September 11 Digital Archive

story9405.xml

Title

story9405.xml

Source

born-digital

Media Type

story

Created by Author

yes

Described by Author

no

Date Entered

2003-08-05

911DA Story: Story

September 11, 2001
By Richard Widows

In the spring and summer of 2001, my employer, Thomson Financial, had moved many of its New York City employees from Midtown in Manhattan to its new world headquarters at 195 Broadway, across the street from the World Trade Center (WTC). The group I was with, the Wiesenberger unit, moved in late March of 2001.

I commuted to work by walking to the train station in Westfield, NJ and taking the Raritan train line to Newark, NJ. There I boarded a PATH train to the WTC. From the WTC it was a walk of just a couple of minutes to our building.

Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, turned out to be busier than expected for me. Normally I exercised at noon. But in the morning, some mid-day conference calls were scheduled that prevented me from exercising. But it was a nice day and I wanted to at least get outside for a few minutes, so I walked over to the plaza by the World Trace Center towers. In the summer they set up a large stage and had concerts and other entertainment during the days at the plaza. It was a nice, warm day and I decided to listen to the music and smoke my once-a-year cigar. It was a peaceful, relaxing few minutes by the WTC towers.

At the time, I considered exercising twice the next day (Sept. 11)?once early in the morning and again at noon? to make up for the missed day. And if it turned out to be a busy day that would prevent me for a noon workout, at least I would get one exercise session in the morning.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I arrived at the Westfield station a few minutes before 6:00 a.m. That was my usual time to catch a train that departed a few minutes past 6:00. The train arrived on time, but at its next stop, Garwood, NJ, it stalled. After 10 or 15 minutes of waiting, the crew announced that they were unable to re-start it and we would have to catch another train. Everyone filed out and walked to the track on the other side. We waited for about 20 minutes for the next train. Everyone was in decent spirits except one lady who was vocal about her annoyance over the delay. I had been working at home once or twice a week and thought about walking home and working there rather than waiting for another train. But the nature of the work I had that day was better accomplished at my office, so I decided to wait.

Sept. 11 was a Tuesday. It had been unusually warm over the previous weekend but had cooled down Monday night. So Sept. 11 was the first day since spring that I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt to work. But it wasn?t so cool that I needed a jacket. It was a perfectly clear, calm day.

I was a bit annoyed that it was slightly after 8:00 a.m. when I arrived in my office?roughly an hour later than my usual arrival time. Because I was so much later than usual, I didn?t consider a morning session at the fitness center to make up for the loss of my noon workout the previous day.

I got some coffee and sent at least one email to a colleague in Rockville, MD, the headquarters of my Thomson Financial unit.

Our building is across Church Street from the WTC. It is an old AT&T headquarters, probably built in the 1950s. In the best tradition of the old AT&T--in the 1950s the largest corporation in the world--there are many marble columns and impressive brass fittings in the building. Also, in the best AT&T tradition, it is probably as solid a building as is likely to exist. It is about 25 stories tall and is separated from the WTC by the relatively new Hilton Millennium Hotel. The hotel is very oddly shaped, a block wide, about 40 stories high but only 60 to 80 feet deep. It looks almost like a long, thin book balanced on its bottom edge.

I had an interior office about 20 feet from the exterior windows and facing generally away from the WTC. It was on the sixth floor.

I was in my office at 8:45 a.m. when the first explosion happened. It was a short, very loud bang and the building shook. I heard some screams and shouts from the street. My first guess was that two trucks had collided head-on with an explosion or perhaps a crane or a section of a building under construction had crashed to the ground. I also thought it could have been an underground gas explosion or a collision in the subway system. In New York City, some buildings shake when subway trains pass under them, so the shaking didn?t overly alarm me. I walked over to the window and saw people running down the street away from the WTC. Others our area of the office looked on, but no one seemed overly alarmed. I couldn?t see the WTC from my office and I didn?t see any debris coming down.

I phoned my wife Jackie to tell her something had happened but that I was OK. The line was busy. I tried again and it was still busy. I tried a third time and this time there was no answer. I left a message on the answering machine that something had happened but that I was OK. So I tried her work number, although I didn?t expect anyone to be in. But there was and I left a message to tell her when she got in that I was OK.

Then I called Ramy Shaalan (born in Egypt) in our unit?s headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, to let them know that the three Wiesenberger people who were at the NYC office were OK. He wasn?t in. Then I tried Ray Amani (born in Iran) and he wasn?t in.

