9/11 for me really starts the Sunday night of 9/9/01. My wife and I were headed home from the Jersey shore that night after visiting my grandmother for a few days. As we approached the Lincoln Tunnel – the one closest to midtown – I remarked that I’d never noticed how far it really seemed from The World Trade Center to The Empire State Building. I also remarked how everything else just seemed to get dwarfed in between the two sets of structures.
But, I truly do remember the morning of 9/11 like it was yesterday. It really does seem that way…
At the time, I was working at CBS News and had worked my usual 4p – Midnight shift on 9/10. I took a cab home that night and was home by around 12:45. As is still the case, I stayed up quite late listening to music. Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” always reminds me of that night. There was also a very hard rain that fell that night. It serenaded me to sleep by around 430am.
We were awoken by a phone call only about 5 hours later. It was my mother-in-law asking – and I remember what she said so clearly – if “we’d seen what was going on around us?” We sprang from the bed…and turned on the TV set and picked up the phone mid-message.
We got one other call from our friend Anthony in Chicago before the lines went haywire. He is a building specialist and architect. I was on the phone with him when the second tower started to collapse. All I know is that as it did, I could not help but laugh at how it was happening. It seemed comical, but my laugh was the sort of nervous laughter – knowing that as each storey pancaked one on top of another – many, many lives were ending.
About 30 minutes before the first tower fell, I called into work to find out if they needed me to come in. The guy I was working for at the time told me to stay home. By the time the second tower fell, I was practically on my way to walking to the Broadcast Center. I made it in around 2pm – after making sure everything was OK with any possible loved ones we may have had downtown. My wife has a cousin who is a firefighter in the Bronx. If there was any bright side here it was that his house was held back from going down to Ground Zero as their house is in a particularly bad part of the Bronx.
On 9/11, I worked an 18 hour shift. I don’t think I stopped for a break. Such is breaking news… I remember how often we showed the footage of the planes hitting…and the towers falling. I really am numb to seeing that footage still today. It means almost nothing to me…
When I went to leave that following morning, I was exhausted and I knew I was going to be off until 4pm on 9/13. I went home and slept for about 10 hours.
That evening, we got word that one of my cousin’s had recently been relocated to one of the Towers. However, she’d been late to work that morning by about 5-10 minutes. If ever we were grateful for the slow lurch of New York City traffic, it was then. We spoke to Debbie that night…and while she sounded good and happy to be home and safe and sound, I could tell she was shaken. She should have been in that tower – and she lost many friends.
As I headed into work on 9/13, I made my way to the 86th Street Subway Station to pick up the 4/5/6 trains. The trains had resumed most of their load by then – going as far South as 14th Street initially.
I have said this before and it will always bear repeating when I talk about 9/11. I was struck by the instant humanity that erupted or rippled from that rubble. As I came upon the entry way to the 86th Street station, there was a young mother pushing her stroller that she was about to pick up to carry down the stairs. Inside of 3 seconds, she had 5 willing guys to help her with this. It was the first ripple of kindness I’d seen…
On the TV and radio, the media were making pleas for supplies, clothing, boots, water, food – you name it. I had called on 9/12 to volunteer and got the call on 9/13 to come down on 9/14. My last pair of Doc Martens were donated to the cause as well as a few canned goods we had in the kitchen. I worked about 5 hours at the Red Cross loading trucks and packing lunches before I headed into work.
The next ripple of kindness amazed me… After my 4p-12a shift on 9/14, I was in no mood to deal with the subway and I hopped in a cab. They were always parked in front of the CBS Broadcast Center knowing that someone would be going or coming from there 24/7. As we made our way across town on 57th Street, I saw the cabbie – who was either Pakistani or Afghani – had an old-fashioned CB Radio. By now, it had been fairly firmly established that some form of Middle Eastern group – Al Qaeda had been put out there, but nothing was definitive yet – had been responsible for this attack. The cabbie said to me, ‘We’re using them to coordinate trips to the various hospitals and ERs in the city. We know where the families are…and we’re trying to take them to their loved ones.’
I started to get choked up as he was telling me this. Here he is presumed to be part of the ‘enemy’ doing his part to help families and effected loved ones as best he could by carting families around for free. He tried to give me a free ride that I obviously did not take.
Over the coming weeks, there were more and other of these ripples. 9/11 is a lot of the reason I make the time that I do for people. To me, my time is worth it.
To me, this is all about understanding. The better job we do of understanding where one another is coming from, the less the likelihood of harming one another.
It’s the Golden Rule – inverted.
It’s been 8 years as of when I am writing this. I don’t think about 9/11 anymore the way I used to. I’ve been able to move on…and I know those who’ve been affected have been able to do so too. My hope is that we use these sorts of tragedies as learning experiences. I know I have. I was very fortunate not to have lost anyone that day…but I know we all lost something.