Where were you Sept. 11th, 10 years ago? archived
joy said:
And I remember coming into the office in December. They allowed us 2 hours to go in and collect whatever we could.
I remember walking into my office and the light was all wrong. There was light. Streaming in. There shouldn't have been. The towers had blocked most of it.
I remember when they carted out the last bean of steel from the pit. They draped it with an American flag.
I remember the one year anniversary. I was working - the news crews were on our building's 10th floor setback and ML had a ceremony there. The company lost 3 people.
I remember looking out the window at any given time to see FF working on the pile.
I remember seeing them stop and form a line and knowing what it meant.
Sep 11, 2011 at 7:57am Edited
I worked in our school district then, so I was at Tuscan school. It was a beautiful sunny day. I remember we were getting the class organized to go to Art. The principal came in to give us a head's up of what little info she had sometime after 9 a.m. She did not want to make any sort of PA announcement so as not to alarm the students, but she was letting the staff know. Some of the staff had family members who worked in lower Manhattan, so we covered for each other while people tried to reach loved ones by phone. I remember being in the Art room, listening to the news on a radio at the far end of the room while the children worked on a project at the other end of the classroom. We were taking turns listening to the radio (the children couldn't hear it where they were working) - I remember being the one listening when the first tower collapsed. It was impossible to believe at the time - such an enormous building, collapsed? The voice on the radio sounded like the broadcaster covering the Hindenberg disaster so many years before. Parents started coming to pick up their children, but we all tried to keep the school as calm as possible. No one knew if any of the students had parents who worked in the Towers (I don't think any did) so we wanted to have the school routine go on as normally as possible until we knew what was happening. Initially, we were all so confused. Was the first plane an accident? Then, with the second plane, the Pennsylvania plane and the Pentagon, we knew it was no accident - it was devastating.
I was on an airplane that morning, on my way to Boston for a great big meeting. The kind of day where you set your notes aside and just look out the window at the scenery below. I remember seeing a south-bound jet below me and wondering why air traffic control had it flying so low...I'm sure that was one of the WTC jets, based on everything I've read since then.
I found out about the hits while in a taxi on the way to the client conference center. We then spent many surreal hours in the conference center, first with no information except what we were getting by phone. Client site went into lock-down, and we weren't allowed out of the conference section. Later they brought us a television and a few dozen of us watched in horror as the towers fell and the enormity of the situation hit. One of my colleagues (a pilot) left when his National Guard unit was called up, and another left to try to reach her parents, who were staying at the WTC plaza hotel.
After hours of this, the clients decided to ask everyone who was willing to go on with the meeting (since they had spent a fortune on consulting leading up to the meeting!), so we spent the afternoon pretending we could concentrate on presenting and discussing the state of our industry.
At home, it was the first day of preschool for my daughter, so instead of watching from Midtown, my spouse was at the synagogue with our little one, and never made it into Manhattan that week. He tried to shield our two-year-old from the coverage, but she still saw enough to scare her.
I had the strangest dinner of my life that night, stuck in a Boston business hotel, at an empty restaurant with colleagues from Pittsburg, who spent the dinner assessing which Pittsburg building the terrorists had been targeting (yeah, WTC, Pentagon, and the Cathedral of Knowledge...that must be it...). We didn't yet understand where Flight 93 had been headed...
Stayed up most of the night watching news reports in my hotel room, and came home on the first Amtrak train the next morning. I will never forget the gorgeous weather as we came along the Connecticut shore, followed by the magestic horror of the pillar of smoke rising from where the WTC had stood. It is seared into my memory.
Two nearby neighbors lost sons that day, a child in our preschool lost a father, a child who would later be in my daughter's school lost a mother, and so many others lost so much...
I found out about the hits while in a taxi on the way to the client conference center. We then spent many surreal hours in the conference center, first with no information except what we were getting by phone. Client site went into lock-down, and we weren't allowed out of the conference section. Later they brought us a television and a few dozen of us watched in horror as the towers fell and the enormity of the situation hit. One of my colleagues (a pilot) left when his National Guard unit was called up, and another left to try to reach her parents, who were staying at the WTC plaza hotel.
