Today, my blog is not about what’s happening now, but what happened seven years ago.
There is only one day in my entire life that I can recall from start to finish, and that was September 11, 2001. I can remember every step I took that day.
It started off as a normal day, except that I wasn’t feeling well. I was up late, playing games on the computer, and when I woke up, I was just not feeling well, and almost called in sick. But, I figured I had a lot of work to do, and I’d catch some shut-eye on the train.
So, at 8:15 AM, I left my apartment, which was about a block from the train station, picked up a bagel, coffee, and a copy of Newsday, our home town paper. I missed my 8:06 (direct to NYC) and instead caught the 8:25 local (Train to Brooklyn, change at Jamaica for the train to NYC)
I remember reading the editorial page. Being 9/11, they ran a cute story about funny “911″ calls taken from actual 911 center recordings. I was starting to feel a little better, but still a little groggy. I fell asleep reading the Newsday, and awoke as the train pulled into Jamaica station.
Normally, the connecting train would already be there, but today it was not. I’ve taken this train before, when I’ve missed my regular train. However, I figured that if the train were to be much later, I could always hop on the subway and take the train right into Times Square, which is where I worked. But they made an announcement over the P.A. system, saying that all subway service was suspended “due to an electrical condition.”
Well, something felt a little odd, and we were wondering what was going on. Ten minutes, and our train still hadn’t arrived, and the subway was shut down, due to some vague “electrical condition.”
Finally, the connecting train arrived, and we boarded. The train moved on, the conductor collected tickets, and everything was back to normal. I took a couple of sips of my now-cold coffee, finishing it off. The train stopped at Woodside. “That’s odd,” I thought. “This train never stops at Woodside.”
After the train pulled out, and Penn Station was our next stop, cellphones around me started ringing. The woman behind me burst into tears. People were buzzing about “A plane crashed into the twin towers.” Nobody knew what happened, other than a plane crashed. Nobody thought about terrorists, or anything evil, just thoughts of an accident, and quite a large one at that. Rushing to the doors, I looked out the glass window and saw smoke in the distance.
The train then pulled into the tunnel. I believe someone said, jsut as we entered the tunnel, that another plane had hit. Now everybody was on edge.
I was on edge.
My sister works in one of the smaller buildings at the World Trade Center. So, as soon as the train pulled into the station, I started thinking, “Should I just take the next train out, and get out of the city?”
Well, I went upstairs, and walked into Caruso’s Pizzeria, and asked around about what was happening. The place was empty, but they confirmed that two planes had crashed, one in each tower. I tried calling my sister on her cellphone, but there was no answer. I was now scared, and quite worried. I didn’t know what to think. I was trying to make a decision — Do I go to the office, or do I go back downstairs and take the next train home. I went with the latter, and crammed myself onto the next train scheduled to depart. I didn’t care where it was heading, because all trains will stop at Jamaica, and I can catch my own line there. I just wanted to get out of the city. The train got more and more packed, and people were cramming to get on the train. It was worse than Rush Hour on Chrismas Eve. It was more crowded than the “Drunk Train” on New Years Day. Not a single person more could fit on the trian when the doors closed. But the train did not move.
After five or ten minutes, the conductor announced that the tunnels were closed, and the doors opened. We were asked to exit the train.
Well, off to the office, where else can I go? I took the 10-block walk to my office in Times Square. It was a sobering walk, and people were just starting to talk about an airplane hitting the Pentagon. We knew what this meant. We were under attack, and there was nothing that we, the pedestrians of New York City, could do about it.
As I approached my office, I could not get inside. They were busy evacuating the building. Someone said there was a bomb threat. This was the Viacom building, home of MTV’s “TRL” stuido, and the corporate parent company, Viacom.
I met up with a co-worker, and we walked down another 10 blocks to our other building, where we figured we could at least get on a computer and see what was happening online. At this point, we couldn’t call anybody as our cellphones did not have a signal. Nobody’s did.