I walked over to get another cup of coffee and some people around the office were talking about an airplane hitting the WTC. I figured that the explosion was probably caused by a small plane bouncing off one of the towers and then exploding when it hit the ground. On the way back, someone walked in and said it was a big plane, like a Boeing 747 (the biggest passenger airplane at the time). I figured the person was exaggerating. As I walked over to my office, another person walked in and said it was some sort of large, commercial plane and the collision was bad. He said he saw debris flying out of the WTC tower when it hit. I looked out the window again and saw a long line of fire engines and other emergency vehicles approaching. I still didn?t realize how bad it was, but I figured that I would wait for things to settle and then later go outside and take a look.

I again tried others in out Maryland headquarters and no one answered. So I phoned Bill Chambers, the president, and told him the three Wiesenberger people at 195 Broadway who were in at that time were all OK. He said, ?OK in what way?? I said there was an explosion in the WTC area, possibly involving an airplane. ?You will probably hear something about it on the news,? I said, in what was probably the understatement of the century. Then I said I wanted to call my wife and Bill thanked me for the message. I learned later that when I called, he was in a meeting with two marketing people. When he put down the phone after talking with me, he said: ?Holy shit! An airplane has hit the WTC.?

As soon as I put down the phone from talking with Bill, it immediately rang. It was Jackie. She said she was out walking the dog when I called the third time and when she came in the WTC was on TV. There were holes in it from the collision and it was burning badly. I assured her I was OK and would be very careful when going out to look. She discouraged me from going anywhere but straight home. It turned out that soon afterwards she got calls from friends and family members asking about me.

In July I joined a fitness center at the top floor of the Marriott WTC hotel. It was located right between the two WTC towers. As I mentioned above, I usually I exercised at noon. But on the weekend before the attack I had been talking about sometimes exercising early in the morning, before coming into work. Jackie was worried that Sept. 11 was the day I might have chosen for a morning workout (which I almost did because I missed exercising the previous day). If I had, I probably would have been showering or just walking out between the towers when the first plane hit. Actually, it was a distinct possibility. But it was to be a busy day and I wanted to accomplish a lot early, in case distractions would interrupt my work later on. Also, with the train delay, I would not have done it (but what if the train had not broken down?). Jackie remembered my remark about exercising early and wanted to make sure that I had chosen the morning of 9/11 (she apparently had not yet read my voice message).

I decided to go to the men?s room and then possibly to go outside and look at the damage. The men?s room is on the side of our building closest to the WTC South Tower, which was the second to be hit. I was approaching the area when the second explosion occurred. I was perhaps 20 feet from the windows closest to the South Tower. It seemed like a much stronger explosion, possibly because I was much closer (about 200 yards away). The building seemed to shake even harder. Almost immediately, debris was falling like a severe winter blizzard?not straight down but at 45-plus degree angle?except that it was big pieces anywhere from a foot to a yard or more in size. There was so much debris coming down that you couldn?t see very far. It was 9:03, 18 minutes after the first explosion.

The men?s room could wait, I decided. It was time to get out of the area. Maybe we were being bombed and more explosions were forthcoming, I thought. I reversed and started back toward my office. I looked at the elevators but decided it was better to take the stairs. I thought briefly about going back to my office to pick up some work. But I saw others heading toward the stairs and decided it was time to get out. So I didn?t bother to go back to my office to get anything.

We filed hastily down the stairs to the Thomson Financial reception area on the fourth floor, where the stairs ended. Some people were wandering around to various parts of the large reception area shouting about not knowing how to get out. Unfortunately, we had not yet had any fire drills since moving into the building. Finally, the receptionist led us to another set of stairs that led down the four stories to the lobby. Some of the people were beginning to panic.

When I got to the lobby, I didn?t pay attention to what the others were doing, I had already planned what I would do. I headed diagonally across to the exit closest to Fulton Street. That exit was farthest from the South Tower and, in my opinion, was the exit route bested shielded by the Millennium Hotel.

Normally I am rather reckless by nature and would be inclined to spend some time looking around. But after talking to Jackie and seeing the debris flying down, I figured it was best to do things the way she would. So I didn?t attempt to look at the WTC. I walked briskly east on Fulton Street, keeping close to buildings so that I could hopefully find shelter if more debris started coming down. There were big pieces of plate glass on Fulton Street as far away as four blocks from the WTC. But there aren?t buildings with plate glass that size, so I figured they were from the WTC towers. As I walked down Fulton Street, most of the merchants were already in the process of closing their stores.

