My annual September 11th post - on its 19th anniversary

[duke74]

My annual September 11th post... apologies for the repeat, but this date cannot be forgotten...it is as indelibly etched on the U.S. psyche as is December 7th...and it is just as meaningful to me as in the past. Even after the events of 2020, this still remains as a defining moment to me.

As time passes, it has become mere "history" to some, like WW II or any other historical event. Students graduating from high school as part of the class of 2020 were probably not born yet on September 11, 2001.

-----

We were in the World Trade Center 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 temporarily 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 (now "Brookfield Plaza").

On September 11th, I was in London for a series of meetings. Someone into 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 Verrazano 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 realized that 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.

My office looked RIGHT out on the site, so I saw the clean-up and the rise of the new structures and development of the memorial on an almost daily basis. It hit me each and every day what was there, but thankfully, also what has now risen from those (literal) ashes. (We later moved to 30 Rock and I have left the firm due to mandatory retirement requirements.) I will again watch the ceremonies, with tears in my eyes (albeit a different type of ceremony this year with the pandemic).

God bless the victims, the first responders, and those who we have lost since that day. God bless those who protect us here and abroad...and never forget that we must remain vigilant - that this remains an evil world with those dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. and our allies.

Towers - sun.jpg Firemen.jpg Beams 9-11.jpg

[duke74]

The Budweiser September 11th tribute ad. Only played once. Still tear up every time I replay it.

Never forget, never forgive.


https://youtu.be/LyP0JsyvYnA

[scylla]

Thank you, again, duke74.

I would like to remember, in particular, the six Duke alumni who died during the attacks: Michael Morgan Taylor '81, A. Todd Rancke '81, Christopher Todd Pitman '93, Peter Ortale '87, J. Robinson "Rob" Lenoir '84, and my friend and classmate, Frederick C. Rimmele III, M.D. '94 .

[CrazyNotCrazie]

My annual September 11th post... apologies for the repeat, but this date cannot be forgotten...it is as indelibly etched on the U.S. psyche as is December 7th...and it is just as meaningful to me as in the past. Even after the events of 2020, this still remains as a defining moment to me.

As time passes, it has become mere "history" to some, like WW II or any other historical event. Students graduating from high school as part of the class of 2020 were probably not born yet on September 11, 2001.

-----

We were in the World Trade Center 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 temporarily 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 (now "Brookfield Plaza").

On September 11th, I was in London for a series of meetings. Someone into 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 Verrazano 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 realized that 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.

My office looked RIGHT out on the site, so I saw the clean-up and the rise of the new structures and development of the memorial on an almost daily basis. It hit me each and every day what was there, but thankfully, also what has now risen from those (literal) ashes. (We later moved to 30 Rock and I have left the firm due to mandatory retirement requirements.) I will again watch the ceremonies, with tears in my eyes (albeit a different type of ceremony this year with the pandemic).

God bless the victims, the first responders, and those who we have lost since that day. God bless those who protect us here and abroad...and never forget that we must remain vigilant - that this remains an evil world with those dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. and our allies.

Towers - sun.jpg Firemen.jpg Beams 9-11.jpg

Thank you for sharing. I am hoping to see the beams of light tonight - an incredibly moving memorial.

[DukieInKansas]

In some ways, it seems so long ago and in others, it was just yesterday. I still remember watching as it was initially being reported and finally leaving to go to work. When the internet was swamped and it was hard to get updates, I went home to bring a TV into the office. I remember the shock of watching the first tower fall. Those feelings come back every year.

From Alan Jackson's song - Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning:

"Where were you when the world stopped turnin'
That September day?
Were you in the yard with your wife and children
Or workin' on some stage in L.A.?
Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke
Risin' against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry?"

Link to song on YouTube - warning: it has pictures from that day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPHnadJ-0hE

[duke74]

Thank you, again, duke74.

I would like to remember, in particular, the six Duke alumni who died during the attacks: Michael Morgan Taylor '81, A. Todd Rancke '81, Christopher Todd Pitman '93, Peter Ortale '87, J. Robinson "Rob" Lenoir '84, and my friend and classmate, Frederick C. Rimmele III, M.D. '94 .

Apologies for my oversight. May they rest in eternal peace.

[duke74]

Thank you for sharing. I am hoping to see the beams of light tonight - an incredibly moving memorial.