After hours of this, the clients decided to ask everyone who was willing to go on with the meeting (since they had spent a fortune on consulting leading up to the meeting!), so we spent the afternoon pretending we could concentrate on presenting and discussing the state of our industry.
At home, it was the first day of preschool for my daughter, so instead of watching from Midtown, my spouse was at the synagogue with our little one, and never made it into Manhattan that week. He tried to shield our two-year-old from the coverage, but she still saw enough to scare her.
I had the strangest dinner of my life that night, stuck in a Boston business hotel, at an empty restaurant with colleagues from Pittsburg, who spent the dinner assessing which Pittsburg building the terrorists had been targeting (yeah, WTC, Pentagon, and the Cathedral of Knowledge...that must be it...). We didn't yet understand where Flight 93 had been headed...
Stayed up most of the night watching news reports in my hotel room, and came home on the first Amtrak train the next morning. I will never forget the gorgeous weather as we came along the Connecticut shore, followed by the magestic horror of the pillar of smoke rising from where the WTC had stood. It is seared into my memory.
Two nearby neighbors lost sons that day, a child in our preschool lost a father, a child who would later be in my daughter's school lost a mother, and so many others lost so much...
krnl said:
sac said:
Same here.PeggyC said:
I find I can't read the stories, or tell my own... today. Maybe later.
But I am compelled to keep checking this thread to test if I want to post. No newspapers or TV news shows today for me.
No TV here either...my memories are not as searing as some, but my 5 year olds do not need today as an introduction to the topic. Actually, husband plans to watch football, and has been warned to keep his fingers on the remote in case the commemorations and discussions go into details we don't yet chose to share with the little ones...
He went to a commemoration this morning with my 12 year old, but the little ones are not ready for this coverage yet.
Was working in my office in Greenwich Village. Heard people outside my window yelling about a plane hitting the north tower. I went outside where people were gathered on the street just staring at the hole, flames and smoke coming from where the plane had hit the north tower. Some of those who'd been outside said the plane had come in so low over the city that they felt they could see faces in the windows but then it had climbed slightly and hit the tower. Our initial thought was that it was a tragic accident. After a while, I went back inside until I heard people yelling again about smoke coming from the south tower. Again, just stood in the street trying to understand what was going on when my friend from Washington, DC called to tell me the Pentagon had been hit and that the government department for which he worked was evacuating. A couple of minutes later, I got a call from a family member that my niece was on a plane flying out of Pittsburgh at that very time and that the news about plane hijackings was just breaking. No one knew if she was on a hijacked plane or not; ultimately learned she was safe. By this time, I'd gone to the roof of my building with a group of colleagues, all of us just watching in disbelief. We could see many "objects" falling from the towers. Didn't realize until later that some of those "objects" must have been people...really glad we were just far enough away that we were unable to distinguish. We stood there as the first tower collapsed...almost in slow motion and with an accompanying low roar, crumbling floor-by-floor into a mass of smoke and dust that rose up and enveloped that part of the city. And then the second tower fell. We all stood there struggling to comprehend what was happening...in some ways it was so surreal and the terribleness of the reality seemed unfathomable.
I didn't go home that night or for the next three days. I managed to get a call through on a landline to my family to let them know I was safe and remained in the city, co-organizing a crisis center set up by my University to house and feed people who were unable to return home. We also fed a few fire and police persons who had made their way that far north, offered counseling, and tried to help people who were looking for friends and loved ones by turning a wall into a communication board where people posted notes in the faint hope that their friends might come by the center and see it. I will never forget the pervasive acrid smoky smell that hung over the city for those first few days and the hundreds of pleading posters and flyers with pictures of lost loved ones attached to every pole and post on the street. When I eventually made my way home, I went directly to my son's elementary school where he happened to be outside at recess. When he saw me walking across the lawn, he came running into my arms and we both just stood there hugging and crying. It has remained one of my most bittersweet memories.