I was probably at least a quarter mile away before I decided to look at the WTC. As Jackie had said, there were holes in the buildings. The fires were burning on all sides and black smoke was rising everywhere. The flames were big and red and very menacing. I figured that it was virtually impossible that anyone above the points of impact would survive. Even if people got to the roofs, the smoke was so heavy that I couldn?t imagine helicopters being able to get close enough to land or even to drop lifelines to the roofs.

It looked to me as if pieces of the metallic outer-structure of the buildings were melting and bending downward from the heat. Also, I think of fire as normally burning upward. The South Tower?s fire seemed to be visibly moving downward. It was probably the intense heat from the blazing jet fuel plus the flaming fuel itself running downward in the building.

Years before I did some volunteer work that resulted in me spending some time talking with a senior firefighter. Among other things, he told me that virtually any human being, when confronted by fire, will jump from a building rather than burn. News stories I have read and documentaries I have seen on TV seem to confirm this. I saw dark objects falling from the towers that I hoped were not people?but probably were. The dark objects were moving outward before falling, so they were almost certainly people jumping. They was just above the fire line, so it is a fairly certain assumption that they were people jumping from a thousand feet up rather than burning to death. There were more of them than I cared to think about. But I didn?t want to see people jumping from the towers, so I did not spend more than a few moments looking at the buildings from a close distance.

If there were more explosions to come, I didn?t want to be around any tall buildings, so I headed east on Fulton Street. I figured that it was best to get back to New Jersey as fast as possible. But I still needed to go to the men?s room. I figured my best bet was to take Fulton to the East River and use the men?s room at the Fulton Fish Market shopping area. Along Fulton, people seemed stunned. Many along Fulton Street?young and old?were weeping.

Words cannot describe the feeling of standing a few hundred yards away from those two giant towers burning, knowing that thousands of people are not far away, were dead or doomed to die. What I remember thinking is: This really isn?t happening. It?s like a movie. These two huge buildings aren?t both on fire, with holes in them. These thousands of people not far away aren?t really dead or doomed to die.

I knew that there were going to be horribly tragic stories about doomed people calling relatives on their cell phones. I think that was what I least looked forward to. And later it proved to be true.

Along Fulton some people were talking about taking the subway to get away from the area. But I heard some say that the stations were closed. I didn?t like the idea of taking the subway, as I felt that cave-ins and gas attacks were a possibility. I didn?t like the idea of being stuck somewhere in a dark tunnel.

When I got to the Fulton shopping complex, I checked the building directory and saw that the rest rooms were on the second level. When I got there, I saw the men?s room sign, but there was a line of 20 or 30 people. I started toward what I thought was the end of the line, but three women seated on a bench told me they were the end and I would have to line up behind them. Then, somehow, one of the women on the bench came to the conclusion that I wanted to use the men?s room. She said the line was for use of pay phones and that I could go directly into the men?s room, which I did.

I wasn?t aware of a bad smell from the burning buildings until I left the Fulton shopping area.

My plan was to walk to mid-town Manhattan, probably around four or five miles by foot. So from the Fulton Market area, I just started walking north. Many, many police cars passed me headed toward the WTC. I thought how brave they were. My inclination was to give them a thumbs up, but I didn?t want to distract them and I also didn?t want anyone to misinterpret the gesture. Probably no more than 45 minutes after the first explosion I saw a medical emergency vehicle with a Long Island address on it headed toward the WTC. I would have thought that it would have taken at least an hour to get here from Long Island. They must have left as soon as they heard about the first explosion.

Police, medical emergency and fire truck traffic headed toward the WTC was heavy. I saw a medical vehicle with a woman driver make a U turn because traffic was blocking her truck. She drove half a block in the other direction and saw that she would be blocked in that direction also. So she made another U turn and returned to her original route. Later, my hope was that she got stuck in traffic long enough to survive the collapse of the towers.

While walking near one of the bridges (I?m not sure if it was the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge), I experienced one of the few discourteous acts that I saw that day. A steady stream of people were walking uptown and we were crossing with a traffic light indicating that it was OK to cross. A man in a fairly new Chrysler PT Cruiser (a car I like) insisted on going against a red light and pushing through the stream of people. He didn?t hit anyone hard enough to hurt them, but he determinedly pushed right through the pedestrians to get to the bridge.

