Weekly Mail September 11 Special 2021.... 20 years later

 

                                                     

                                    September 11, 2021

20 years later, we look back on that horrible day....

The first thing I remember about that morning was walking to the train station listening to Imus in the Morning. The mayoral primaries were supposed to be that day, and Imus producer Bernard McGirk was interviewing people on the street about who they were going to vote for. Bernard was speaking to a woman who said she was a teacher who was badmouthing Mayor Rudy Guiliani. Bernard asked her "what she had against guys with bad hair who spit when they talked" The woman said she didn't want to talk to Bernard because "he wasn't axing her serious questions," to which Bernard responded, "I'm not axing you and you're a school teacher?" 

It would be the last good laugh I'd have for a while. 

The ride in to work was uneventful. I got in and started making phone calls on a closing that was supposed to go that day. The woman whose closing we were doing had been extremely pushy. I was going to be happy to get rid of this case. 

A little before 9:00, I got a call from a girl who had worked for us during the summer, and whose Mom worked in our Brooklyn office. The mom was home sick that day, and she told her daughter that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I went to our Internet computer and saw a picture one of the Twin Towers on fire. I thought it was just a small plane. 

In the conference room, some of the other people in the suite were watching this on TV. Our secretary, Rosie, was asking me if she should interrupt a meeting to tell them about this. I didn't think it was that big a deal. All of the sudden, Maria, a secretary for one of the other firms started yelling, the other tower's been hit. There's another plane." 

"OK Rosie, we better tell him." 

We kept the TV on and found a radio. In the meantime, the woman who we were doing the closing for was starting to call. As the morning wore on, I started to tell her that we probably weren't going to be able to do the closing today. Yes, she knew what was going on, but she still insisted on closing. I was about to blow a gasket. 

While I was on the phone with this lunatic, I heard on WOR radio that 1) The Pentagon had been hit, 2) There was a fire in the Capitol, and 3) that one of the towers had fallen. 

When I got off the phone, I called my father, who was working on William Street at the time. "They're locking us in, he said "I'll probably be here for a while." The thought of him being trapped in a building, knowing that he had trouble walking as it was, got me all choked up. 

(Later on, my sister Katie would comment that our Dad was on the front lines in Vietnam, and all these years later, he was pretty damn close to the front lines as America was being attacked.) 

I managed to keep it together for a few minutes, but then I nearly lost it again. 

Another co-worker, a former cop who had become a lawyer, about as tough a man I had ever met, came out of the conference room in tears. "There's no more Twin Towers. It's like, they're all gone." 

Meanwhile, the guys on the radio were talking about a plane crashing into Pittsburgh, and that there were 4 more hijacked planes in the air. It was time for us to make a run for it. 

Our office was on Madison between 40th and 41st, so we had to figure out where to go. I suggested we start making our way towards the 59th Street Bridge, but to avoid going near Grand Central and the United Nations, where I figured the next two planes would hit. So we walked down 40th Street to 3rd Avenue and up Third till we got to 47th Street. 

We ended up at Connolly's on 47th between 3rd and Lex. If Al-Qaeda was coming for us, they'd have to get us over beers and wings. 

 President Bush came on the TV (I can't even remember what time it was) He was at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. There wasn't a sound in the bar besides some guy yelling "Everybody shut the f-ck up!" Bush went on to talk about how he had alerted the military and been in contact with congressional leaders and leaders around the world. He concluded with this line: "The resolve of our nation is being put to the test. But make no mistake, America will show the world, that we will pass this test." While he would be criticized for the awkwardness of this statement, and we still had no idea what we were dealing with, I felt somewhat assured after this. The President would fly from Louisiana to Nebraska, and then back to D.C, the idea being to keep him moving and to make sure our capital was secure. 

There was no train service so there was no way for us to get home. I could have walked home over the bridge, but I didn't want to leave my coworkers. In hindsight, I kind of wished I did. The solidarity of walking back to Queens with thousands of my fellow NY'ers would have been something to tell the grandkids. Alas, it was not to be. 

Thankfully, I had heard from my father, who they were allowing to leave, and Katie, who was in school on 71st and 2nd. They were both fine. Earlier I had told my dad that I thought Kate should stay where she was. In my state of panic, I figured we should stay apart, better that only one of us got killed rather than both of us. It sounds crazy now, but I figured I was in walking distance of three potential targets: The UN, The Met Life Building (which would take out Grand Central) and The Empire State Building. She was safer uptown. There are still times I think about that moment, and shutter. 