I read this morning that for the 20th anniversary next year they are trying to make this a permanent piece of the memorial - perhaps underground lights that rise to the surface when desired. We almost didn't have it this year, purportedly due to COVID risks. Glad wiser heads prevailed.

[Lord Ash]

Wrote this some years ago. Still applies.

Lived about 20 blocks from the towers.

Was teaching that day, up at CPE1 on 106th street. Was helping in a first grade class when a first grader told me another kid was saying that there were explosions downtown. I said that people like to make stuff up. Still have no idea how the kid knew.

Then the principal started coming around and telling us. A lot of phones were down, and there weren't computers in the classrooms and people didn't have iphones or anything.

We got only a bit of news. It was really scary, because we just couldn't find out what was happening. We heard about the Pentagon, and there were rumors that the Supreme Court had been attacked... and then the fighters started screaming overhead, and I genuinely believed WWIII had started.

Parents started to come and get kids. An aide sat in the back with an ear bud in, and told us what he could figure out.

At around 10:45 I went out to get food for everyone. The streets were PACKED... like a completely full subway, with everyone walking north. Now, 106th is MILES from Ground Zero... but everyone was just running away. Saw people covered in the dust. Went into a restaurant, where there were a hundred people around a TV, and there was a shot of one of the towers still standing, and I blurted out "Wait, are the towers still up?!?" and everyone turned and one person said "No, that's from before."

Eventually school closed and I went over to 5th ave to catch a bus downtown, because the subways were down. The only traffic was buses, and HUGE convoys of tractor trailers with medical supply names on the sides, and humvees. I still didn't know everything that had happened.

When the bus got a bit further south I leaned out (it was a bus where everyone faced each other) and looked downtown, and my heart stopped. I hadnt seen the plume yet, and it basically covered the entire horizon. I think I gasped, and everyone else leaned over and looked down the length of the bus, and you could tell nobody had really SEEN it yet, because everyone was floored.

I lived below the cordoned off zone.

Met all my friends at my buddy's apartment on Thompson, which was also below the cordoned off zone. When our friend who actually worked at the towers showed up at the door we all burst into tears and hugged. My college roommates dad also worked there, but got out safely we learned later.

Everything was dusty. That night it was silent. I had a corner apartment on the NE corner of MacDougal and 3rd. I could see right down south MacDougal and see the plume. There were huge floodlights all night, lighting it up. I got high, and sat on my fire escape on the 3rd floor, and watched four kids (I assume NYU students) play frisbee in the empty West Village streets while a kid jumped up and down smoking a joint on a trampoline right in the middle of the intersection of MacDougal and 3rd. Occasionally they would call out "car!" and move for the humvees or whatever that came by. It was silent, and eerie.

The fire department on my block (now Anderson Cooper's house) lost a guy... Keith Roma. The flowers outside the place took up the ENTIRE block, five or six feet wide and three or four feet deep.

There were missing person posters EVERYWHERE. My entire neighborhood was covered in them.

I remember two that stuck out.

One was an older man, and on the poster it said he had six grandkids.

Another was a pretty young blond woman in a white dress. On the poster it said she had just gotten married.

I knew that nobody needed to know any of that to find them... it was just their loved ones heartache.

The Daily News the next day... I remember seeing the cover... and thinking "Holy I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.. If there are 10,000 of us dead... how the hell can we ever recover?"

My best friend was in the National Guard and was called in for body recovery on the 12th. He called me on the way in, and we talked. We didn't talk again for three days. He called when he had come back out, and had a breakdown. He just kept talking about what it was like to find the bodies, the parts, and having to MOVE them... he kept talking about the weight of them. I quickly got out of town (he lived in NJ) and got over to his place, and we got in the car and left, drove up to Vermont, and stayed up there for a few days so he could get his head straight.

Everything I owned was dusty for a month after, and the smell... the smell stuck around for six months. The plume, the smoke... it lasted what felt like forever.

I didn't see any footage or photos of it for... for a long, long time? I couldn't. The first thing I really saw was when I was at the New York Historical Society, and I walked past a door, and there was a movie theatre inside, and on the screen as part of a 9/11 exhibit they were just playing a single shot... a single steady shot of one of the towers burning. A close up, showing maybe the top twenty or thirty floors. I happened to look to the right as I passed, and it hit me like a truck. I just stood there, mouth open, and watched the video from the doorway for maybe ten minutes. I just couldn't move. I still don't really watch anything about it.