At about the same place, I saw an extremely small fire truck headed toward the WTC. I though, what good will a truck that small do with those two huge towers burning? Days later I saw on TV a mangled, burned fire truck of about that same size being unburied from the debris. I hoped it wasn?t the same one I saw headed toward the WTC.

I started walking along the East River, but had to get to the West Side when I got to midtown. So I need to go mostly north, but also west. I don?t know that part of town, so I was going by dead reckoning. When I turned west and walked for a while, I noticed that I had inadvertently come a bit backwards and closer to the WTC. There was a lot of smoke and I mainly looked to see if the communication antenna at the top of the North Tower was still straight up. It looked to me as if it was. (It is possible that the South Tower had already collapsed by that time, as the smoke was so heavy that I couldn?t see much of the WTC area.) But I still didn?t want to see people jumping, so I focused on getting uptown and not spending time looking at the towers.

I saw the WTC area one or two more times as I crossed intersections. But I glanced only briefly and checked the communications tower. It seemed perhaps a little tilted, but I figured you should expect that with a bad fire. One thing that puzzled me was the absence of news helicopters hovering around the towers. I figured they would be as thick as flies around honey. Later, I learned that all aircraft had been grounded after the attack. However, I did see a military jet streak across the area.

I headed northwest through Chinatown and until then didn?t realize how big it was. It was also the day for primary elections and some voting places were open. Later, the elections were postponed for two weeks. I walked past a tavern and at 10:00 or so in the morning the bar was fairly full of people drinking and watching the news. My thinking was: I hope they don?t have to worry about getting off Manhattan. Alcohol was the last thing anyone needed at that time.

As I walked north, more and more people appeared walking in the same direction. I looked for a phone to call Jackie, but every pay phone had several people lined up to make calls. I wanted to focus on getting off Manhattan, so I kept walking. A good way to navigate in lower Manhattan is to orient yourself relative to the WTC towers. At some intersections I looked for them but didn?t see anything. I thought I should be within sight, but maybe I was too far away. The truth is that they had probably already collapsed.

From time to time I would pass vehicles, mostly vans, parked at the curb with the side doors open and the radios at high volume on news stations so that people passing by could get updates. Some stores that sold televisions had them on in the front windows with the volume turned high enough for people walking by to hear. Usually there would be 10 to 20 people listening. I heard rumors about the Sears Tower in Chicago being hit, as well as the U.S. capital and other targets. Some people said as many as eight planes had been hijacked and had been directed at various targets.

As I walked uptown, I worried that I had not shut down the computer in my office. I figured I would be back soon?possibly the next day--and that it wouldn?t do it any good to be on for that period of time. I even had a few misgivings about heading home. What if they put the fires out and the buildings in the area reopen and I don?t show up? I also had brought a nectarine with me that morning and I wondered if I had taken it out of my book bag. (I had not, and when I returned several weeks later the book bag was a mess.)

Also, Wiesenberger was scheduled to have a client conference in Baltimore in less than a week. There was to be a one-hour session on a software capability I managed. These sessions can be extremely dull, so to make mine interesting, I had planned for a lot of humor to be injected. As a walked uptown, I figured that after the fires in the WTC, the humor would have to be abandoned. It didn?t occur to me that the client conference would be called off, which is what happened.

It might sound silly that I really worried about things like a computer not shut down, a nectarine in a book bag and elimination of humor at a presentation, but those things were big on my mind as I walked uptown.

I was well past Chinatown headed uptown when I noticed a bus was headed toward Midtown. It stopped and I noticed that they were letting people on without tokens (which I didn?t have?nor did I know how much fare was normally required). I took it, and it turned out that New York City had started the free bus service to get people away from the WTC area. This was within an hour and a half of the first explosion?amazing responsiveness from the city to get people away from the area and to where they could get home.

I figured my best bets for getting to New Jersey were: 1) PATH subway trains from the 33rd Street station; 2) Jersey Transit trains from Penn Station on 34th Street; or 3) bus service from the Port Authority bus terminal on 42nd Street.

The driver announced that they would stop at 23rd St., 34th St., and then various other stops further uptown. I figured 34th was my best bet, as it would allow me to check the PATH station and then Penn Station. So I got off the bus at 34th, turned around and found myself staring right at the Empire State Building. With all the talk of eight planes being hijacked and rammed into buildings, I figured the Empire State was a potential target. So I walked to 29th Street and headed toward the West Side. It was probably around 11:00 and I passed a tiny church on 29th. I think it was Catholic. It had a sign out front asking passers-by to stop in and pray for peace. I wondered if the sign was placed there as a result of the attack.