We went in, and I was able to make a couple of phone calls, and we also saw that all bridges and tunnels were closed to traffic. I called my friend Adam, and after assuring him that I was okay, I asked if he could pick me up in Queens. I was ready to walk over the bridge, just to get out of the city. I still hadn’t heard from my sister. I called her, and I called my brother-in-law, but could not reach either of them.
But Phil, my friend and co-worker, said he was heading with some other people in his department, to someone’s condo on the upper West side, so we walked over there. It was about another mile or so, and we passed many cars on the side of the road with their doors open, people gathered around, listening to the radio (Mostly 1010 WINS)
As we got to her condo, we turned on CNN, and watched in horror. There were people falling out of the tower. Jumping out of windows so they could die a quicker death than to be burned alive. Who could ever imagine watching something like this on the news. This was not a movie, this was happening downtown, just several miles from where we were sitting.
People. Jumping. Out of the World Trade Center.
Only it was about to get worse. We watched in horror as the first tower collapsed. We all went silent, our mouths hanging open in disbelief. How could this happen? How could this crash have caused the tower to come down? And what about the other tower?
Well, not much after that, we watched in more horror as the second tower went down.
Now, I must pause for a moment, and mention that I used to work at the World Trade Center, three years earlier. I worked on the 32nd floor, and at the time that these planes hit, my normal routine would have had me up on the 110th floor at the cafeteria, grabbing a coffee and a bagel to bring down to my desk. If I wasn’t laid off three years ago, I would not have survived.
Still no word from my sister. I was a little relieved in the knowledge that she was not in either of the towers, but nonetheless, she was right there at “Ground Zero.”
The hours went by very slowly. We went out on the terrace and watched the smoke downtown. We watched emergency vehicles moving down empty streets of Manhattan.
Now, the reason I chose this photo to go with my blog, is because the poster is at St. Vincent’s Hospital. I never visited this poster, but we did go down to St. Vincents, which was a block away from us, and offered to donate blood. But we were turned away. They had more people volunteering blood th
an they could handle.
More volunteers than they could handle.
This is New York City. And they had more volunteers coming out to donate their own blood to help those who were injured downtown.
At about 2:30 or so, they announced on the television that they will be restoring limited service to the Long Island Railroad, so Phil and I agreed to take whosever train was next (since we lived near each other, but on different train branches) and drive the other one to their car. Turns out Hewlett (my station, on the Far Rockaway branch) was next, so after walking two and half miles down to Penn Station, we boarded and went home.
On the train, I finally heard from my mom that my sister was alright. She hopped on the ferry and was now in New Jersey, waiting for her husband to drive in and pick her up. She watched, from the ferry, as the towers collapsed.
Back to the posters.
People put these posters up all over the place. Everybody who hadn’t made it home that night, their families put up posters all over the city. It started in hopes that someone may have seen or taken them to the hospital, and hoping that they would find their loved ones.
As the days progressed, hope was fading, and the posters became memorials. They were placed everywhere. The one pictured here was at St. Vincent’s. I remember the ones placed at Times Square station, and the ones placed in Penn Station. I stopped every day, and spent 10-15 minutes reading these posters. To this day, seven years later, many of their faces are as vivid in my memory as the days that I was reading these posters.
This was the day our country had changed. Our innocence was lost. Liberties and freedoms we took for granted would be lost, piece by piece. Our nation would never be the same, and those days lost would forever be known as “Pre-9/11″
I am going to end my blog on this thought, because I can’t go any more without crying. I can’t even tell this story without tears forming, and I’m halfway through an entire box of tissues right now. I don’t want to turn this into anger and get into a political story.
I live in California now, but I was born and raised in New York, and this is the one day that I will always remember. All the people who lost their lives this day … both the Firefighters AND the people who just came into their office to earn a living like they do every day… I will remember their faces. I will remember what happened, and it will sadden me every time I think about it.
I have to go now.
