story10886.xml

story10886.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-09-10

I stood on the train platform at Metropark delighting in the sparkling air. This particular September morning was exceptionally clear with the fresh air that comes down from Canada in the fall. The weather was fine and I felt good. I was wearing my newly cleaned blue pinstriped suit, a white shirt and a brand new gold-yellowish tie. The tie made me feel special. It was a unique feeling that I always experienced whenever I wore something new.

The commute to the city was uneventful and I arrived at my office on the 19th floor at 55 Broad Street about 7:40 am and began my daily routine. I unlocked the overhead cabinet in my cubical, took out my laptop, plugged it in, turned it on and went for a cup of coffee. When I got back, I logged on and started checking my email.

It wasn?t long before I started conversation with one of the guys that worked in my office. We generally talked about sports and today wasn?t any different; the Mets winning streak, Clemens? chances for another Cy Young award.

About 8:45 I heard something like a muffled roar. It wasn?t quite like an explosion but then again it wasn?t like any of the usual sounds that you get accustomed to hearing in the city. There was a pause in our conversation. My co-worker heard the sound as well and I remarked that the noise was unusual and I couldn?t recall ever hearing something like it before. He said it was probably a truck and we continued our conversation.

It wasn?t long before one of the secretaries, sitting at a desk near a south-facing window, called for us to see all the confetti floating in the air outside. I went and looking outside and saw papers blowing all around the building. I tried to see where they were coming from and when I looked up as high as I could see there were papers floating above all the building around us. Just then my friend got a bulletin on his PC that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

My company occupied the entire floor of the building so it was possible to get a vantage point to see in all directions in lower Manhattan. We hurried to the opposite side of our floor and went onto an outside landing of a stairwell. From there, we were able to look north and see the south side of both the north and south towers of the WTC. Smoke was coming from the north tower but we couldn?t see the north side of the tower where the plane hit.

At this time no one knew what kind of plane it was and we all assumed it was a small private plane. I couldn?t imagine how such an incident could happen on an exceptionally clear day and I was skeptical that it was an accident. In any event it looked like it would be a tough fire to put out but I didn?t doubt that it could be done.

I went back to my desk and called wife to tell her what happened. She had heard the news and wanted to know if I was going to leave and come home. Based on the little information that I knew at the time, I figured that the worst that could happen would be a harder than usual evening rush hour but there shouldn?t be any problems getting home.

I went around to the Broad Street side of our floor, the west side of the building, to where my boss sits and told him about the plane. Even though the WTC was visible from his office, he wasn?t aware of what happened. We went to a corner office on the northwest side of the building when we could see both towers. The fire in the north tower appeared worst then when I originally saw it. While we watched, I caught the flickering image of another plane between the buildings to our west. It was turning and I clearly saw the underside of the plane as it banked a little and crashed into the south tower. I watched in amazement not believing what I just saw. Now I realized that the first crash wasn?t an accident, and neither was the second. The city was under attack and the plane crashes were acts of terrorism.

I hurried down the hall anxious to get to the phone and call my wife again when I realized what I just saw. The plane that hit the south tower might have been filled with people and there surely were hundreds of other people occupying the floors that it hit, and I just witnessed their deaths.

I got my wife on the phone and told her of the second plane. She wanted me to leave and get home as soon as I could. I told her I would call back when I was leaving. I figured the company would tell us we should leave but an official announcement never came. Everyone in the office including myself procrastinated about leaving and without knowing it at the time our hesitation was probably the best non-decision we could make.

A couple of the women that worked in my office arrived. They both were frightened, one was nearly hysterical. She wasn?t far from the WTC when the South tower was struck and as she took refuge in a doorway as she watched papers spotted with blood drifting to the ground.

I tried to call my wife again but by this time the call wouldn?t go through on my office phone, and I didn?t have a signal on my cell phone.

I turned on a small portable radio that I always carried in my brief case hoping to get some news. I couldn?t pick up any of the NY stations but I did get a station from New Jersey and began to hear about what was going on. A small group of my fellow workers congregated around my $10 radio that was now worth its weight in gold. The news reports that were at first vague began to get sharper. Several other planes were feared hijacked and a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. Then the city shut down, the tunnels and bridges were closed. No trainings were running. Now I couldn?t get home if I wanted to. I tried again to call my wife but I still couldn?t get through.

