At the beginning of 2002 I was asked to write a brief commentary reflecting on the attacks of September 11, 2001, for the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society for inclusion in a book of remembrances they were compiling. The entries for Georgia were published in the regional newsletter. While others wrote about patriotism and vigilance and retribution, I chose a more personal observation of the day which I was later told more in keeping with the intentions of the project. For this fifth anniversary of that tragic day, I’m posting what I wanted to write but had to edit down for space considerations.
For me there are only a handful of days for which my recollection of them are so clear it is as if I’m still living those minutes and hours: the day my father passed away, the day my daughter was born, the day Elvis died, and September 11, 2001. That particular Tuesday broke sunny and clear, for all intents a very nice, uneventful day. I had a 9 am class that day, and it was in my criminology class that we first heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We all assumed it was a small commuter or perhaps even a private plane which had crashed; nobody seemed to be overly concerned about the news. All of my classes that semester were in the same building where I worked, so between classes I went to my office to check my online sources of news and information. That something was amiss in the world became evident as I could not access any of my usual sources for news, their servers being overloaded from demand. I finally did manage to access MSNBC’s site to discover that it was actually an airliner that had crashed into the World Trade Center, and also that a second plane had crashed into the second tower.
By this time the first WTC tower had collapsed. Stunned, I made my way to my next class upstairs, where other students were talking about what had happened. I mentioned that one of the towers had collapsed and someone said that both towers had collapsed. Both? That couldn’t be, I told myself. I was young when I lived on Long Island and we didn’t go to the city that often. But I do remember seeing them on the skyline, especially the last time I visited New York in 1978. These buildings were enormous, their huge presence in Manhattan were on a scale that photographs could not convey. And now they were gone. I was dumbfounded, numbed by the news. My first thought was for my family in New York. Were any of them there? Was everyone okay? The professor had come in and was about to start class when I told her I couldn’t stay.
I headed back to my car to head home for a little while before I had to go to work. The rock station I normally listened to had been preempted for news about what had happened in New York, and, I was to find out, in Washington. There was also a report of an airliner that had crashed in Pennsylvania but nobody was sure if it was related to the earlier events or not. What the hell was going on? Had we seen all the attacks that were going to happen or was there more to come? There was an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty.
I made it home and immediately turned on the news. It was there that I finally was able to see video of the morning’s attacks in New York and Washington. As I watched, my thoughts turned to those people in the Twin Towers who were trapped and of the first responders who went in to rescue them. And like millions of others did that day, I watched many of those people meet their fates in clouds of pulverized concrete and twisted steel. My feelings were not of anger for those who perpetrated this act, but that of quiet despondence and frustration--the human race had devolved to committing violent acts of mass murder in order to pursue someone’s agenda.
By the time I made it in to work most of the major news services had been able to respond to the massive amounts of bandwidth being asked of them that day. The afternoon was spent watching streaming news coverage of the tragedies. Five o’clock rolled around and I headed off to pick up my then two-year old daughter from daycare. I felt a sense of urgency this time for no apparent reason. As I turned onto the road where her daycare was located, I listened to the live coverage on the radio as WTC 7 collapsed. It truly had been one exceptionally horrible day. I arrived at the daycare and found my daughter in the area where all the children would gather at the end of the day waiting for their parents. “Daddy!” she yelled as she came running. For her it was just another day. I gave her a big hug as I usually did, but it was different this day. There was a renewed appreciation for her and my role as parent/protector, and for everyone who plays an important role in my life. How many children had lost one or both parents that day and would never experience the simple act of a hug again? I made the most of that hug on that afternoon.
That was five years ago, half a decade, 1,825 days, 260 weeks—and I still remember it like it was yesterday. Watching a documentary yesterday on the construction and destruction of the Twin Towers brought that fact home to me, stirring up some of the unsettling emotions I felt on that fateful day.
Hanging by the front door at my home is a black and white print I purchased and framed this past summer. It’s entitled “Manhattan Morning” and features the Manhattan skyline with the Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground and the Twin Towers rising up behind. It’s a reminder to me of the ambitions of David and Nelson Rockefeller, how they transformed the New York skyline, how that skyline once looked, how it will never look again, the people who died on September 11, 2001, and how important the people in my life truly are.
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