Missing Poster

As they watched news coverage of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, the family of R. Mark Rasweiler, a vice president at Marsh & McLennan on the 100th floor of the North Tower, remained hopeful that he would be found alive, possibly hospitalized or in shock and wandering. That afternoon Rasweiler’s daughter Lindsey, who worked in advertising, launched an effort to find him. Recalling pictures of missing children on milk cartons, she and her coworkers created a missing poster, believed to be one of the first to appear after 9/11. Armed with 500 fliers, her siblings, Caryn and Michael, traveled into Manhattan from New Jersey on September 12, placing posters into the hands of strangers and posting them near hospitals and throughout the city. For the next several days, Lindsey remained home with her mother, Susan, answering telephone calls from people who had seen the poster. Like other missing posters, it eventually became a memorial as the family confronted the reality that Rasweiler would not be coming home.