Twenty years ago today ...
Today, I'm watching the sunrise in Chicago. On September 11, 2001, I lived in northern New Jersey and worked in lower Manhattan. Though that part of my life is long ago and far away, some things never leave you.
In August of 2001 ...
... this was the view from slightly south of Colgate Pier on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. Tom was playing with his new camera and shot this photo little more than two weeks before September 11th. It was a truly gorgeous view. At the time, I lived about half a mile from Colgate and from my bedroom windows, I could see the the upper third of the North Tower(with the antenna) and part of the South Tower. At night, it was gorgeous. Magical.
Tuesday, September 11th. Back home in Chicago, my brother Danny had undergone major surgery the day before, and my main concern was how he was doing. I'd planned to call him from work.
I got up and ready, fed Nimbus, grabbed my bag and left for work. It was a trip I made five days a week -- walk from my Jersey City apartment to the Grove Street PATH station and onto the train, then from the PATH terminal beneath the WTC complex, up the massive escalator structure into the mezzanine, out the Liberty St. exit of WTC 4 / South Tower, cross Broadway, and walk the three-and-a-half blocks to my workplace at the end of Wall Street. I'd made the same exact trip every day since 1996, and could do it in my sleep. So it was that my very last trip through World Trade Center was a blur. I wish I could say that I saw or did something memorable, that a whole and breathing WTC registered in my mind, that I turned around at the top of Liberty Street and looked back at the Twin Towers one last time, but no. My mind was on getting to work so I could call my brother. And so, at approximately 0730 on September 11, 2001, I walked through World Trade Center for the very last time -- indeed, it was the last time I even made it west of Broadway until 2004.
Make the walk, get to work, log in, commune with friends, redo a software installation for yet another moron who shouldn't be allowed to touch a computer, SSDD.
"Hey -- a plane just hit World Trade Center." That's how it started for us, with Jonna calling out into the quiet office. The next sound was the tapping of a dozen keyboards as we all went online to see what was going on.
I remember the very first picture that popped up on CNN's site. It was just a hole in the side of the building. Not much smoke, no flames, it didn't even look to be that big a hole. Just a hole. Some of the Level III techs were making jokes about stupid lawyers with more money than flight skills flying their expensive toys into buildings. From the conference room, we looked down at South Street, at all the FDNY trucks and ambulances racing towrds WTC. We didn't know that it had been a commercial jet.
A bit before nine, Pat, our department head, arrived. But instead of stopping to talk as she usually did, Pat went straight into her office, shut the door, and stayed there. She was crying. Understand, Pat was fearless. Fierce and badass and scary. A "don't fuck with me or I will END you" sort of woman. And she was in her office crying. We later found out that she'd been exiting WTC when the first plane hit. We found out what she'd seen hitting the ground.
News filtered in that it had indeed been a commercial flight, that hundreds of people were probably dead. Nicholas called us into the conference room to request a moment of silence for the victims. He cried. Nicholas was the second New York badass that I had seen break down that morning.
It got quiet after that, there were no more jokes, and the department went silent, everyone still net-surfing, checking the news. I called my Mom in Chicago, told her something bad was going down in New York, that I was much closer to it than I liked, and that she should turn on the news. And so it came to be that from nearly a thousand miles and one time-zone away, my Mom ended up witnessing -- on TV -- more of what was happening, live-as-it-happened than I did, some 4 blocks west of the whole shebang. Of all that happened that day, that was the most surreal.
The second plane hit. I don't remember who called that one out. General consensus -- this was no accident, we're under attack. Shortly thereafter, we had a visitor. One of the upper-level muckety-mucks from the 24th floor had come down from on high to call us all into an "emergency meeting."
Questions everywhere. Was New York under attack?
Yes.
By who?
We don't know.
Were we evacuating like the rest of lower Manhattan seemed to be?
No, you are not.
Yeah, that corporate cow from Upstairs stood there and told us point-blank that we were going to stay right there and continue to "perform a valued service for our clients." Never, ever will I forget that phrase, or the silence that fell afterwards. At one point, Mike mentioned that people had families, and what if they left anyway. Her response? You could lose your job.
Um. Yeah. Okay.
In the meantime, as Ms. 24th Floor is yapping on about Important Service and Dedication and Other Corporate Bullshit, we're all sitting in the conference room, looking down at South Street, Pier 11, and the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Watching thousands and thousands of people board the outbound ferries. Watching what looked like all of lower Manhattan's workforce getting the hell out of Dodge.
But no, we were told to stay and do our jobs. Like anyone that day gave a rat's ass if their financial software was working or not. And whaddya know, by the time we were dismissed from that "emergency meeting" -- just in time to hear the news that a third plane had hit the Pentagon -- our phone system was dead.