Also on 29thn Street, I passed by a small restaurant that was just opening. It looked like it was Indian food, but the staff was speaking Spanish. They had on a TV tuned to a Spanish station that was showing the disaster. I phoned Jackie at work. (For some reason, I didn?t think she would wait at home to hear from me?and I was right.) The person who answered said it was good to hear from me. Jackie told me the towers had collapsed. I really didn?t believe her. Perhaps the top few stories dumped some materials onto the ground, but I couldn?t imagine both towers collapsing. I?m not sure when I became fully convinced that they had truly collapsed. My recollection is that I first saw one of the Trade Center towers collapse on the Spanish TV station as I left the small restaurant.

I walked to 29th & Broadway but decided not to try the PATH train. For one thing, the station is very close to the Empire State Building. Also, I didn?t like the fact that one line runs to the WTC and there could be damage or unhealthy fumes. The 33rd St. line also swings fairly close to the WTC. So I walked by the Penn Station, which is underground beneath Madison Square Garden. There were many people outside and I thought perhaps there was a convention in the Garden and they had evacuated it. But the people were probably waiting for trains, as it turned out Penn Station was closed.

So I walked to the 42nd St. bus terminal and that was also closed. I figured it could be a long time getting out of Manhattan, but I was alive, so it didn?t bother me too much. I still saw some election activity from time to time. I saw a truckload of campaign helpers going somewhere. I wished that I were on the truck and heading into New Jersey.

I walked down 8th Avenue, where there are fewer tall buildings than in other thoroughfares in the area, figuring I would stop at a police station and ask them my best bet for getting to New Jersey (I knew where a station was located). Also, I wanted to stay away from crowds and tall buildings. I found a pay phone next to a motel and called Geoff Frink at Wiesenberger in Maryland. I asked him to send email to some key people that I was OK and we talked about the disaster. Geoff is a very down-to-earth guy and I felt better after speaking with him. I?m not certain that he knew for certain that the towers had collapsed.

Then I phoned Jackie and she said trains had begun leaving Manhattan for New Jersey. I think by then I believed that the towers had actually collapsed. I visited the men?s room at the near-by motel and then walked past the bus station, which was still closed. Then I want to Penn Station and it was still closed. The crowd was larger in front of it. So I figured I would just wait until the trains started running. Somehow I got the idea that it wouldn?t be for a while, so I decided to get ready for a prolonged wait. My big hope was that the city had to leave the mid-town workers out when they quit in the late afternoon. But I was prepared mentally to take a couple of days to get home.

If I was going to wait a long time, I wanted something to read?anything. I had left work without returning to my office and all I had was my wallet, my Thomson ID card and keys. I would settle for any decent magazine or book. I just wanted something to read. It turned out that I had to walk about five blocks before I found a place that sold anything but newspapers. Finally I found a shop with magazines. I found two that weren?t either women?s magazines or porno men?s magazines?Time and GQ. I bought them both, figuring I might have a lot of time to read before leaving Manhattan. It was getting warm, I had walked a lot and my nerves were shot. I was becoming quite thirsty. I thought about buying a big bottle of water or cola, but decided against it. If I got into a three-hour line for a train, I didn?t want to have to leave the line after two and a half hours to go to the bathroom. So I thought I could live for a while slightly dehydrated.

I returned to Penn Station and sat down across the street from a person directing things with a bullhorn. I sat on a ledge next to a bank beneath a big window. If there was another explosion and the window collapsed, I would be in trouble. But I was worn out and decided to take that chance.

After sitting there for at least half an hour, I saw a large number of people heading toward the side of Penn Station. I hesitated for a minute and then decided to follow them. Several hundred converged by a set of doors. I asked if these were for trains to New Jersey and they said yes. We waited about 20 to 30 minutes before the doors opened. Most of the people were courteous, but one couple seemed to be taking great delight in sneaking closer to the door. They seemed foreign, with the woman far less then five feet tall and the man not much over five feet. Also, some guys in their 20s were behind me and were discussing how if you wanted to perform a terrorist attack, ramming airplanes into the WTC was a great idea. I heard another military jet but couldn?t see it.

When doors finally opened, we filed in a reasonably orderly fashion into the station. Transit officials did a good job of directing us in the right general direction to get to the trains. But there were no signs as to which track to take to get to a Newark train. Along with many others, I made a wrong turn toward a train headed for somewhere else. Finally, I had a feeling I was going in the right direction and amazingly got onto the first train headed for Newark.