I didn't go home that night or for the next three days. I managed to get a call through on a landline to my family to let them know I was safe and remained in the city, co-organizing a crisis center set up by my University to house and feed people who were unable to return home. We also fed a few fire and police persons who had made their way that far north, offered counseling, and tried to help people who were looking for friends and loved ones by turning a wall into a communication board where people posted notes in the faint hope that their friends might come by the center and see it. I will never forget the pervasive acrid smoky smell that hung over the city for those first few days and the hundreds of pleading posters and flyers with pictures of lost loved ones attached to every pole and post on the street. When I eventually made my way home, I went directly to my son's elementary school where he happened to be outside at recess. When he saw me walking across the lawn, he came running into my arms and we both just stood there hugging and crying. It has remained one of my most bittersweet memories.
What I remember most was in the days/weeks/months that followed seeing the "Missing" flyers in Penn Station. Devastating.
Tthank you to everyone who took the time and expended the painful emotions necesaary to share their stories... Especially to. Buzzsaw for those last lines.
My story is notable only that I was living in minneapolis at the time: had been for three months after nmoving from NYC for work. I felt so disconnected and disturbed by what I felt was a gross underappreciation by the locals for the sheer magnitude of events that I resolved that week to stay for the duration of the contract and not one extra day. Which is exactly what we did.
This is home for us and hopefully always will be giv e or take a few miles...
My story is notable only that I was living in minneapolis at the time: had been for three months after nmoving from NYC for work. I felt so disconnected and disturbed by what I felt was a gross underappreciation by the locals for the sheer magnitude of events that I resolved that week to stay for the duration of the contract and not one extra day. Which is exactly what we did.
This is home for us and hopefully always will be giv e or take a few miles...
On the PATH, heading to 130 Liberty. Later watched the fall from right across the river in JC in painful detail, wondering if my dad got out (he did), spent part of the afternoon attempting to coordinate medical supplies from our infirmary to the ferry at Colgate, then the latter part of the day figuring what the hell we as an institution were going to do, dealing with disater recovery plans, booking hotel rooms, sourcing add'l private security to beef up corporate, etc.
Couldn't get back to SI by car (where we were living at the time) as all bridges and tunnels were shut, drove into Bayonne, walked across the top of the Bayonne Bridge alone, having somehow skirted around the police and the masses who had abandoned their cars and were trying to get onto the pedestrian walkway down and off to the side. Walked along the double-yellow with no one-- not a person or a car or anything-- and stopped at the top of the bridge for a few minutes to stare at the scene in lower Manhattan in complete silence. Probably the most serenly bizarre moment of my life. Got a ride from someone who saw me walking along the expressway who said I looked like a zombie too exhausted to eat.
Came home to learn that ctrzwife was frantic, having fielded calls from folks I hadn't heard from in years wondering about me (including my ex who had a rather nice chat-- interesting) and her brother. He had gotten caught up in the first tower falling when he left his office in Hanover Sq to check out the scene (still believing it was a small plane until he got there)... he was spared serious injury from the fall, along with a pair of NYPD, by unseen hands pulling them backwards as they fell in the maelstrom, into a building later found to be the NY Fed. Only thing he's kept is his wallet still filled with dust and burned everything else.
The (work-related) episode which resulted in me winding up at Ground Zero on the evening of 9/13 with automatic rifles pointing at my head is a whole other story.
Couldn't get back to SI by car (where we were living at the time) as all bridges and tunnels were shut, drove into Bayonne, walked across the top of the Bayonne Bridge alone, having somehow skirted around the police and the masses who had abandoned their cars and were trying to get onto the pedestrian walkway down and off to the side. Walked along the double-yellow with no one-- not a person or a car or anything-- and stopped at the top of the bridge for a few minutes to stare at the scene in lower Manhattan in complete silence. Probably the most serenly bizarre moment of my life. Got a ride from someone who saw me walking along the expressway who said I looked like a zombie too exhausted to eat.
Came home to learn that ctrzwife was frantic, having fielded calls from folks I hadn't heard from in years wondering about me (including my ex who had a rather nice chat-- interesting) and her brother. He had gotten caught up in the first tower falling when he left his office in Hanover Sq to check out the scene (still believing it was a small plane until he got there)... he was spared serious injury from the fall, along with a pair of NYPD, by unseen hands pulling them backwards as they fell in the maelstrom, into a building later found to be the NY Fed. Only thing he's kept is his wallet still filled with dust and burned everything else.
