As I won’t be writing on the actual 10 year anniversary of 9/11 I thought I’d write about it today. Also, just for those playing along, I won’t be writing tomorrow either as I’ll be at the second wedding of the three I’ve to attend.
Ten years ago and three weeks prior to the tragedies of 9/11, I was in New York City. I was there for work for a training seminar. It was a three week long seminar so on the weekends me and other colleagues would hop on the train and go into New York to catch the sights and sounds. It was my first time in New York and I loved it.
On the last weekend of this long trip I went on a full on site-seeing bonanza. We went to Battery Park and saw the monument to the Merchant Marines. We tried to get to The Statute of Liberty but that line was blocks and blocks long. It did make me very proud that so many people were there to see that wonderful gift from France. I took a picture with a woman dressed like Lady Liberty, she gave me a nice peck on the check and it’s one of my favorite photos.
My traveling companion and I decided to go and check out the World Trade Center. It was breathtaking. It was really a beautiful building. I’m from Chicago, the birthplace of the skyscraper and even I was impressed with the tower. We rode the elevator up to the observation deck on the top of the South Tower and it was an incredible view. In Chicago, the Sear’s tower’s observation area was all glassed in and you couldn’t get onto the actual top of the building. The tower though, you were in the open air and could look out in all directions. It was just amazing. I took tons of photos from the top and was in a bunch as well, pointing out over the city, playing the new God.
My friend and I went back down to the Tower plaza and I took more photos. I have a favorite one of the old globe and fountain that was in the plaza square. The sun shone behind it as it was setting and there was a real magic in the air that whole day. On the train ride back to New Jersey I fell asleep like a small child all tuckered out from the days adventure. That and I was a little drunk from all the drinking on Bleeker Street.
Fast forward to 9/11/01 and I had just got out of the shower when I heard on the radio that a plane had hit the Tower. The way the initial details came in over the radio they made it sound like a small Cessna had hit the building. I thought it was strange since I had just been there. I went downstairs and turned the little TV on by the ironing board and started ironing my pants for the work day ahead.
As the TV warmed up I could see that there was a little more damage than what a Cessna could cause and that’s when I saw the second plane, live, crash into the second Tower. I stopped breathing. I stopped moving. All I could think was, “I was just there, I was JUST there”.
My generation had seen tragedy on TV before. In 1985 were bore witness to the Challenger disaster, but that was so far away and I had never been on a space shuttle so it was hard to really relate to it. When those planes hit the Towers though I couldn’t help but think about all those employees I had seen when I visited. The elevator workers, the security guards, the business people just going about their daily activities, there was a real possibility that some of them, that all of them were dead. So I felt something with this tragedy I hadn’t felt with any other, a real connection to a place.
As the day’s events unfolded and all our eyes were glued to TV’s and all our prayers were being silently muttered I imagined myself in a fox hole somewhere in the world, drafted into a war without end. I had gone into work that morning because I really didn’t know what else to do. I was in a state of mild shock and disbelief. I used to work kitty-corner from the Sears Tower and as soon as I got to work my boss told me to go back home as the offices were closing. There was a mass exodus from Downtown Chicago the likes of which I had never seen and will probably never see again in my life time.
While waiting in Union Station for the next train home I was sitting in the Snuggery, no booze was being served of course, watching the TV’s along with the rest of the travelers and I started speaking to the guy next to me. I don’t remember his name, but we were talking about the fact that America was now at war with someone and we didn’t even know who. He had to catch his train and I remember shaking his hand and saying, “I hope we don’t meet again in some dirty foxhole”. He laughed and off he went while I continued to watch the aftermath on TV.
Here it is, ten years later and I’m happy to say that I’m not in a foxhole. (Although I can’t imagine that a cubicle is much better) I’ve had a lot of fortune and troubles in the last ten years, when the world we knew it changed forever. I’m happy to be here and I am happy to have experienced all of life’s trials and tribulations when so many didn’t.
It’s my proud honor to remember all of those that are no longer with us. I am more proud of us for how we pulled through and I hope this dark anniversary will remind us that we’re not as different as we think and compromise is always an option.
Never Forget.
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