I found a seat at the end of car, where two double seats face each other. There as an African-American gentlemen, probably in his 60s, in a suit seated in one of the seats. I sat caddy-corner from him, which is how people normally fill the end seats?two people caddy-corner and two empty seats. But there was a lot of people and an African-American man probably in his 40s sat next to the man in the suit. Then a huge (probably well over 300 pounds) African-American woman crowded into the seat next to me. All of us conversed except for the man in the suit, who seemed extremely sad. It turned out the woman worked about a dozen blocks north of the WTC and had a clear view of the attack. She actually saw the second plane ram the South Tower. It turned out that she was originally from Greensboro, NC, where my daughter Alena lived at the time. She knew about Guilford College, which Alena attended. The other man was somewhat difficult to understand. My conclusion was that he was headed for the WTC when it was attacked and his PATH train got diverted to mid-town. He made a remark that also qualified for understatement of the century: ?One plane ramming the WTC could be an accident, but two planes hitting the towers so close together was probably a deliberate act.?

I think it helped me to converse with people on the trip. The conductors didn?t collect tickets (more good reacting by transportation authorities in the area) and everyone on the train broke into applause when we emerged from the tunnel in New Jersey. I couldn?t believe I was really on my way home until I actually got off the train in Newark station.

The train to Westfield was later than scheduled, but I think Jersey Transit was more interested in getting the most people home rather than keeping a schedule. After what happened to the WTC, I was just happy to be alive. It would take a lot to bother me. Things that seemed like major problems a day before suddenly didn?t seem all that important. That attitude of ?only the really big things matter? has persisted in me?possibly the only positive thing to come from the attack.

I got a seat on the train to Westfield and it happened that standing close to me was Ken Lipper, a son of Michael Lipper, who owned the mutual fund information firm at which I worked for eight years. Ken worked there for a year or two and then joined an insurance company. Ken and I talked about his father, his brothers, my family, our companies, his family, Westfield (where he also lives), but the conversation always diverted to the WTC disaster. It turns out Ken also walked to midtown, but went further west than the route I took. He walked by a hospital and volunteered to donate blood. He said they graciously thanked him but said there was a line one and a half times around the block of people volunteering blood, so they really couldn?t accept any more. So he told me he would try again to donate somewhere in the Westfield area.

From the train we could see downtown Manhattan. There was a lot of smoke there, but no twin WTC towers. I finally truly believed they had collapsed. Ken Lipper said he wasn?t going to watch the towers collapse on TV and I agreed that watching it wasn?t a good idea. But I knew that I would. Again, the train?s conductors didn?t collect tickets. The authorities were quick to focus on getting people home rather than worrying about collecting fares.

It was around 4:00 p.m. when I walked home from the station. I think I called Jackie to tell her I was home safely. As Jackie cautioned, I took off all my clothes and put them in the garage in case the terrorists had used chemical or biological agents in the attack. I drank about several quarts of fruit drink and became mesmerized by the TV. (My remark to Ken Lipper that it probably wasn?t a good idea to watch the buildings collapse on TV didn?t last long.) I don?t think the major stations covered anything but the WTC disaster for at least four or five days. I would watch for a while and suddenly it was late at night. Then I would watch the morning news and suddenly it it would be late afternoon.

When Jackie arrived home on 9/11, one of the first things she did was to look for a flag to put in the front window.

I don?t know when all the facts about the attacks finally came together. It seems like well into the evening of Sept. 11 and even into the next day, news programs seemed certain that the George Washington Bridge was threatened by explosives.

The president of the U.S. was in Florida when the attacks occurred. The vice president was sent into a secure location and the president was diverted west from Florida because there was news that his plane was targeted by terrorists. So New York mayor Rudy Guilliani turned out to be the major authority figure to reach the mass media after the attack. He not only did a great job of organizing things in the attack area, but also in communicating things when the federal government wasn?t yet mobilized to issue any statements. Guilliani had the presence of mind just hours after the attack to say that one thing was certain?it wasn?t done by New Yorkers, so people shouldn?t take revenge on anyone in New York who looked, spoke or dressed differently. Later, the president said essentially the same thing.

Guilliani later was named Time Magazine person of the year.