The (work-related) episode which resulted in me winding up at Ground Zero on the evening of 9/13 with automatic rifles pointing at my head is a whole other story.
I was living in Greenwich Village at the time and went down to the WTC when the 2nd plane hit. (If anyone cares to read it I wrote a rather lengthy account of the day and which is posted here: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/11/im-emt-have-to-go-down-there-running-toward-towers-on-11/ )
I was also working at UMDNJ that day. I remember hearing at first on the radio in the office that a small plane had hit the WTC. We went over to one of our bldgs that was under construction and had a view of the Twin Towers. By time we got there, the 1st tower had fallen. But I'll never forget watching the 2nd tower sway in the wind like a tree and then just crumble - not explode but just crumble. Construction workers all around us were crying (as were we).
I was working in the WFC when the 1st bombing occurred a few years prior. We were right across from the garage that blew out. At first, we thought that our mechanical floor had an explosion as the whole building shoke. My biggest memory of that day is absolute silence on the floor followed by one of the managers screaming "What the f**k!".
I was working in the WFC when the 1st bombing occurred a few years prior. We were right across from the garage that blew out. At first, we thought that our mechanical floor had an explosion as the whole building shoke. My biggest memory of that day is absolute silence on the floor followed by one of the managers screaming "What the f**k!".
buzzsaw said:
I've been trying to live a life worthy of life itself, as a tribute to those who died.
Not to live in fear.
Not to waste a day.
And to never forget.
Amen, brother
Sep 11, 2011 at 10:21am Edited
At home in Park Slope. Saw the fires on tv. Went out on my bike to go to the pier and take pictures. Halfway there got enveloped by a wave of dust ash and debris. Turned around to outrun the wave. On the ride back I passes by cars parked in the middle of the street or halfway on the sidewalk with people in tears listening to the radio which was announcing that the tower fell. Couldn't believe it.
I was home. My daughter was 2-1/2 months old. We saw on the news that a plane had hit the WTC, but not many details. Like everyone else we thought it was an accident.
We went outside and stood on our lawn after the second plane hit. A few of our neighbors and a bunch of SO DPW-type folks came up to our cul-de-sac to see what was going on. I remember telling someone who had just come up that one of the towers fell. When I looked back, the other one was gone.
We had a friend who worked at WTC. She was 8 months pregnant and walked all the way from her office to 94th street and West End Ave. Another friend worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was there in '93 and left as soon as the first plane hit. He was one of only a handful of people from his entire office to survive.
This used to be my view every morning.
We went outside and stood on our lawn after the second plane hit. A few of our neighbors and a bunch of SO DPW-type folks came up to our cul-de-sac to see what was going on. I remember telling someone who had just come up that one of the towers fell. When I looked back, the other one was gone.
We had a friend who worked at WTC. She was 8 months pregnant and walked all the way from her office to 94th street and West End Ave. Another friend worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was there in '93 and left as soon as the first plane hit. He was one of only a handful of people from his entire office to survive.
This used to be my view every morning.
Was home, running a little late as the Giants had played MNF the night before. Got a call from my ex that he heard about a plane hitting the WTC. Turned on the television and saw the second plane hit. Was in shock. Left for work but turned around in the reservation after I heard about the Pentagon. Waited for ex to get home, we went to Bunny's where everyone was staring at the TVs in shock and listening to reports of hijacked planes all over the country. Dave came in, we all went and hung out on Fiche's back deck until Mr. Fiche got home safely (he left his office immediately and went to the ferry; was home by about 3).
Will never forget talking to my Dad on the phone and crying with him. When I was little he loved to go into the city and watch the WTC being built.
Such an awful day. I'll never forget...
Will never forget talking to my Dad on the phone and crying with him. When I was little he loved to go into the city and watch the WTC being built.
Such an awful day. I'll never forget...
what a gorgeous picture. the city skyline will never look the same to me. that is the way it should look.
