September 11, Two Decades Later
September 11, Two Decades Later
It was 20 years ago today. In a faraway time, that would’ve been simply Sgt. Pepper beginning to play. But today it’s the preamble to a far more somber event.
It’s the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It’s been two decades since the ultimate evil descended upon America that changed our world instantly, cruelly, personally. We each were immediately pulled from our imagined cocoon of invulnerability as we watched the towers crumble, the Falling Man plummeting, and so many innocent lives vanish among piles of rubble and humanity.
This is the day to remember them. A generation has grown up with it being simply a passed-down memory. It’s a history lesson now — and in some cases, it’s not even being taught at all. When I’ve asked my own children if they talk about it in school during the anniversary, the response has been a collective “no.”
The most society-changing event of the past 50 years or so isn’t even being discussed in some schools anymore now that we’re living through the next one. Just as many of us remember life before September 11, 2001, this generation will remember life pre-COVID and life after.
When over 650,000 people have died from a pandemic, 3,000 victims doesn’t seem like such a big number anymore.
But it is.
We can speculate about the inevitability of the death toll of a highly communicable, lethal virus, but that doesn’t change the fact that 9/11 was not inevitable. It was planned and carried out, ruthlessly, by humans.
The motive is open to speculation. But the likely end goal was to destabilize our nation to create fear. It was a show to prove that America was vulnerable.
Twenty years later, we’re still learning that lesson. Only now, our fear comes from within. Our derision isn’t coming from beyond our borders, it’s between them. We’ve put up political barriers among ourselves that are far more insidious to all of us now. We’ve become “some of the people,” not “we the people.”
It’s time for us to reflect upon that lesson that we should have learned twenty years ago — that America’s strength reveals itself best when we come together. It’s hard to do. It might seem impossible. But it’s necessary for us in order to finally, actually heal.
Share your stories. Remember those we senselessly lost. And find your own way to come back together as an American family.
Below is the story of where I was that day, written a few years later, on September 11th.
It Was The Calmest of Days
I heard about the first plane hitting the tower at my coffee cart, of all places. After making my daily walk across town from Port Authority to 46th and 3rd, I couldn’t help but notice all of the commotion going on to my right, all the traffic and emergency vehicles speeding downtown. I saw smoke billowing into the air, but as it had just happened, it hadn’t been overwhelming –yet.
“A plane just flew into the World Trade Center,” the coffee guy told me. Naturally, I assumed that it was probably a small Cessna or something. It wasn’t until I got up to my office that I found out what had really struck the tower. At that point, most of our 12-person department had gathered in my boss’ office to watch the carnage on her TV. Although we were only a couple of miles uptown, we felt both safe and utterly vulnerable, each at the same time. Midtown, from a New Yorker’s point of view, is light-years away from the World Trade Center. But it’s really not so far in human distance.
There was a bizarre feeling of helplessness and isolation. While we watched gathered in that office, this horror was going on so close that you could smell it. We watched the replays, over and over, sharing whatever stunned thoughts we may have had with each other.
My wife was closer to the site — she was doing some freelance much further downtown. She saw the second tower fall from where she was. She wisely cleared out early, going back to our Weehawken, NJ apartment just across the river instead of staying where she was. I was lucky enough to briefly get through to my wife by phone, before the call was suddenly dropped, so at least we each knew we were both safe.
It took my office considerably longer to come to our senses and go home to our loved ones. Once we finally peeled ourselves away from the TV coverage, we found ourselves faced with the now daunting task of crossing the Hudson River. The bridges and tunnels had been closed, of course. How do you leave town?
The three Jersey people in our group left together; somehow we found out that they were using a makeshift ferry service to get people across to NJ. As we made our walk westward, we watched as others filed uptown, many covered with dust and ash. Everyone had the same faraway dazed look in their eyes. We were watching an exodus from Hell. No one said a word; none were sufficient.
I don’t even know where we boarded the boats that day, nor do I remember what type of boat it was. It may have been some sort of Circle Line type of tourist boat. We sat on the top deck, the three of us among the hundred or two others who, like us, had merely followed the stream of people to these charity boats. As the ship launched from the docks, all of our eyes were naturally fixated on lower Manhattan. One of the most striking things about it — and the entire journey beyond my office walls — was the silence. Apart from the sirens of emergency vehicles, the sound of the boat’s engine, and lap of the water against the hull, it was purely, hauntingly silent.
That silence lasted unbroken until we reached the Jersey side of the Hudson. From there, chaos reigned as everyone struggled to find which bus would take them closest to home. I had no such worry as the boats had docked less than a mile from my apartment. I helped my friends as best as I could to figure out where they had to go, and then I began to walk home.
Suddenly, I was alone for the first time since this day started.
The entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel was between where I was and where I had to go, and it was absolutely deserted. It had been closed to traffic, and somehow there was no one else there. So I found myself walking towards the Tunnel, on a typically congested thoroughfare, completely alone. It felt, quite appropriately, post-apocalyptic.
It didn’t take long to reach my apartment and my new wife, although it was an emotional eternity. We had been married for less than a month when the attacks happened. We’d only been back from our honeymoon for about two weeks, probably less. I can’t imagine what we would have done had this been on 9/01 rather than 9/11.
The calls and emails, when they could get through, brought in the important news. Our friends and loved ones had been accounted for. A friend couldn’t find a pair of shoes that she planned to wear that morning, so she was running extra late for work in her office in the South Tower. The devil may wear Prada, but I think her angel wears Nine West.
We found out later that my brother-in-law lost a friend in the collapse that day. Doug’s a strong man, a happy man, a resolutely positive man. Yet years later, at a holiday dinner, I saw this strong man fall apart as we briefly talked about that day.
My experiences of that day were nothing. To thousands of others, they were everything.
Now, my office is directly across the street from Ground Zero, this most hallowed of American ground. I can’t help but marvel at the sights around me every day. Not at this huge, gaping, national hole, but of the surviving neighborhood. It is unfathomable to me that my building — directly across the street from this carnage — is still standing.
But here I sit, every day in my 12th floor office, amazed that this could have happened right here, that so many could have perished that day, for doing nothing other than what I’m doing right now. I’m at work, and it’s the calmest of days.
