceremony at the September 11 memorial garden in London’s Grosvenor Square.

Mr Dennis’s widow could not be reached for comment.