SORescue said:
I was living in Greenwich Village at the time and went down to the WTC when the 2nd plane hit. (If anyone cares to read it I wrote a rather lengthy account of the day and which is posted here: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/11/im-emt-have-to-go-down-there-running-toward-towers-on-11/ )
Thanks for sharing that, SORescue.
Training with a group of friends for the Avon Breast Cancer 3 day walk. I remember it was such beautiful day and we were laughing and enjoy our walk. Suddenly, we heard helicopters and I remember thinking to myself why are there so many choppers flying in the sky, as we approached my girlsfriends house her husband ran outside to tell us the news.
Sep 11, 2011 at 1:04pm Edited
I still have the invitation flier for the "Waters Technology" conference co-sponsored by Compaq (they supported building our trading floor at Baruch College) that was held at Windows on the World that morning. I stayed at home that day to sign off on our kitchen remodel with the general contractor. It didn't really sink in until I got the e-mail that 6 Compaq employees we had been working with for the last year were all at the conference.
The day after, they used our trading floor as one of the initial meeting places for people who were trying to locate missing friends and relatives. After the first day the place was swamped and they moved it to the armory across the street. One of the hardest jobs I ever had to do was take down the "missing" pictures and fliers people had taped up along the glass walls.
It was very difficult walking along the line of people every day on the way to class. There were just no words that I could come up with.
The day after, they used our trading floor as one of the initial meeting places for people who were trying to locate missing friends and relatives. After the first day the place was swamped and they moved it to the armory across the street. One of the hardest jobs I ever had to do was take down the "missing" pictures and fliers people had taped up along the glass walls.
It was very difficult walking along the line of people every day on the way to class. There were just no words that I could come up with.
I was working in Springfield and, like most people, initially thought that something had gone wrong with a small plane's guidance system - and then the second plane hit - we could see the smoke from our office window. Once the Pentagon was hit, my boss sent us all home and told us to stay off the roads. I stopped at Morrow Church though - sometimes you just have to be on your knees at the alter - at least I did.
My friend, who was an episcopal priest serving in NY wrote this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-crafton/longing-to-run-away-from-911_b_954355.html
My friend, who was an episcopal priest serving in NY wrote this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-crafton/longing-to-run-away-from-911_b_954355.html
I was living in Montclair and what I remember most is that day started out so BEAUTIFUL. Just a perfect September day...the sky was so blue and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. My son was almost two months old and I was getting him ready for his two month baby wellness appointment. I turned on channel 11 news (WPIX) and they were showing the smoking first tower. The newscaster was saying "we think a plane hit the tower...and it looks like another one is coming". And then we see the plane hit the second tower...and my tv goes black (the antenna for WPIX was on top of the 2nd tower). I remember not being able to reach neither my son's father who worked in the 2nd tower nor my sister who worked in midtown. Later that day I reacheed my sister and she was walking with friends uptown trying to figure out how to get home to New Jersey. It was 3 days before I made contact with my ex...he was there that day, he and a coworker helped a disabled man get down the stairs and then ran for their lives when the towers came down. Six months later, my ex moved to Florida, he hasn't held a job since 9/11 and is on disability.
I have hesitated to open this thread all day--even though I was not downtown 10 years ago, I watched from the 45th floor of our building in Midtown and had a clear view on that gorgeous blue-sky day. I still get very emotional when I try to talk about it.
My office was in the sub-basement of 9 West 57th Street. First, my chief engineer called me on his walkie-talkie to say that a jetliner had just buzzed the top of the building when he was on the roof working on the cooling towers. That was the first plane. It was about 100 stories over the City at that time. 9 West 57th Street towers over the end of Central Park and so the terrorists must have been sight-flying using Central Park, 9 West, and the Empire State Building as guide posts. Minutes after that transmission someone called my office to say a plane had hit WTC. I did not put the two incidents together, and assumed it was a small passenger plane that got lost.
Still, I started to head to the owner's suite on the 45th floor to check in with his security team--they were ex-NYPD and linked in to all the news. Before I got there my walkie-talkie went off again--the second plane had hit. I immediately locked the building down to people entering, although we let anyone leave who wanted to get out. Within minutes the whole 50 story, 1.5 million square foot building was 90% empty as people fled--to where, they had no clue. Many wound up in Central Park, and looking out our north windows over the Park Plaza we could see a sea of people there.
