Weekly Mail September 11 Special 2019

                                 September 11, 2019



18 years on, this is what comes to mind as we remember that horrible day....



The 2019 Wall Street Run and Heart Walk to benefit the American Heart Association was held this past May 16. My sisters and brother in law put together Team Running for Rebecca in honor of Becky.

The walk started down by the Hudson River near the World Trade Center. Timmy and I took the subway to Chambers Street and then had to figure out how to get to the meet up spot. It was the first time I had been down near the WTC since about a year after the 9/11 attacks.

I had never been to the memorial; I hadn't been close to the Freedom Tower. I hadn't seen all the work that had been done.

Tim and I went to the memorial and looked at the fountains and read some of the names. There were a couple of people whose names I recognized. One was the dad of the young woman whose wedding I went to in Italy last year. The other was the brother of a former co-worker.

You couldn't help being down there, especially if you remember what it looked like when the Twin Towers were standing, or if you saw what it was like when it was called Ground Zero, to be amazed by how much it has come back. I remember seeing the artists plans for Reflecting Absence, the plan that was chosen as the memorial, and how true to the rendering the actual memorial was. It seemed to take forever to get the project started, and there is still much to do, but what has gotten done is nothing short of brilliant.

In many ways, this was the most appropriate place to have something like Running for Rebecca.

One of Becky's best friends came up to Timmy and said, "I haven't seen you since the worst day of my life." For many, September 11th, 2001 was the worst day of their lives. It had always been for me, thinking back to those first moments that day, when nobody was quite sure what was going on. When the radio reports I was listening to said that there were more hijacked planes in the air, when I spoke to my dad and he said they were locking down his building, which was just blocks from the WTC. Wondering if I'd ever see him again. Wondering if one of those planes still in the air was heading for the UN, or the Empire State Building, or the Met Life Building which would take out Grand Central Terminal.

As it ended up, although I knew some people who died that day, none of my relatives were amongst the victims.  Dad, Katie and myself all made it home from Manhattan that afternoon. But there were close to 3,000 people whose families weren't as fortunate.

And my heart broke for all of them. All of America's hearts broke that day.

In the days to come though, I tried to turn the sorrow and heartache into hope (when I wasn't turning it into anger) . I tried to focus on all the people that were rescued. I tried to focus on the response, all the volunteers that went down to help out, the fact that blood banks were turning people away because they had more than enough supply. I thought about the staging areas, specifically the Shea Stadium parking lot. How America had come together, in a way I had never seen, and sadly in a way I haven't seen since.

But still, there were those young kids who lost their parents that day. Older parents who lost young adult children. Wives who lost husbands and vice versa. I prayed that those people would find happiness someday again.

Many of them have.

Some have not.

But I would imagine for most, there are good days and bad.There are days that you wonder how the hell you are going to put one foot in front of the other. There are songs that come on the radio and it's all you can do to keep it together.

I know. I've been there. I still am. We all are.

But walking through the 9/11 memorial, and seeing all the new buildings, I was reminded of what's possible. It wasn't easy, and the pain didn't go away, but the country moved on in spite of it. Downtown was rebuilt. The Freedom Tower rose, the memorial is breathtaking.

In the shadows of America's darkest day, where the spirit of our nation created brilliance out of rubble, where pain and sorrow  gave way to hope, that's where Running for Rebecca took place that night in May.

That's where we took our pain and sorrow over our loss and tried to make something special. It was the most appropriate place to have it.


It was where we were supposed to be.




God Bless those we lost that day, and those they left behind.
God Bless those who are dealing with loss and heartbreak.
and God Bless America.




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