Some (non political) reflections on today-September 11th

[duke74]

Uodated from my post last year...

We were in the WTC until the first attack in February 1993. (My office was on the 100th floor, facing the Lady of the Harbor. I remember the walk down in the dark and smoke). We then moved temprorarily to our midtown offices on B’way and 50th Street. Thank goodness, my managing partner decided NOT to move back to the WTC – a gutsy decision based on client and political pressures, but a wise one in retrospect and one that considered the employees of the firm. We moved across West Street to the World Financial Center.

On September 11th, I was in London for a series of meetings. Someone came back down to the conference room and said that a plane went into the Trade Center..and had to make the point that she was not kidding, based on our reactions. We spent the next day trying to reach our families, crying and watching CNN. My wife was on the BQE (for those o/s of NY, that’s the Brooklyn Queens Expressway) heading to work and saw the planes hit. My son was in his senior year at Duke.

I headed off to Zurich for another meeting, since I couldn’t get back home anyhow. I ended up being able to get back to the States on Saturday, but with the “lottery” of air availability, flew into Pittsburgh. Luckily my travel service was able to get me a rental car at Pittsburgh, and I started the long ride back to Queens. Stopped in PA for the night, eyes almost closed from fatigue and emotion. On Sunday morning, I crossed the Verazzano Narrows Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn and saw the smoke rising from what was the WTC complex. Tears again…pulled off the road until I composed myself.

This is NOT about me, but my life has not been the same since – professionally or personally. My wife (an atty by profession) is a volunteer with the cops of the NYPD, and has embedded herself even more into that group of heroes to help any way she can. I went on an intellectual journey, and went back to school at NYU at the age of 53 for a masters in int’l relations. (We suddenly learned that something was out there..and I had so much to learn on the subject.) My son decided that he was “coming home”…he graduated Duke in 2002 and went to law school in NYC. The magnet was there. What got to him was some non-NYer’s moronic comment in a class shortly after the attacks – something to the effect of “why is everyone so upset? They were only buildings!”

My office looks RIGHT out on the site, so I have seen the last parts of the clean-up and the rise of the new structures and development of the memorial on an almost daily basis. It hits me each and every day what was there, but thankfully, also what is now rising from those (literal) ashes. I will watch the ceremonies, and will sit through the entire reading of the names.

God bless the victims, the first responders, and those who we have lost since that day. And God bless those who protect us here and abroad.

[Reisen]

I was in the same class as your son (2002), and work in 3 World Financial Center. It's hard hearing everyone's stories (many of my coworkers were in the office that day, directly across the street), but very meaningful. Thanks for posting yours.

[alteran]

Thanks for this.