The owner's staff stood at the windows of the 45th floor and watched the towers burning. Suddenly, one disappeared in a cloud of dust and debris. "Secondary explosion?" I asked of the man next to me, Marcus Benner, who was one of the smartest operating engineers I have ever known. He instantly shook his head and said, "structural failure." Everyone in that room had either built or operated sky scrapers; we knew in our bones what that meant. 9 West was built around the same time and used the same fireproofing spray on the steel beams that provide structural support for the building. We knew that the planes must have compromised the fireproofing and burned through the steel. We knew that no one was coming out of that place alive, and we knew that the toxic cloud of asbestos and pulverized concrete and crystallized computers and desks and chairs would do great damage to lungs. In fact, the next day when my chief engineer and two other engineers asked leave to go down to WTC to help clean up, I insisted that they wear their respirators. I hope they did.
Later that day a guy stumbled to our front door, all covered in blood and soot and looking dazed. He was a banker from Bank of America who had miraculously escaped one of the burning towers, and somehow had walked all the way to 9 West, where there was a major B of A office. We took him in, threw him into a shower in the engineer's room, and meanwhile I went over to a nearby sports store to get him a sweatsuit to wear because we tossed his contaminated clothes. We shuddered to think of what he had breathed in, let alone seen.
I was able to get out of the City when NJT was running again, took a shower, and came back to take care of my building. As the train neared the tunnel it rounded a corner, and there, where the WTC used to stand, all we saw was smoke. The five or so people on the train watched in stunned silence--it felt like someone had lopped off my arm and I suddenly was aware that it was missing. Then a woman started to sob, softly, and we all broke down in tears.
My office was in the sub-basement of 9 West 57th Street. First, my chief engineer called me on his walkie-talkie to say that a jetliner had just buzzed the top of the building when he was on the roof working on the cooling towers. That was the first plane. It was about 100 stories over the City at that time. 9 West 57th Street towers over the end of Central Park and so the terrorists must have been sight-flying using Central Park, 9 West, and the Empire State Building as guide posts. Minutes after that transmission someone called my office to say a plane had hit WTC. I did not put the two incidents together, and assumed it was a small passenger plane that got lost.
Still, I started to head to the owner's suite on the 45th floor to check in with his security team--they were ex-NYPD and linked in to all the news. Before I got there my walkie-talkie went off again--the second plane had hit. I immediately locked the building down to people entering, although we let anyone leave who wanted to get out. Within minutes the whole 50 story, 1.5 million square foot building was 90% empty as people fled--to where, they had no clue. Many wound up in Central Park, and looking out our north windows over the Park Plaza we could see a sea of people there.
The owner's staff stood at the windows of the 45th floor and watched the towers burning. Suddenly, one disappeared in a cloud of dust and debris. "Secondary explosion?" I asked of the man next to me, Marcus Benner, who was one of the smartest operating engineers I have ever known. He instantly shook his head and said, "structural failure." Everyone in that room had either built or operated sky scrapers; we knew in our bones what that meant. 9 West was built around the same time and used the same fireproofing spray on the steel beams that provide structural support for the building. We knew that the planes must have compromised the fireproofing and burned through the steel. We knew that no one was coming out of that place alive, and we knew that the toxic cloud of asbestos and pulverized concrete and crystallized computers and desks and chairs would do great damage to lungs. In fact, the next day when my chief engineer and two other engineers asked leave to go down to WTC to help clean up, I insisted that they wear their respirators. I hope they did.
Later that day a guy stumbled to our front door, all covered in blood and soot and looking dazed. He was a banker from Bank of America who had miraculously escaped one of the burning towers, and somehow had walked all the way to 9 West, where there was a major B of A office. We took him in, threw him into a shower in the engineer's room, and meanwhile I went over to a nearby sports store to get him a sweatsuit to wear because we tossed his contaminated clothes. We shuddered to think of what he had breathed in, let alone seen.