I should have phoned work the afternoon of Sept. 11, but I really wasn?t up to it. I definitely should have called the next morning, but still couldn?t bring myself to do it. Finally, the president of the company phoned me in the late morning to make sure I was OK.

For a long time, I couldn?t sleep well at all. I would force myself away from the TV coverage of the disaster around 10:00 p.m. and go to bed. Most nights I would lie awake until well past 1:00 a.m. and then awaken between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. and get out of bed as if a giant were grabbing me and pulling me up.

For years I had commuted to the PATH (the subway between NJ and NYC) station in the WTC and had walked through the complex to get to work. And for a year and a half I had an office in the south tower of the WTC. So the area was an important part of my life, which added to my depression.

Newspapers ran pages of profiles of people who had died, including photos. I had one dream where I turned to these pages and the people in the pictures began moving and talking about their experiences. They didn?t shout or scream or weep, just conversed in a normal voice about their experiences that ended in death during the attack.

I had another dream where someone in New York City was telling me about a big backgammon game that I ought to see. I wasn?t interested, but followed the person anyway. He always lead me to the WTC. The lower portions of the towers looked somewhat like backgammon boards. It happened again and again. In another dream, I was wandering down corridors trying different directions at intersections, but the corridor I would choose would have flames at the end. Even at Halloween, more than a month and a half after the attack, I would dream about pumpkins that would suddenly burst into flames. I had dreams about the attack for many months. Many were extremely complex, abstract dreams.

It took me a while to get back into a working mode. I had committed to writing an article for an e-newsletter. The day after the attack I decided to make some notes for the article. I did the same the next day. At the end of the day (Thursday), I reviewed my work and noted that I had written all of three lines of notes. My recollection is that finally, on Friday, I used my insomnia to my benefit and wrote the article from about 4:00 a.m. until well into the evening.

The feelings that constantly bothered me were fear and guilt. Whatever I might be doing at a given moment, I felt guilty that I should be doing something else. Even when I was working hard (which was when I felt most at ease), I felt guilty that I should be doing some other work. I also became paranoid to the point where I bought a tape recorder to record conversations I had relating to work. The paranoia regarding work was compounded by the fact that the company announced a major reorganization the week after the attack. The economy had been weakening and most economists predicted?correctly?that the attack would push the U.S. into a recession. I was in my late 50s and getting a new job at that age was next to impossible because of age discrimination.

Regarding my worries from the day of the attack, I learned that all power had gone out in the WTC area, so not shutting off my computer wasn?t a problem. The client conference was cancelled, so I didn?t have to worry about the comedy I had written into my presentation. But I did wonder a lot about whether I had removed the nectarine from my book bag?and what the bag would be like if I hadn?t. The thought turned from a mild worry to a matter to be laughed at.

Because our location was in the official disaster area, it was closed down and I ended up working at home for close to two months. When I finally returned to the building, I discovered that my fears about the nectarine in the book bag were real. The nectarine had rotted, but I felt that throwing the bag away would be a victory for the terrorists, so I spent a lot of time cleaning out the bag.

After two or three weeks at home, getting almost no sleep, I called a counseling service provided by my employer. They suggested I see a doctor to get prescriptions for anxiety, depression and insomnia drugs, which I did. It was great to finally be able to sleep, but Jackie said that the one of the drugs was causing me to have violent convulsions while asleep. I had no idea I shaking while sleeping, but Jackie said it was so bad that the bed would bounce around. I mentioned it to the doctor and he didn?t seem bothered. It was a side effect of one of the drugs.

I wasn?t alone in needing medication. Ads for anti-depression drugs started to appear regularly on TV within weeks of the attacks. I don?t recall seeing them before then.

I don?t recall if it was before or after I started the medication, but I think my low point was one evening in September when it was still daylight until after 7:00 p.m. In the late afternoon, I said to Jackie: ?It?s six o?clock. Is it OK for me to put my pajamas on?? She impressed on me the importance of getting onto a regular schedule and I think that was the point where I started to make progress against the depression. It was slow and very difficult progress and sometimes I felt like just quitting everything I was doing, but to me, that was the low point. Sometimes the only thought that kept me going was that to quit would be a victory for the terrorists. I wasn?t alone in that feeling. Some time after the attack I saw a cartoon of a young boy telling his teacher that if she gave him a bad grade that it would be a victory for the terrorists.

Since the WTC was destroyed, my commute became much more difficult. Thomson Financial provided van service from the PATH stations a mile or so north of the WTC to our building. But the vans frequently got snarled in traffic and I switched to walking.