Even though the building?s ventilation system was turned off, our computer network was still running. I took a chance and sent an email to a friend who lives in my town of East Brunswick. I told him that the phones weren?t working and I couldn?t reach my wife. I asked him to call her office and tell her I was still in the office and okay. It worked, only a few minutes passed before he replied that he reached her and she was relieved to get the message.

I was still in the office listening to the radio when the first tower collapsed. I heard the moaning sound it made and by the time I got to a window the building was gone. A gray cloud of smoke came billowing past the New York Stock Exchange and down Broad Street. The cloud quickly rose from the ground until it reached our floor and completely engulfed the building. It was suddenly dark outside and I couldn?t see a thing. Now I knew for sure that I couldn?t leave.

An announcement came over the building PA that there were two doctors in the building if anybody needed medical help and that all tenants were directed to go to either a large conference area on the 4th floor or to the basement. All of the people in my office opted to go to the basement and reluctantly we took the elevator down to the lobby. Once there, I could see that the front doors were sealed shut with duck tape. Outside the street was dark but I saw a man walking by, almost dragging his brief case. He was completely gray, covered from head to toe in ashes. He reminded me of the ghost of Christmas Past.

From the lobby we walked down a flight of stairs to reach the basement which was crowded with people. The area we were led to was actually the office for one of the building?s other tenants. They had a game room where some people were actually playing air-hockey while a few other guys were re-filling empty water cooler bottles with water from the men?s room.

The company that occupied the space still had their network running so I used one of their PCs to email my friend again asking him to pass the word to my wife that I was still in the city, in the basement of my building and okay. It wasn't long after we got to the basement when the rumble of the North Tower's collapse vibrated through the floor. The rest of the morning was spent exchanging bits of news with people I never met before and just being anxious to know what was going on.

Finally, about noontime, we decided to go back up to the 19th floor. I immediately went to my phone and tried to call my wife again, but I couldn't get through. Surprisingly I had a message on the phone from the gas station were I had left my car the night before. The mechanic?s message was that I only needed a new battery and to call him back to approve the cost. I didn?t think I could get through to him, particularly because the station was only a half mile from my wife's office. But I called anyway and surprisingly he answered the phone. I told him to replace the battery and to call my wife, tell her I was okay and I would soon be leaving for home.

The air was clearing and portions of the East River were visible. Many boats were now circling the city, going around the harbor and up the East River. All the people in my office began discussing their plans on where they were going to go and who they were going with while someone cut up a bunch of promotional tee shirts to use as facemasks. I knew that I wouldn?t be coming back to the office for a while so I crammed my laptop into my brief case and grabbed a bottle of water. I took off my new tie and put it into my overhead cabinet. I was afraid that it might get ruined if I wore it outside.

The tunnels and bridges were still closed so I planned to go to the South Street seaport and try to get a ferry to the Atlantic Highlands. I didn?t know how I could get home from there but at least I wouldn?t be trapped in the city. When it came time to leave, I left with a co-worker who lives in Clifton. He heard from his daughter that ferryboats were running from Battery Park to New Jersey so I changed my plans and decided to go to Battery Park with him.

When we got to the lobby the security guards told us that we had to use the service entrance and once we left the building we would not be allowed to get back in. I covered my mouth with my wet handkerchief and we left the building exiting onto Beaver Street. Everything was coated with dust; papers and debris were everywhere.

Heading west we crossed Broad Street going toward Battery Park. The usual sounds of the city were gone, as if it was stunned into silence. It was amazingly quite, so much so that I could hear people talking from blocks away. When we reached Bowling Green I stopped and stood in the middle of the road at One Broadway and looked around. A breeze swirled the ashes around creating little dust devils that danced about. A Japanese photographer was hastily moving from place to place stopping for an instant here and there to snap a picture. I wish I had my camera to take some picture of my own that I could share with my family. I didn't need photos for my sake because the images that I saw on this day are forever burnt into my memory. I looked up the street toward the WTC and somewhere about Liberty Street there was a curtain of black smoke that stretched across Broadway toward Brooklyn cutting us off from the rest of Manhattan. It seemed like a scene from On the Beach

We crossed the intersection of Broadway and Battery Place went into Battery Park moving in the direction of Ft. Clinton. To the right of us a line of ambulances circled down West St. to Battery Place and up Greenwich. As they sat there with their siren silent I could hear the grinding of their roof lights as they spun red flashes into the dusty air. They were prepared for a rescue that never happened.

Walking up the promenade through the park I was kicking up the dust as I followed someone else's footprints in the ashes. For some strange reason, the quite and footprints reminded be of the serene walks after a new snow fall that I took in my youth.

