The U.S. President made a personal tribute to the singer who was, he said, ‘truly the Queen of Disco . . . her voice was unforgettable’.
She was only 63 when she died in Florida after battling lung cancer — a premature passing certainly, but not so troublingly young as Whitney Houston, who died at 48 three months ago, or Michael Jackson, gone at 50 three years ago.
Her death could have been regarded as another showbusiness career cut tragically short — but then intriguing reports began to surface within hours of her death.
Friends claimed she was convinced she had been a victim of 9/11 — developing the cancer that killed her after inhaling the toxic dust-filled air that blanketed lower Manhattan for days after the destruction of the World Trade Centre. The singer had been living in New York at the time of the terror outrage, in an apartment close to the Twin Towers.
As with so many others caught near the eye of the storm, Summer admitted later she had been deeply affected by the devastation of a day that claimed 3,000 lives. The singer battled depression during her life and attempted suicide in 1976 — but the horror of 9/11 sent her into a bout of depression that lasted two years, she later revealed.
‘I was freaked out,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t go out, didn’t want to talk to anybody. I kept the blinds down and stayed in my bedroom.’ She went on: ‘I went to church and light came back into my soul.’
However, she admitted that even years later ‘that feeling’ returned whenever she saw anything reminding her of the attack.
In the months and years following 9/11, Summer’s paranoia intensified, say friends. Deney Terrio, a friend and the disco choreographer who taught John Travolta to dance, recalled how she would hang silk sheets in her dressing room to prevent any dust from coming in. Another told the showbusiness website TMZ the singer would continually spray disinfectant in the air.
Memorial: Tributes to Donna Summer in Los Angeles. She claimed the 9/11 smoke cloud made her ill
Singer: Donna Summer performing in Houston, Texas in 1982
After Summer was diagnosed with lung cancer, some close to her told her the usual culprit — cigarette smoking — was probably to blame. Summer did smoke, and spent a lot of her life in the hazy atmosphere of nightclubs. But she stuck to her guns and, friends told TMZ, was adamant 9/11 was to blame.
Not only that, the devout born-again Christian insisted the Al Qaeda plot had been an attack on Christianity by Islamic radicals and so, in essence, she and fellow Christians had been its intended targets.
Leaving aside the religious theorising, it would be easy to brush aside her fears over the dust cloud as the paranoia and hypochondria of a showbusiness diva.
Easy, if it weren’t for one salient point: her fears about the toxic air near Ground Zero have proved all too prescient.
Though neither Donna Summer nor anyone else will have known exactly how much of the air-borne fallout from the collapse of the Twin Towers she was exposed to, suffice to say that many who were there would not be surprised if it did cause her cancer.
Scientists have long identified asbestos and various other toxic materials as cancer-causing ‘carcinogens’, and expert analysis found many of these particles in the dust from the World Trade Centre, which lingered over New York for days.
Along with the asbestos there were microscopic shards of glass and benzene, which is produced by burning fuel.
The cloud, according to the air pollution expert Professor Thomas Cahill, was ‘wildly toxic’. A recent study by New York medical experts published in The Lancet found that firemen who were exposed to the 9/11 attack have a higher risk of developing cancer than colleagues who were not exposed.
The study’s authors concluded that a link between the exposure in New York and cancer was ‘biologically plausible’.
Thousands who worked on or near the site have sued the city after falling ill, while rescue workers and residents who — like Summer — lived near the World Trade Centre have cancer diagnoses they blame on the attack. More than 60,000 people are thought to be at risk, and are enrolled in health monitoring or 9/11 treatment programmes.
At least 55 rescue workers called to the Twin Towers have died of cancer since September 2001, and more than 75 have been diagnosed with the disease since the attacks.
In addition, more than 18,000 New Yorkers claim they have fallen ill due to inhaling toxic dust particles. But last year, those who may have been victims were disappointed by a federal report ruling there was not yet enough evidence to say whether the smoke cloud had caused cancers.
The U.S. government has set aside $4.3 billion to monitor, treat and compensate people exposed to the toxic fumes and dust. However, in a controversial political compromise to placate Republicans alarmed by the possibility of soaring costs, cancer was omitted from the ailments that qualified for financial aid.
Three New York congressmen rebuffed the report by saying they were confident that future studies — one is due to take place this year — will establish a link between cancer and the 9/11 fallout.
Scientists say it takes between five and 20 years for cancer to develop after exposure to toxic substances. Even federal officials have acknowledged the number of victims of the Twin Towers attack could yet rise.
Smoke: Donna Summer claimed that smoke from 9/11 was to blame for her lung cancer
‘I think it is plausible many people will die of the numerous conditions we’ve seen due to their exposure,’ said Dr John Howard, the 9/11 Federal Health Director.
Could the possibility that Donna Summer was one of them, and she died not through smoking but as the indirect victim of terrorists, provide solace to her family?
They know at least that Summer does not deserve to be remembered as just another star whose early death was a result of self-abuse.
Famously undivalike in her behaviour, in real life Summer could hardly have been more different to the lubricious image promoted in the 17-minute extended version of her first hit single Love To Love You Baby, which contained the sounds of a score of simulated orgasms.
Born LaDonna Adrian Gaines as one of seven children of a devoutly Christian family, like Whitney Houston she rose to fame in a gospel choir. But unlike Houston, whose life slipped into alcohol and drug abuse, Summer had a morally upright reputation — at least off stage. In fact, she was dismayed by her reputation as a sex goddess.
After a brief first marriage to a German actor, with whom she had her first daughter, she married fellow singer Bruce Sudano in 1980 and had two more girls. It was a union that lasted until her death.
She attracted serious controversy only once in her life, when she incensed her gay fans after apparently describing Aids as divine retribution for an immoral lifestyle. She insisted she had been misquoted, but many fans boycotted her music, though the sea of tributes on her death this week shows she remained much admired.
If Summer had a premonition of the disease that would kill her, did she also foresee the terror attack that might have brought it on? She certainly thought so, telling an interviewer four years ago about an incident shortly before 9/11.
‘My husband and I were walking down the street,’ she recalled. ‘I had this feeling. I said: “Honey, I feel like terrorism [is coming], high on top of the buildings.” I knew something was going to happen.’
Culled from The Daily Mail UK.
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