story6622.xml

story6622.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

I was a junior at Providence College but my home is Brentwood, Long Island. My first class on Tuesdays was Histology at 9:30. Since it was only the second week of school, I was still getting up early and watching the news before class. On the morning of the 11th, I had gotten distracted by a news story online - U2 had announced that tickets for their fall US tour were going on sale that Saturday. I was searching the internet, trying to find out what time the tickets were going on sale when my brother imed me with simply "Did you hear?" My brother being a U2 fan also, I thought he was maybe referring to that. Then he imed me "Two planes just hit the twin towers." I ran into my living room, put on the tv and just stared in utter and complete shock. I tried calling home but all the lines to NY were busy. It wasn't until close to noon that I was able to get through (a cousin came online and I had him call my dad and had my dad call me in RI). My dad used to work across the street from the towers, I grew up going to the 60th floor of 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza and getting a sense that I could almost touch the buildings. He said to me, "Tara, I have two pieces of bad news for you. Mark Rosen is missing and so is Danny's dad." Mark worked for Sandler O'Neil on the 104th floor of the south tower. 65 other employees of Sandler O'Neil died that September morning. Danny's father is a NYC firefighter who was never actually missing, just couldn't get in touch with home after the towers collapsed. The next few days were just so hard. I brought my cell phone to every class, had it right out on my desk, waiting for the miracle phone call that Mark was found. The call never came. I was a eucharistic minister at Mark Rosen's memorial service at home on Long Island on September 28th. His wife Patti spoke, his daughter Amanda read a poem. It was beautiful. One year later, is it really one year later? The pain is so strong, but I didn't cry yesterday. I had cried so much this past year, there didn't seem to be any tears left for me. There's a beautiful quote from President Bush that he said on the 3 month anniversary of the attacks: "For those of us who lived through these events, the only marker we'll ever need is the tick of a clock on the 46th minute on the 8th hour of the 11th day. We'll remember where we were and how we felt. We'll remember the dead and what we owe them. We'll remember what we lost and what we found." To the 2,801 victims of the Twin Towers, the 40 victims of Flight 93, and the over 180 victims at the Pentagon, your candle has burnt out long before your legend ever will. I love and miss you Mark Rosen!