At 3:00 I was walking to the bathroom at Connolly's when I passed by a TV that had NBC on. Tom Brokaw began giving the rundown "At 8:45 this morning, a plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. About 15 minutes later a second plane struck the other tower. At 9:40, a plane struck the Pentagon... " All I could think at that time was that Dan Rather had become famous because he was in Dallas when President Kennedy was shot. What was going through Brokaw's mind as he was reporting this. Was he scared because the nation was under attack, or was his blood pumping because he was covering the biggest story in years?  In the years since, I've read and watched documentaries about the Olympic Massacre at Munich in 1972, just about 19 years to the day before 9/11/2001. Jim McKay was on the air for over 15 hours covering the crisis for ABC. When it was over, he looked at the camera and said "They're all gone", just as my co-worker had when the second tower fell. 

There were some reports around 4 O'clock coming over that some trains were up and running. So I walked over to Grand Central and got the 7 train. I'll never forget the feeling I got as that train came out of the tunnel at Hunters Point, seeing the huge cloud of smoke down where the Twin Towers used to be. It was at that moment I went from being scared to being humiliated. That's the overwhelming feeling I had as I headed home that day. Anger and humiliation. 

I had never been so happy to get home and see everybody as I was when I got home that night. But I was dreading finding out about who didn't make it. I was able to account for my close friends and family that were down there, but I knew several of my high school classmates, with whom I had celebrated my 10th year reunion were firemen. Amazingly, there were very few people of the nearly 3,000 that died that I knew personally. It didn't make me any more comfortable or any less angry.

 Later on, I was on AOL. There were plenty of chatrooms devoted to 9/11. Many like me, were calling for the strongest possible retaliation. Others were taking a wait and see approach. Others were starting in with the "we have to understand why they did this." All these years later, even as I've gotten older and maybe softer in my old age, I can still feel the anger, the humiliation. I still can't bring myself to "understand why they did this" 

The next few days were remarkable for several reasons. Mainly the volunteers that came forward to help in the recovery efforts at what was now being called Ground Zero. Also there had been so many people donating blood, that the blood banks were turning people away. Donations poured in from all over the world. Just about every house in America was displaying an American Flag. As horrible as the events of September 11th were, the unity that prevailed in the days after attacks was amazing.

Sadly, I suspect we will never see that kind of unity again. 

A young woman who was reading the names of the victims of 9/11 on Saturday morning said something to the effect of "Let's try to stand together, instead of having to choose a side." In this age where we can go on social media and express any and all thoughts that may pop into our minds (guilty!) that might be a tall order. But it always helps to remember that we did, if even for a brief moment in our history. 

And they'll be people that will say that it never really happened, that it was somehow romanticizing the days after 9/11, but those people are wrong. I remember hearing about blood banks turning away people because they had more than enough supply. I saw strangers helping each other, I saw folks down at Shea Stadium in the parking lot loading supplies onto trucks to get to the workers down at Ground Zero. Nobody's making this stuff up. That's what happened. 

I took my son to his dentist appointment on Friday, and he was wearing a shirt with an American flag on it. The secretary complimented him on it, and then while he was in with the dentist she asked me "Do you these kids understand?" 

I know since Tim's been back in school (September 1) they've talked about it every day in his Social Studies class and in his English class they are reading a book about it. So yeah, these kids are learning about it, but do they understand? That's a harder question.

My parents and other people who lived through it used to tell me that the day President Kennedy was killed was something you had to live through to totally understand. There was no way to accurately describe the way the streets became deserted that afternoon into evening, how the country came to a standstill for the 4 days between the assassination  in Dallas and the funeral in Washington DC the following Monday. I read plenty and saw many movies about it, but the older I got, the more I realized our folks were right. If you weren't there, you really couldn't understand it.

And I suspect that's the case here as well. And I think the main reason is that they never knew the world before 9/11.  To people like Timmy and any other kid born in the 21st century, it's just always been. 

When I talked to Timmy about this, he said. "Maybe COVID-19 is to me what 9/11 was to you and Mom."  

In many ways I hope it is. I hope and pray he never has to live through anything as horrible. That's my hope for all our kids. 

God Bless Everyone we lost that day, and those that were left behind

God Bless all those who helped dig through the rubble in the days following, and are now sick and dying due to breathing in that toxic air

God Bless everyone who gave their lives defending our freedom. Especially the 13 American Service Members who were killed in Afghanistan on August 26. 

and God Bless America. 

Regular Weekly Mail returns next Sunday