In wake of 9/11 tragedy, Bobby Valentine forged indelible bond with a victim’s family

If you remember those surreal weeks after, you remember what it was like trying to piece back together the Lower Manhattan grid you’d always known with the one being reshaped, even as the ruins of the towers still smoldered in its midst. One-way streets were now no-way streets. Detour signs ruled the day.

And Bobby Valentine was lost.

It was around 10:45 or so on the evening of Friday, Nov. 23, 2001, and Valentine had just watched the 18th-ranked Syracuse Orangemen defeat Wake Forest, 74-67, in the finals of the Preseason NIT at Madison Square Garden. He’d taken in that game in a Garden suite in the company of some favored guests: a small gaggle of children who’d had parents go to work the morning of Sept. 11 and never come home.

Two of those kids were in a limo now with Valentine as they crawled the dystopian streets trying to reach the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and their home in Kensington after being diverted from the West Side Highway. Matt Conroy, all of 13, was giving the driver directions after Valentine threw up his hands, and it was going well: He was considering Xavier for high school and knew that part of the island better than Bobby did. The car inched toward the tube.