Remembering 9/11 archived

I remember that morning when one of our employees, who had a 2nd job as NYFD paramedic, coming in and telling us of the 1st tower being hit and he had to rush downtown. We went to the roof of our building on 17th St and watched as those terrible events unfolded in front of our eyes. And I remember for the next month or so as the train pulled into Hoboken seeing the smoke plume where the towers stood. Depending on the direction of the wind sometimes you could smell the smoke in Hoboken or on 17th St. RIP all those lost.

A few of my own memories from that day:

Standing in my office talking with a co-worker and hearing my co-worker exclaim," That sounded like a plane crash!" Both of us running to the nearest window and seeing a jigsaw puzzle piece shaped hole in what used to be the upper middle of one of the WTC towers. Minutes later, seeing the top third of the other tower outlined in embers where a solid tower had once stood. Looking out the window and seeing the solid line of gawkers just standing there looking at where the whole towers had been, watching in frozen horror as they burned.

A frantic knocking on our locked office door. A voice shouting that we had to evacuate the building immediately (we learned later that buildings to either side of us had been identified as strong possible targets for the NEXT plane, fortunately there was no next plane). Reaching the lobby and being told to head north and over the bridge into Queens (we were at Chambers Street). Walking north but cutting west towards NYP. Taking the narrowest streets I could. Purposely avoiding those streets containing landmarks that could be targets. Hearing first one and then the other tower crash to the ground. Hearing the screams, but looking just long enough to ascertain what had happened before moving on.

Reaching NYP where a single police office officer was guarding the Seventh Avenue entrance to the station. A crowd easily numbering in the thousands by that time just standing there quietly (dead silence quiet) waiting for the station to open so each of them could get home. The occasional person trying to speak into a dead cell phone to try and reach a loved one. Finally, an offer for those who wished to sit in Madison Square Garden but with few if any persons accepting.

Entering the station several hours later. Having the train called and realizing I didn't know how to get to the track. Finally making it down and standing all the way home in a crowded car. Listening to the person standing near me exclaim how she was a court officer but had NOT responded to the call for Court Officers to report to the WTC to help the victims. She figured if she had, she would be dead by then. Not a single passenger (me included) responding to her shocked and shocking statements.

Arriving home at last and finding Bernie calmly sitting there watching TV as if it were a perfectly normal day, which it certainly was not and just being so grateful that both of us had made it out of lower Manhattan alive.

My son's reported memory of the day:

He was at school in Newark, taking an architecture class in building systems when the planes hit. The teacher of the class upon hearing of the attack on the WTC took the class up on the roof of the architecture building and proceeded to lecture on precisely how and why the twin towers would collapse. The class sat there and watched the towers collapse exactly as the teacher said they would.

We lived in California at that time. I remember getting up, turning on Howard Stern in the bathroom as I was getting ready, just like any other day. I heard him talking about it, but couldn't quite grasp what was going on so I quickly told my husband to turn on the tv. We were 3 hours behind, so at that point the towers had already fallen and we were absolutely stunned. For days I could do nothing but watch the coverage and cry.

Reading all of your first-hand accounts now gives me chills and brings tears to my eyes all over again..

I was at work, it was 8:50. I had dropped off my son at my moms and my daughter at school, she was in second grade and it was the 3rd day of school for her. One of the secretaries called for me to "come down here, somethings happened with at the world trade center" - we could see it from our window...in cranford and springfield you could see it. We also had the tv on. We watched, 9 of us, in horror, for hours. Our mouths open. Pacing. Shaking. We needed the president to close the campus but the ***** didnt. I left, and went to cassidy's school and picked her up. I had to have her with me. I called her father who was on his way home from rhode island. Everything stopped. I got my son, and the three of us went home and just sat. It only got worse from there. I lost a cousin. Friends lost friends, fathers, mothers. We were hit hard . It hurts me now even more than then, to watch the footage. Its simply horrific.

I am attending a tribute at noon here on campus. I dread it, and I need it.

I remember the cars in the train station parking lots, Maplewood, Millburn, Short Hills, Summit, that were not picked up for many days............

wow, that one hurts mf.

