Photo by Reuters
Photo by FEMA
I had gotten up early and dropped my son off at his new high school in Southampton, New York. He was almost as excited about his new school as he was about getting a cell phone for the first time and being allowed to take it to school as long as it was kept in his backpack. Then I headed to an early morning tennis game before I went to work.
Those were the last normal moments we would spend for quite awhile. It was 8:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001.
When someone yelled out at the tennis court that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, I thought it was an accident that had happened. It was only when they said you have to see this that I got to a TV set. I watched the second plane, a domestic airliner, smash into the Trade Center and got my head into mom emergency gear driving as fast as I could to get to get my son. He had used his new cell phone to call me and tell me there were bomb threats at the school. We were not in Manhattan, but not that far away and I had no idea if more planes would head our way or if bombs had been planted who knows where because none of us knew at that moment what had really taken place. Fear of the known and fear of the unknown.
As I pulled up in front of the high school, the scene was like the ones we had watched after too many school shootings. Hundreds of students were running out of the building as the principal yelled through a bullhorn that the school buses would be arriving momentarily to take everyone home. I saw my son and two of my neighbor’s sons and wasn’t going to make anyone I could help wait for a bus. The three boys jumped in the car trying to figure out what was going on.
Once home with the television set on, the clear skies became smokier and the dread became greater. I watched the South Tower collapse at 9:59 a.m. And then the North Tower at 10:28 a.m. All I could think about were the people inside. We watched a man jump out of one of the windows falling to what I’m sure he hoped would be safety that wasn’t. I had just watched a man commit suicide. How many more? Later I learned there were hundreds more.
I was told that Southampton Hospital had been designated a place for helicopters to brings survivors. It was a hundred miles outside New York City, but it was close enough. I kept waiting for word of survivors. No word came.
What next?
Watching for hours the unimaginable become imaginable. I had been to the Trade Center so many times over so many years. Personal times. Professional times. Taking my son to the roof top of Two World Trade Center was one of his favorite things to do when he was young. Traveling up the elevator at what seemed like breakneck speed to have the doors open, step outside and see the most amazing views of all five boroughs of New York City. A business client in crisis brought me to the Trade Center by helicopter on a weekend when speed was an issue for a story that was about to break. That entire business was still operating out of the Trade Center on September 11th. Then there was Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the One World Trade Center building that I loved. You really did feel like you were on top of the world.
It was all gone before our eyes.
The collective trauma of September 11, 2001 never has left those who lost loved ones, friends, those in lower Manhattan, miles away or even farther. As I write these words, it all comes back.
Our country has never been the same. For the first time the ground we walk on became vulnerable. We had been attacked by only two hijacked passenger planes in New York City, another plane near Washington, D.C. and a fourth plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, but it was so much more. Al-Qaeda’s terrorist work hit home and today’s younger generation is forgetting something they never knew first hand.
We can never repeat the stories often enough.
9/11
September 11, 2001