Mike was the only one of us intelligent enough to say "Fuck this," grab his stuff, and leave. The man is my hero to this day. The rest of us sheep stayed at our desks. In shock? Maybe. Twenty years later, I'm still asking myself why I stayed. I've NEVER been one for blind obedience and I respect authority only when it gives me reason to, so with all the respect I did NOT have for Ms. 24th Floor, I should have been out that door right after Mike. But I stayed. We all stayed. Personally, I think that a part of me was expecting the FDNY to work their magic and put out the damn fire so I could walk back to World Trade Center, catch my PATH train back to good old New Jersey, and go home. Another reason was that we were so isolated in our little techie bubble, in our secure department with our servers and software and all our windows facing south and east so all we could see was the East River and Brooklyn. The disaster unfolding at WTC was behind us. In 2001, there were no smartphones and we had no television access, no office phones, eventually not even cell service ... even our internet connection began clogging up as the entire East Coast and much of the world went online trying to see what was going on. We had no clue how bad things really were until well after the second tower had fallen.
Then internal company messages started coming in from our coworkers down in Delaware, concerned as to why they couldn't get through to us on the phones. And once again, people from miles away were describing to me what was going on some four blocks behind my back. I asked a favor, and that's how my mother in Chicago received a series of calls from Valerie in Delaware, assuring Mom that her oldest daughter was stuck in the middle of hell, but so far okay.
When the South Tower went down, we saw the boiling white dust cloud, but had no clue. A bunch of us were standing at the windows watching that big white cloud roll right down Wall Street, engulf our building and momentarily turn the outside black as night. We thought it was just smoke from the fires, that's how out of the communications loop we were.
Pat came by to tell us that we should get away from the windows because there could be another plane out there. It took all of my strength to avoid laughing in her face. If a commercial jet hit our little 24-story building, it wasn't gonna matter whether I was at the window or at my desk 20 feet away. But return to my desk, I did, considering for the first time how much danger we could be in. My genius masterplan for a worst-case scenario? Kicking off my heels and putting my trainers back on so I could run if I had to, and tucking my ID inside my bra so if the worst happened, the body would still be identifiable. Definitely not thinking straight, or I would have left when Mike did. Scared? Undoubtedly, but it was pointless to waste energy on being terrified when there was so much to process. Four blocks away, people were dying. Down in DC, people were dying. And who knew what the hell else was going on. Were we at war? I don't remember being truly scared until after we found out the Twin Towers were actually gone and I realized that the PATH station underneath WTC -- what I thought was my only way home -- no longer existed. And even then, my main worry was, if I couldn't get home, who would feed Nimbus.
Another massive white cloud turned to blackness outside our windows. We still didn't understand its meaning. News came about yet another plane crashing in Pennsylvania. And dear God, was this ever going to end? News finally trickled in that WTC was gone and how the hell were TWO 110-story buildings just ... gone? We all just sat there stunned after that.
We didn't get out of that accursed building until nearly noon when the NYPD came by and made us evacuate. Take that, Ms. 24th Floor!
I caught up with a fellow New Jerseyite who promised to get me home and I followed him to Pier 11 where we caught a ferry back to Colgate. On the way back, the ferry passed very close to the spot where World Trade Center used to be. Everybody jumped up and ran topside to see. That is, everybody except me and maybe three others. I guess realization was finally kicking in, because I didn't want to see the aftermath. Then the ferry, instead of going to Colgate Pier where it was supposed to, was redirected to Riverside, a few miles further up the Hudson. It turned out that Colgate was being used as a rescue/staging area for the Jersey-side cops and firemen. Except there was no one to rescue.
And when the ferry finally docked at Riverside and we disembarked, I turned around and finally saw. What should have been a beautiful clear view of lower Manhattan and the World Financial Center was nothing but an off-white dust cloud floating where something much more substantial had been.
In New Jersey, the entire PATH system was shut down, subway, Light Rail, buses, everything. It took me nearly an hour to walk home from Riverside Pier, but my New York-dwelling pals had it much worse. Imagine walking from lower Manhattan to Queens. I knew a few people who'd made that trek. Hours and HOURS of walking.
Got home, turned on the TV, finally saw the horrors that had unwound right behind my back, cried for a while, then tried to call my Mom. The phone lines were wonky -- I could intermittently get onto the internet, but couldn't call anyone in New York, couldn't call my Mom in Chicago, couldn't call Walter down in D.C., couldn't even call my fella a half-mile away in Hoboken. But a call to Fay in London went right through with not so much as a hiccup. And thank heaven for that, as she was on the phone to calm me down when the F-16s started roaring overhead and, alone in my apartment, I absolutely, utterly lost my shit because I had apparently reached my limit on "new and exciting" things for the day.
Still. I was far, FAR luckier than some that day. I made it home before dark, alive, and with all my parts intact. Entirely too many people in New York, in Washington D.C., and in a lonely field in Pennsylvania did not.
And that was my September 11, 2001.
Postscript the First:
Nearly a week later, lower Manhattan was locked down -- nobody that wasn't FDNY, NYPD, FBI, or who had legitimate proof of residence was getting in. The bridges were shut down, the tunnels were shut down, everything was walled off. Citibank sent all of us down to the Delaware office for the week that the city was off-limits. And so I got my first full night of sleep in days at a hotel in New Castle, Delaware. A week after that, coming back home, the first thing I saw from ten miles out on the Jersey Turnpike? The dark plume of smoke snaking away from what remained of WTC, up and out and over Brooklyn. It had been nearly two weeks since World Trade Center went down and the site was still smoking.