I remember I was in Dominican Republic when this event occurred ...

I was in college ... in the classroom with some friends ... and I remember hearing a lot of people running down the hall .. all of a sudden someone came in and interrupted the class and said a plane just crashed one of the towers ... My classmates didn't believe it at first we were like really ?? USA?? how can that be possible!! ... but then my friends started to receive phones calls and there expression was priceless... I remember I had my cell phone at the time and called my mother ... and I could tell by her voice it was true .. she just said "I'm watching it on TV and I can't believe it".. so we all went to the cafeteria which they had a big TV and of course it was packed... and that is where we saw the disturbing image... and saw the second plane crash ....

There was such a silence in the cafeteria .. it felt like an hour pass by... I heard some people saying there parents had office in the building ..and they couldn't get in contact ... so everyone was thinking the worst...

I'm saying this story because the whole world was in shock... I mean that tiny little island DR, was very in shock ... I saw people crying , calling there families, didn't know what to say... I remember the Dean of our college authorizing us to leave home .. no more class for today I guess my country felt scared and panic a little ..

That was how so many of the victims were finally identified. There was so little physical evidence left for any of us to know who had made it out and who had not.

I heard a radio report in the car as the second plane crashed, on the way to a yoga class. The class was uneasy, and after 90 minutes many church bells in Madison were tolling and somehow everybody understood what had happened. Still, finding out afterward that the towers were gone was surreal. For several years the closest view I could bear of ground zero was from the reservation. To this day, tourists taking pictures at the site is something I don't understand.

I think about Doug often, and I always remember him laughing or with a big grin.

Posted By: n66The radio commenters this morning were saying how after 9/11 for very many months, New Yorkers were kind, polite, and caring. It was so true how everyone pulled together. It did seem like we had changed forever, but now I'm discouraged thinking that we haven't really changed or learned from this experience.

Although it may be readily apparent in every day life, I believe that shared experience really did change New Yorkers and how they see each other, and during a time of great stress, it shines through again. Just look at the difference between what happened during the last big blackout, and the one before it.

In one, you had looting and wanton destruction. The second, post-9/11, we had people sat out in the street in deck chairs under candle light sharing beers and sandwiches, and ordinary citizens stepping into intersections to direct traffic so the cops could be where they were more needed. That was a long, dark, hot night in a city of over 8 million people that passed almost entirely without incident.

I think it changed new yorkers incredibly, for the better. I see it every time I am in the city.

Posted By: j rTo this day, tourists taking pictures at the site is something I don't understand.

Amen. I find that terribly disturbing. It's not a tourist attraction--it's a grave!

Posted By: ridski

Posted By: n66The radio commenters this morning were saying how after 9/11 for very many months, New Yorkers were kind, polite, and caring. It was so true how everyone pulled together. It did seem like we had changed forever, but now I'm discouraged thinking that we haven't really changed or learned from this experience.

Although it may be readily apparent in every day life, I believe that shared experience really did change New Yorkers and how they see each other, and during a time of great stress, it shines through again. Just look at the difference between what happened during the last big blackout, and the one before it.

In one, you had looting and wanton destruction. The second, post-9/11, we had people sat out in the street in deck chairs under candle light sharing beers and sandwiches, and ordinary citizens stepping into intersections to direct traffic so the cops could be where they were more needed. That was a long, dark, hot night in a city of over 8 million people that passed almost entirely without incident.

You know what--I agree. The blackout is an incredible example.

I think you may be right about the city being kinder. I was thinking more about how many of us are just as shallow and self-obsessed and materialistic as we were before. In the months after 9/11, I couldn't even think about shopping.

Posted By: j rTo this day, tourists taking pictures at the site is something I don't understand.

When I've traveled, I've taken pictures of things that are not "cheerful." I have pictures of the ruins of a Holocost-era prison in Poland, for example. It's an unsettling sight and I think my pictures of it are worth looking at again and again. I think that people take pictures of ground zero in a way that is very different than taking pictures at Disney.

JMHO.

Those towers were a part of the fabric of my every day life. Having them gone, and only a hole in the ground, is almost like losing a familiar friend.