When the big power outage happened, everyone I know panicked; we assumed we got hit again. Every time a plane flew low, my then-girlfriend and I would pause, and wait, until it passed. The plane crash in Queens a month or so later had everyone panicked. And every time there was fireworks in the city, the streets would be full of frightened people, thinking we were under attack.

Worst day of my life, without question.

Crazy... they talked about doing a fighter fly over NYC today... everyone up here was like "Are you I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.ing nuts? The LAST thing anyone here wants is to hear that again." There is nothing as ear-drum-bursting as fighters overhead, and when you hear them at what you think may be the start of WWIII... no thanks.

And it is a damn shame that we went from "We are all New Yorkers today" to people hating the city, even if they have never been there, because of what they think it represents politically Would be great if we could get back to the "we are all in this together" feeling.

[weezie]

If life returns to a semblance of normality, we are due to be in NYC next year on the 20th remembrance of the tragedies.

[Jeffrey]

My annual September 11th post... apologies for the repeat, but this date cannot be forgotten...it is as indelibly etched on the U.S. psyche as is December 7th...and it is just as meaningful to me as in the past. Even after the events of 2020, this still remains as a defining moment to me.

As time passes, it has become mere "history" to some, like WW II or any other historical event. Students graduating from high school as part of the class of 2020 were probably not born yet on September 11, 2001.

-----

We were in the World Trade Center 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 temporarily 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 (now "Brookfield Plaza").

On September 11th, I was in London for a series of meetings. Someone into 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 Verrazano 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 realized that 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.

My office looked RIGHT out on the site, so I saw the clean-up and the rise of the new structures and development of the memorial on an almost daily basis. It hit me each and every day what was there, but thankfully, also what has now risen from those (literal) ashes. (We later moved to 30 Rock and I have left the firm due to mandatory retirement requirements.) I will again watch the ceremonies, with tears in my eyes (albeit a different type of ceremony this year with the pandemic).

God bless the victims, the first responders, and those who we have lost since that day. God bless those who protect us here and abroad...and never forget that we must remain vigilant - that this remains an evil world with those dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. and our allies.

Towers - sun.jpg Firemen.jpg Beams 9-11.jpg

Always one of my all-time favorite threads. Thank you, very much, for always posting your great and very important thread!

[fidel]

I was working in Zurich at the time. About 3pm, the internet slowed to a crawl. Rumors started that a plane hit a tower in NYC.

Getting news from the NYT became impossible, so many were hitting the site that refreshes were taking a half hour. We started hitting other news sites (BBC I remember). More and more, the news was text-only as it was near impossible for graphics to flow through the choked internet.

I remember hearing that the towers had 'collapsed', but wondering what that really meant? Did the planes break them in half? I remember the awe when I saw the towers drop as if a controlled event was taking place, starting from the top and pancaking onto itself until all that was left was a cloud.

People in Switzerland were coming up to me sharing condolences, knowing I was an American (and from NY, though far from NYC). It was a strange time. My heart aches for those caught in the towers, especially as the son of a fire fighter.

Heres to the first responders, and all affected.

[Rich]

Thank you for sharing. I am hoping to see the beams of light tonight - an incredibly moving memorial.

Drove by them last night on my way around Manhattan from Long Island to New Jersey. It really is moving and a perfect reminder.

[DevilHorse]

I was working in Middletown, NJ at the time when the planes hit. My job would sometimes have me meet with customers in the WTC (lower floors). I'd take the PATH trains in from Newark. The PATH station stop was in the basement of the WTC (which was obviously destroyed). So I was familiar with the building.

Other than being transfixed by the days events, what I remember is that many of the people in the WTC came from New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York towns. There are dozens and dozens of stops on the commuter rail lines. Middletown, NJ lost 37 people in the towers that day. Many of them had children left to be picked up at school and after care. It was a heart wrenching story told over and over in the suburbs.

My officemate lost a cousin that day. It touched everyone in many ways, and still does. The scars left from that day can still be seen and felt.

Bless all of the victims and their families.

Thanks for starting the thread.

(Love the Budweiser commercial).

Larry
DevilHorse