September 11th – A Day of Remembrance

Today, I am speaking at the Church of the Sacred Heart in the Barela neighborhood of Albuquerque, NM. After September 11th, 2001, the parish asked for and received a fallen beam from the World Trade Center. They hold this beam as a sacred trust and – each year – say a memorial mass for those who died that day. I am from New York, and was a witness to the attacks. I offered to share my memories. What follows are the words I have prepared:

Tuesday morning, September 11^th, 2001, was one of those days that New Yorkers look forward to after a long, hot, humid summer. The sky was clear, the air was crisp, and it signaled the start of the fall season that always reenergized the city.

I took my usual commuter train into Grand Central Station and walked down to the always crowded Number 4 train that went to the downtown financial district where I worked. This day started to feel different as soon as I stood on the platform waiting for the Express train to come. I had ridden the subways for most of my life, but this day I felt very anxious and apprehensive about getting on the train. I remembered how – when I used to work at the World Trade Center – I had taken a different train that was – for some reason – always less crowded. I thought that – maybe – tomorrow, I would try that route again.

The anxiety that I felt did not lessen once I got on my downtown train. I decided to get off one stop early at Fulton Street since I didn’t have an early morning meeting that day, and could get to work a little late. I wanted to feel that cool, fall air again. Instead, when I climbed the stairs to street level, just a block from the World Trade Center, I knew the world around me had changed forever.

The North Tower had just been hit. People were running from the Trade Center, with frightened looks on their faces. Those around me on the street were already speculating that this was a terrorist attack. The plane had been so big. And falling, slowly from the sky were the day-to-day reminders of office life. Sheets of paper gently singed around the edges drifted down. Children’s drawings that proud parents had displayed in their cubilcles. The high heeled shoes that New York women kept under their desks so that they could wear comfortable flats on their commutes to and from the office. The air was full, as these quiet testimonials floated down from 100 stories high and were carried with the wind.

I walked towards an open space that, at lunchtime, typically was full of workers having a quick sandwich or playing a game of chess on cement tables. I saw the horrible gash in the side of Tower One, and the raging fire. Then my eyes focused in and I saw some things start to fall from the building. Then the gravity of the moment stuck as I realized what I was witnessing. People – many hand-in-hand –  taking that terrible plunge from the top floors, from the flames, to the ground. The journey down seemed to take forever. The couples would drift apart, perhaps – hopefully – as they lost consciousness before their bodies met the earth.

They were meeting a terrible fate, dying without the comfort of their families around them. Many unaware that their loved ones were even in danger. It had all happened so suddenly. I could only stand and bear witness. Follow their descent with my silent tears. Hold these strangers in my heart for those brief moments. Time stood still.

Then, everything changed again. Although I could see the South Tower, I didn’t hear the plane. I experienced an eerie silence. It felt like a vacuum. Like all of the air had been pulled away from the streets around me. Then bits of metal began to fall like heavy rain. I thought that there had been a secondary explosion in the North Tower. I knew I had to leave. I covered my head with my arms and kept my eyes down. I knew the streets well, and walked as quickly as possible, east, away from the Trade Center. After a few blocks I stopped and looked back. That is when I realized that the second tower had been hit.

I knew that I had to get off of Manhattan Island. I knew that someone else had a plan of destruction and that neither I, nor anyone around me, had any idea what would or could happen next. There were so many potential targets. I saw the traders from the Stock Exchange standing on the street. They feared they could be next.

The subways had all closed down, so most people were walking up to the Brooklyn Bridge to get off the island. That was my plan, but – at the last minute – I saw a car getting on the FDR Drive heading north. I knocked on the car window and the driver let me and a few others in. He and his co-worker had just escaped the Trade Center and wanted get home to NJ. As we pulled up onto the highway, we had a clear view. We stopped. We couldn’t comprehend what we were seeing. Had the tower fallen? Was it just debris blowing? No the tower had collapsed. We were stunned. How many people were still in the building? We didn’t want to move. We also knew we had to go.

All of the bridges and tunnels connected to Manhattan were closed to traffic, so we drove up to the northern suburbs where I lived. Where one bridge was still open. I said I would get off the highway at an exit near my house. They should get back and reassure their families. Cell phones were not working, that day, for anyone. A kind stranger saw me by the side of the road, stopped, and gave me a ride home.

One of my co-workers left Manhattan, that day, by taking a commuter ferry back to south Jersey. He told me that the ferry operators, who had many regular clients that worked in the Trade Center, were keeping a list. They knew exactly who had come to take the return ride that day, and who had not yet been seen.

Another worker got a ride on a tourist boat back to north Jersey, and was taking a long walk home when a teacher at an elementary school invited him to come in, rest, and have a glass of water. He asked about the children still in the classroom. The teacher said that their parents worked in the Trade Center and they would stay there with the children for as long as it took…

A few days later I went back to Manhattan to reconnect with friends. The streets were empty. We walked down to Union Square Park, and saw hundreds of homemade posters. Wedding pictures, family snapshots – all saying: “Missing. Have you seen this person? Worked in Tower One. Worked in Tower Two.” The posters were now memorials with small candles in front. The park was crowded, but quiet. A silent wake.

The next Monday, we all returned to work. I took a bouquet of flowers to place near Ground Zero. It was a small gesture for such a monumental tragedy, but it was all I knew how to do. The streets were crowded with press from around the world and – now – I was the one who had people approaching me with a microphone and a camera: “Did you know someone who died?” “Do you think the markets will rebound?” FEMA was there, the Secret Service, I saw a soldier with an automatic weapon.

A few months earlier I had been in Jerusalem and was shocked to see solders in the street with machine guns. It seemed very unsettling at the time. Now, I felt secure at the sight. I felt more protected.

When I got to my office, we spent most of the day answering the phone, taking calls from customers and suppliers around the world who wanted to know if we were OK. I called my usual Japanese take-out restaurant to order lunch… to see if they were there. The woman who answered the phone knew me. I was Catherine at 80 Broad Street. I recognized her voice. We had never talked beyond me giving my order and her telling me the total for my bill that day. Today was different. We asked how the other was doing, how we had managed that day. Was everyone OK?

That afternoon I walked over to the local firehouse on Water Street. I knew that they had been hard hit and wanted to offer my condolences. There were just a few firemen there and many more framed and draped pictures of their fallen brethren. I felt not just the sadness but the overwhelming agony of those surviving firefighters. They were not just mourning their loss, but they were back on duty. Ready to answer the call again if needed.

On September 11^th, 2004, I left New York. I wanted to move away from the steel and glass and concrete, and go to a place where I could experience the raw earth and open skies. I wanted to remember, but I also wanted to heal. I was about to take the entrance ramp to the George Washington Bridge, when I heard the announcement on the radio for the first moment of silence… when the North Tower was hit. I pulled off the road. I could see all of the way down the west side of Manhattan to the empty space where the Towers had been. I stayed until after the second moment of silence, then started my four-day journey west to my new home in Nuevo Mexico.

Thank you for bearing witness with me – this year – the tenth anniversary of September 11^th.

 

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