I lived in Jersey City for 11 years and commuted to various jobs in various locations throughout the city, often via path train through the towers themselves. I had a view of the towers from my deck/fire escape, something I was very proud of. I often thought to myself how lucky I was to experience such a great city and all the sights every single day, when there were so many people around the world who would love to visit just once. I have some photos I took of the towers from River street in Hoboken on a very misty Chirstmas morning. Stopped just to take the photo. Most summers I had a share in a house at the shore, and when I was driving home on Sunday nights, the sight of the towers would mean I was "home." Often times on my commute home, I'd see a spectacular sunset reflected in the glass of the towers and think to myself "someday I have to get that picture"--never imagining I would never get that chance. When flying in to any NY area airport, the towers were what you would see first, again as an indicator of "home." I enjoyed drinks at Windows on the World, and even attended a Bar Mitzvah there.

Maybe because I don't have many opportunities to see the skyline or be downtown now, the sight of the now nondescript downtown skyline or that horrible, awful hole in the ground still makes me feel like the wind has been knocked out of me.

meand--I feel that way everytime my train rounds that corner just before the tunnel. The Towers are like a phantom limb that has been cut off--my mind still expects to see them, and I am still a little shocked that they are not there.

Yeah - they were significant geographically as the southern anchor of Manhattan.
Now the city just sort of trails of....

I was home that day--I had taken a vacation day. I woke late to a spectacular day and as I walked downstairs, my husband called me. "Turn on the TV," he said, "planes just crashed into the World Trade Center." I can remember not comprehending what he was talking about. After I hung up, I just sat in front of the TV all day, watching, crying, not believing what I was seeing. I had nightmares for about a year after that.

For some reason, my husband made me go to Home Depot that night--it was open (I don't know why). He said I had to get away from the TV. It was so completely surreal doing that--seemed like a dream.

Posted By: j rTo this day, tourists taking pictures at the site is something I don't understand.

I will never understand this, either. I remember just a few months after the attacks, a tourist in the subway asking everyone very eagerly, with a huge smile on his face, if this was the right way to get to "Ground Zero." I wanted to smack the grin right off his face, to ask him if he realized how many people had died that day and how he would feel if he learned that he was asking directions from someone whose spouse/son/daughter/parent/sibling had died in the wreckage.

Some people are just so clueless. How anything like that could become a tourist attraction for grinning idiots with cameras is beyond me.

My Uncle George passed away a few days earlier. His eldest son, my cousin Dennis worked in the Towers. He decided to take one additional day off before returning to work.........possibly saving his life....

In past 9/11 discussions, Dave or Jamie has posted a link to the early 9/11 threads on 2001 MOL. There we find a thread from Vic DeLuca, posting from the City since all other lines of communicatioon were down, and using MOL as a means of organizing and announcing the town's response from having the fire department hose down early returnees at the train station to setting up a complete counseling program for those who needed it. There we read of personal accounts of the day from one poster's search for information regarding a not-at-home spouse who we later learned was in Canada to another poster's description of her escape from near the top of one of the WTC towers as it was burning.

In later days, there are threads in which posters try to determine who made it and who did not. This is how many of us learn for ther first time of the deaths of three SO/M residents and participate in the memorial for a fire fighter who was a close friend of one of most cherished posters.

If this is still locatable through search or if someone can provide a link, it makes for very appropriate reading today.

talking about tourists taking pictures -- I think its a way of "bringing" it back to their friends, relatives when they get home.

not unlike many tourists in Europe who want to pull out their cameras in every cathedral. over the years, many in Europe now prohibit picture taking.

but I don't think its about dis-reverance at all in either case.

hard for us to grasp, particularly since its in our "back yard" -- that we see it as the site of an attack where so many died.

I have to admit....when I visited the site soon after the events, my heart broke and my mind was blown at the outpourings and displays. I reached for my camera and took photos. Of the teddy bears and the notes and the pleas and the firefighters helmets. I wanted to remember it and be able to show it to my children. I didn't do it out of a sense of wanting to exploit it - I just wanted to remember it always.

I don't mind people wanting to take photos of the site. It's the huge grin that pissed me off royally. And this person was young (maybe 20-something) and northern European, BTW.