My first day back at work, I got off the subway near city hall, which is four or five blocks from the WTC. There was still slippery ash on the streets in the area. There were around seven buildings in the WTC complex. The two towers and one other building collapsed on 9/11. But all the buildings were ruined and eventually torn down. The sight was unbelievable. The remaining buildings were essentially burned except for their metal frames. Huge steel girders were twisted by the heat and stress until they looked like they were made out of wet clay. It was devastation like a bombed-out city. The dust that was raised by the debris being carried away was foul to breathe. Even though the Environmental Protection Agency said it was safe, the chemicals in the dust gave many people respiratory problems. I was catching a cold every two weeks or so.

There were wooden barriers along many of the streets in the WTC area. A place called the Dakota Bar used them to post countless notices to demolition and debris removal workers that it was the closest place to the disaster site to have a beer?and that its hours of operation were long. The Dakota had a sign over it, ?We speak local dialects,? and then listed the names of ?local? unions whose members patronized the establishment.

Eventually they had the biggest cranes I have ever seen working on removing the debris. The cranes must have been 20 stories tall. Because the WTC went deep into the earth, there were fires burning underground and firefighters with hoses pouring water on the deep fires for three months after the disaster.

A building adjacent to the WTC that was damaged but survived had the biggest flag I have ever seen hanging against its wall that faced the WTC area. It must have been seven or eight stories tall. It was inspiring to approach the area and see that flag draped tall over the wreckage.

Demolition and debris removal went 24 hours a day. There were also huge, extremely bright lights on towering stands illuminating the entire disaster area. It was eerie walking in near darkness and then approaching this large area that was brightly lit but hazy from all the dust brought up from the debris removal, but containing only wreckage and huge cranes.

In the mornings, I would walk from a PATH station in Greenwich Village to work. Real flags and images of flags were everywhere. Most had words such as ?United We Stand,? ?God Bless America? or ?In God We Trust? under them. Most cars had flags on them and many had more than one. They flew flags from antennas and had more on windows. Many had large flag decals on their fenders and doors. Most freeway overpasses had flags overlooking the roads, along with ?United We Stand? slogans. In the weeks that followed 9/11, flags and patriotic messages appeared on grocery bags, pizza boxes, restaurant napkins on the sides of subway cars. A great many homes went with red, white and blue lights to decorate their homes for the holidays.

Next to the Thomson building was St. Paul?s Chapel. It is a very old church across the street from the WTC, yet it survived with no damage. On 9/11 and the weeks that followed, it served as the aid and rest station for rescue workers. In the days that followed the attack, many of NYC?s finest and most expensive restaurants competed with each other to send food to St. Paul?s for the rescue workers. The WTC became known as ?ground zero? and St. Paul?s became known as ?ground hero.? The fence around the chapel became full of posters signed by people from around the world supporting the memory of the attack and the victims. On the ground were many small memorials to individuals, complete with flowers, pictures and mementos. Walking by was uplifting and extremely sad at the same time.

Also, in the best New York City tradition, the walk from the PATH station to work was always accommodating to pedestrians. Temporary pipes and huge electrical cables were needed to keep downtown NYC working. But there were always ramps and wooden walkways for pedestrians. New York is a ?walking city? and the powers that be made sure people could still walk.

There was an electric utility relay station adjacent to the supermarket we frequently patronized. A week and a half after the attack we went grocery shopping and an additional temporary relay station was next to the permanent relay station. Large cables connected the two. It was gone in a couple of months, so we assumed it was somehow related to the challenge of getting electricity to downtown NYC.

When we started working in the WTC area again, I did my best to try not to add to the depressing atmosphere in the disaster area. I would smile and wish good morning to police and rescue workers. But on one of my first days back, while walking to work, two or three blocks from the WTC I saw a NYC fire fighter in full firefighting gear walking down the street with a sad, blank look on his face. Without a doubt he had lost many friends and perhaps family members among the 383 Fire Department of NY firefighters who died in the disaster. I couldn?t bring myself to say good morning to him. I think he wanted to be in his own sad world at that time.

Police officers and firefighters gained new status and appreciation. Some NYC actresses and female personalities started dating firefighters on a regular basis. On a popular network late-night comedy, the host, Jay Leno, was interviewing audience members. He asked one?s occupation and when the person said he was a policeman, the audience spontaneously broke into long, loud, happy applause.

Citation

“story9405.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 11, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/13819.