We’re all having a good time with pet memes today, Sept. 11, which shouldn’t overshadow what this solemn day should mean for Americans, New Yorkers in particular.
Little background: My old man was a construction worker who plied his trade on the World Trade Center back in the day. As a kid, I remember him taking me to the site where the Twin Towers stood. He and his crew were just finishing the lobby. I was never prouder of Dad being part of this special place, which years later would be a big part of my life as well.
I was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and our offices were located in the adjacent World Financial Center. My morning work routine was pretty simple: Read the papers and get to the office by 9am, but first pick up breakfast somewhere in World Trade. On 9/11, as I was heading to work, my wife reminded me that I had a doctor’s appointment that morning, which I really should try and make. So, for a change, I took her advice. I got there on time (a rarity for me since I’m habitually late for everything). The receptionist had a TV on; there was breaking news that a small plane hit one of the Twin Towers. No big deal, it seemed.
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An hour later when I left, we were a nation at war. My doctor’s office was just a few blocks north of the crash site. I saw people on the street running for their lives. Desperate, scared and some angry. I ducked into a local Crunch Fitness on Lafayette Street and saw both towers collapse on the big TV screen. A cloud of dust engulfed Lower Manhattan. It reminded me of Hiroshima. It was, to say the least, surreal. Phones weren’t working. People were walking on the street, their clothes covered with soot from the collapsed towers. And death. I knew people who were in the building at the time of impact. Some did not make it out alive. So, I began walking back to my apartment on 20th Street right off the East River to start reporting on what went down, which I did that day with my WSJ colleagues.
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Miraculously, they all managed to survive, and we turned around the paper remotely since our offices were destroyed, filing stories by email (WSJ production and backup facilities were located in NJ). Focusing on work was almost therapeutic because it allowed you at times to push aside the suffering all around us. But not totally. I still remember that putrid, fetid odor of the burning wires, metal and dust that made its way uptown and lingered for weeks. Nearly 3,000 people had perished.
The unimaginable reports started coming in from sources who were there and made it out. They saw people literally jumping to their death from the upper floors of the trade center to avoid being burned alive.
Meanwhile, my wife had gone home early and assembled there with some friends who had escaped the madness. We soon heard the roar of F-15s as they were circling Manhattan. That’s when it really struck us that our lives would never be the same again. A sort of innocence lost, probably not much different than how Israelis feel after Oct. 7, that no one is safe from the insanity of this world.
Of course, the country survived. New York is still here. The Trade Center has been rebuilt. An 8-acre park and memorial honoring those killed on 9/11 as well as those in the first attack on Lower Manhattan in February 1993, surrounds the area as a reminder to never forget those lost. But no one will ever be the same.
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