First trip in to work, after everything was over, after Mohammed Atta's horrendous mug had been plastered all over every newspaper's front page. Waiting for the first morning ferry. Half-a-dozen people got off and walked past those of us waiting to board. One of the disembarking passengers was a man of Middle Eastern appearance who kept his gaze trained on the ground. The two men in front of me were directing nuclear hot stares at him and if looks could kill, the Middle Eastern dude would have been a smoking pile of ash. I wasn't even in the line of fire of those looks, and I felt the burn. No wonder the guy never raised his eyes -- he'd probably been getting that look from nearly everyone he passed.
Then, onto the ferry and to work. Ivory-colored dust -- the remnants of WTC -- was blowing in the gutters. Saw my first-ever glimpse of an armed Humvee -- going up Wall Street. Passed very young soldiers with very big rifles patrolling Pier 11 and South Street Seaport. Saw tactical NYPD on Water Street sporting the kind of weaponry you only saw in action movies. Saw plainclothes cops -- in the lobby of the Citibank building -- with big black guns in holsters. And sometimes not in holsters, sometimes being held. I've never seen so many guns in my life -- I'm not a gun person and the sight of all that armament was unnerving.
The WTC site burned for months -- until late December -- and the plume continued to drift back over Brooklyn. And still the "Pile" continued to burn. And burn. And burn some more. Some days, the smell in the air was hot metal, some days, burning paper, melting plastic, charring wood, some days, unidentifiable odors, but obviously something was still burning. Some days, the air stung your nose, and the chemical tang stayed in the air for months. And all the while, the EPA insisted it was perfectly safe for us to return to work, perfectly safe to breathe all that crap in. All I know is, my asthma came back with a vengeance after a couple weeks of that, and all these years later, I still have respiratory issues, so ... yeah.
October.
Tom, Gloria, and I decided to walk the handful of blocks over to the WTC site to ... see. NYPD wasn't letting anyone past Broadway, but you didn't need to cross, really. It was all right there. A massive, tangled mess of debris spread out for blocks. It had rained since the 11th, and some of the building's exposed steel skeleton was rusting. That's what broke my heart. World Trade Center, those massive silver-white monoliths, that symbol of New York City ... all that was left of those beautiful buildings was a heap, all jagged and broken with bits sticking out, and the rust made it look like the WTC remains were bleeding. We cried. And didn't stay long.
One morning, standing in the pre-dawn darkness waiting for the NY Waterway ferry, I looked across the Hudson and saw what appeared to be the shadow of both towers, rising darkly into the sky exactly where they were supposed to be. In the weeks that followed, I "saw" the image multiple times. A friend said it was the ghost of the Towers and I'm still not sure how serious she was. What had I seen? Neurological misfire or hallucinations from stress and lack of sleep? Maybe just persistence of vision -- my brain "seeing" something that it expected to be there. But dear God, that creeped me out.
At the time, I had wonderful, awesome, endless medical coverage, including mental health. It was shortly after my seeing-buildings-that-weren't-there incident that I began taking full advantage of it. And you know what? Xanax is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I think half of New York was subsisting on tranquilizers for a while.
The utterly lowest point came in late October, early in the morning. About a dozen of us were standing at Colgate pier waiting for the first ferry when the wind shifted, blowing west across the Hudson and towards us. There was a smell. Not a good smell. An awful smell. People were commenting on the odor, saying it must be from a backed-up sewer or suchlike. And then one guy opened his big mouth and stated exactly what it was. Yeah. I could have happily gone to my grave believing the smell was from a sewer, because once you've smelled that, it never, ever leaves you.
Postscript the Second:
May, 2004.
I went back to the "Ground Zero" site to say goodbye, just before I left the East Coast for good. By then, the mess had been cleared up and the NYC subways were running again. And the weirdest thing? When you exited the 1-9 subway station -- the one that used to be on the lower level beneath the South Tower -- well, all the shops that used to be down there were gone, obviously. In 2004, when you came through the doors from the subway station, there was the old familiar tile beneath your feet ... then suddenly, a clean-cut line between stained, decades-old tiles and pristine new concrete. You could see exactly where World Trade Center stopped existing, and my God, was it a weird feeling to step across that line.
I said my goodbyes to New York City, hopped the NY Waterway ferry back to New Jersey, and a day later, I was on my way back to Chicago. And that was that.
September 2021.
It's now been two decades since that day. I've been back in Chicago for most of those years, but I still miss NYC and New Jersey. I miss seeing the Twin Towers in photographs of lower Manhattan. I miss my friends there. I miss my old apartment.
I wish I could be in New York today to properly pay my respects. To the World Trade Center, that constant presence in my East Coast life. To the nearly 3,000 people who died on September 11, 2001. To the first responders who gave their lives that day, and the ones who've suffered so horribly since then. And always, always, to "The 343."
Twenty years ago. Those memories have become more distant with time, but it takes surprisingly little to bring them all flooding back. Today is not going to be a good day.
(Updated from my 10-year anniversary post in 2011.)