I was able to get out of the City when NJT was running again, took a shower, and came back to take care of my building. As the train neared the tunnel it rounded a corner, and there, where the WTC used to stand, all we saw was smoke. The five or so people on the train watched in stunned silence--it felt like someone had lopped off my arm and I suddenly was aware that it was missing. Then a woman started to sob, softly, and we all broke down in tears.
I wrote this a year or so later:
On the morning of the Eleventh
In Eighteen sixty-five
In the battles for our freedom
We remember those that died
Blood that flowed so precious
And changed so many lives
Remember those whose lives were closed
In September skies
From the rolling hills of Normandy
To the hills around Khe-Sahn
Sons and brothers that paid the price
Left us to carry on
In the heat and cold of conflict
On the stones that bear their names
Reflections of our former selves
They forever changed
In Memory, Memorium
On Memorial Day
In Memory, Memorium
May they never fade away
On the morning of the Eleventh
With the sky so clear and blue
Against it stood two towers
So tall and yet so true
In a sound like tearing paper
In the color of broken glass
Ten Thousand hearts were shattered
So much has come to pass
So raise a cup to the fallen
And to those that share the pain
May we live to see the sunrise
Through the long night and rain
And the slow parade of faces
In the marble's faded grain
Let a moment pass and drain the glass
To the September slain
In Memory, Memorium
On Memorial Day
In Memory, Memorium
May they never fade away
On the morning of the Eleventh
In Eighteen sixty-five
In the battles for our freedom
We remember those that died
Blood that flowed so precious
And changed so many lives
Remember those whose lives were closed
In September skies
From the rolling hills of Normandy
To the hills around Khe-Sahn
Sons and brothers that paid the price
Left us to carry on
In the heat and cold of conflict
On the stones that bear their names
Reflections of our former selves
They forever changed
In Memory, Memorium
On Memorial Day
In Memory, Memorium
May they never fade away
On the morning of the Eleventh
With the sky so clear and blue
Against it stood two towers
So tall and yet so true
In a sound like tearing paper
In the color of broken glass
Ten Thousand hearts were shattered
So much has come to pass
So raise a cup to the fallen
And to those that share the pain
May we live to see the sunrise
Through the long night and rain
And the slow parade of faces
In the marble's faded grain
Let a moment pass and drain the glass
To the September slain
In Memory, Memorium
On Memorial Day
In Memory, Memorium
May they never fade away
At the time of the attacks I lived in Jersey City and worked in midtown about a 15 minute walk from the 33rd Street PATH station. I walked to my office from the 33rd Street PATH in nice weather but connected to the subway through the World Trade Center PATH in bad weather. Well, we all remember how beautiful it was that morning. As I walked from the 33rd Street PATH that day I was coincidentally thinking about something really dumb relating to the World Trade Center. On 34th Street, I saw a sign for Ann Taylor, and it reminded me that for the past couple of weeks whenever I’d been in the WTC concourse I’d seen a misspelled sign that announced “Coming Soon – Anne Taylor Loft!” As I was walking across town that morning of 9/11 I was actually thinking about how that sign had hung in such a high-profile place as the WTC concourse for so long without anyone correcting the "Anne" to "Ann", and I remember idly wondering if the misspelled version would still be there that night when I was planning to go through the concourse again.
Then I got to 5th Avenue, and noticed that people were stopped in their tracks, staring downtown at the WTC. The first plane had just hit and you could see all the smoke coming out of the tower. What was unusual, for New York City, was that strangers on the street were talking about it to each other – the driver of a passing car even yelled out the window “A plane hit the World Trade Center!” But at that point people still thought it was a small plane. The second plane hit just as I arrived in my office. We had a view downtown out our conference room window, so my colleagues and I all stood there looking out the window and watching the TV in the conference room at the same time. I will never forget watching everything unfold that morning and the feeling that I was witnessing thousands of people die and not knowing whether friends/family members were OK. I was hysterically sobbing when the towers came down, but no one else in my office was and I remember feeling slightly embarrassed by that. Several weeks later, someone came up to me and said “Your reaction that day was the only appropriate one.”
One thing I won't forget about that day was an awful comment I overheard on the street as I trudged uptown to a friend’s apartment to spend the night: "Forget about the loss of life; what’s this going to do to the market?”
Then I got to 5th Avenue, and noticed that people were stopped in their tracks, staring downtown at the WTC. The first plane had just hit and you could see all the smoke coming out of the tower. What was unusual, for New York City, was that strangers on the street were talking about it to each other – the driver of a passing car even yelled out the window “A plane hit the World Trade Center!” But at that point people still thought it was a small plane. The second plane hit just as I arrived in my office. We had a view downtown out our conference room window, so my colleagues and I all stood there looking out the window and watching the TV in the conference room at the same time. I will never forget watching everything unfold that morning and the feeling that I was witnessing thousands of people die and not knowing whether friends/family members were OK. I was hysterically sobbing when the towers came down, but no one else in my office was and I remember feeling slightly embarrassed by that. Several weeks later, someone came up to me and said “Your reaction that day was the only appropriate one.”
One thing I won't forget about that day was an awful comment I overheard on the street as I trudged uptown to a friend’s apartment to spend the night: "Forget about the loss of life; what’s this going to do to the market?”
I don't usually tell my story because it's not really much of a one and I don't really feel entitled to have one, when so many other people have real connections to the tragedy of that day, but I haven't seen anyone else with a really similar recollection, so:
My wife was 7 months pregnant with our first, and we'd moved into our house in West Orange in March of that year. We'd rented a floor re-finisher from a place out in East Hanover on Rt. 10, and I'd just dropped it off and was driving back home, listening to Howard Stern. After his initial reports on the crash, I switched to 88 or 1010 WINS, can't recall which, and heard the 2nd crash happen live. Ran home ASAP and told my wife, who hadn't had any idea, put on the TV, and got ready to go into the office, in Verona, where we worked together.
Spent the day in the office mostly staring at the TV, which I think we just left on Channel 7. We each know a few people and a bunch of friends-of-friends with close call stories (late trains, etc.); she personally knew someone at Cantor Fitzgerald who died. Anyway, what we both really remember about that day was that once we left the office, sometime in the mid-afternoon, the roads were SCARY, with people absentmindedly sailing through red lights all over the place on Bloomfield Avenue, etc. The whole route between our home and office was filled with spots where you could see the towers, and on that day, and for what felt like weeks afterwards, you instead saw smoke. It was very surreal, and everyone just seemed dazed.
My wife was 7 months pregnant with our first, and we'd moved into our house in West Orange in March of that year. We'd rented a floor re-finisher from a place out in East Hanover on Rt. 10, and I'd just dropped it off and was driving back home, listening to Howard Stern. After his initial reports on the crash, I switched to 88 or 1010 WINS, can't recall which, and heard the 2nd crash happen live. Ran home ASAP and told my wife, who hadn't had any idea, put on the TV, and got ready to go into the office, in Verona, where we worked together.
Spent the day in the office mostly staring at the TV, which I think we just left on Channel 7. We each know a few people and a bunch of friends-of-friends with close call stories (late trains, etc.); she personally knew someone at Cantor Fitzgerald who died. Anyway, what we both really remember about that day was that once we left the office, sometime in the mid-afternoon, the roads were SCARY, with people absentmindedly sailing through red lights all over the place on Bloomfield Avenue, etc. The whole route between our home and office was filled with spots where you could see the towers, and on that day, and for what felt like weeks afterwards, you instead saw smoke. It was very surreal, and everyone just seemed dazed.
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After calling home and leaving a message I picked up the fire command station phone and heard people from the upper floors, mostly occupied by Aon, trying to get answers from the fire command center, which wasn't manned. A couple of people with limited mobility decided to take the elevator to get out of the building and asked me if it was Ok (I guess they saw me as an authority figure because I had the phone in my hand) and I said yes since I knew it would have taken them hours to get down the stairs, but encouraged others to take the stairs. I didn't know until late on Tuesday evening that they had made it out before our building was attacked, whic made me very happy because I was beginning to have the "what ifs" and was feeling guilty.