Ahead of us there wasn?t any noticeable activity and I began to wonder it going in this direction was a mistake. But once we got around to harbor side of the fort it was like finding an oasis. Clear air was blowing in from New Jersey and an assortment of EMTs, police and non-uniformed people were actually glad to see us and I was glad to see them. They gave us bottled water and asked if we needed medical attention but best of all, there where boats there taking people to Jersey. A couple small boats were going up the Hudson to Weehawken and a tug prepared to go to Jersey City. With help from policeman I got on the tug still not knowing how I would get home there. I climbed up the front of the boat to the highest place I could until I reached a spot in front of the wheel house. The tug backed away from the bulkhead, turned and headed away from the city. As we plowed our way across the harbor everybody had their eyes glued to the smoke that was coming up from where the WTC once stood some still shaking their heads in disbelief.

We pulled up to a pier at Jersey City. The crew got a rope around a piling and the captain revved the engines and turned the rudder in such a way as to keep the tug against the dock, the same technique they use with the boats in Disneyworld. It took a while to get off the tug, there must have been 100 people or more on board. When I finally got onto the dock I did the same thing that everybody who went before me did. I stopped to look back across the river almost hoping that when I looked this time the towers would be there, but they weren?t. A policeman beckoned me to move along and get off the pier. There where more rescue workers at the foot of the pier passing out water and one of the people there told me that phones were available in the lobby of one of the office buildings for our use. I was also given instructions on where to go to get buses that were running from Columbus Place to Penn Station in Newark and Weehawken. It was about 1:30 pm and I hoping to stop at Flamingo?s or the Iron Monkey to get a bite to eat or more importantly a drink, but all the businesses in Exchange Place were closed.

It was only a four or five block walk past another string of queued up ambulances to were the busses where stopping. While I waited for the bus I met a couple of guys and we spent the time exchanging stories on the day?s events. One guy had an office at the American Stock Exchange that had the windows blown in. The other told me he was outside watching the fire in the north tower when the south tower was hit. He saw what he believed to be one of the planes engines crash through a walkway above a group of fireman. He didn?t think they could have survived.

It was about 45 minutes before a bus arrived and we headed off to Newark on the Bayonne extension of the Turnpike. The road was closed to all but emergency traffic and indeed the only other vehicle I saw was a police car going toward the city. The bus went up the Turnpike, exited onto Route 280, and took us into Newark.

When we got to the train station the bus pulled up at an entrance that was closed off with police tape. The driver told us that the door was generally open and he didn?t know why it was closed. We exited the bus anyway and as we did a railroad employee asked us if we were from the city, when we said we were he told us we had to go around the side of the station. Following his directions we were led to an area where EMT personnel gave us triage tags and put us in a line to be washed down with water from a garden hose. I asked if I had to do that and when informed it was optional I skipped the water and headed into the station.

The next train south was scheduled to leave in 5 minutes so I quickly found the right platform and got on the train. Newark was the terminus for trains scheduled to go to NYC and consequently the starting point for trains going south. The train was jammed with people and there were barely a few places left to stand. Being packed-in on the train wasn?t unusual but nobody was complaining and that was unusual, in fact it was strangely silence. A few EMTs managed to squeeze onto the train asking if anyone was hurt or needed medical help. I guess they were looking for people who might be in shock. Just before the train started to move, I asked a woman standing next to me how she was. In a quivering voice she said she saw people jumping out of the towers. Her eyes began to tear and she choked back some sobs. She didn?t speak again on the trip and neither did I.

The usual exit from the train at Metropark was generally like a cattle stampede with people rushing to the parking deck and the waiting busses. But when the doors of the train opened on this afternoon everybody exited the train without pushing or jockeying for position. The walk down the stairs to the station was quite and orderly, like a grammar school fire drill monitored by a nun. I was relieved to reach my car and looking around the parking deck I couldn?t help but wonder how many cars belonged to owners that wouldn?t be returning.

I got home about 3:30. Usually I announced my arrival by calling out, ?what?s for diner?? but not this day. On this afternoon I simply hugged my wife and told her that I loved her. The remainder of my night was spent watching the news and making some calls to family and friends.

I worked the remainder of the week in my company?s New Jersey office. I didn?t return to work until Tuesday and as I waited at the train station that morning I was sure that most of the people standing there with me shared the anticipation that I had on returning the city. It was a far different feeling from the one that I had when standing in the same spot 7 days ago.

Penn Station in NYC appeared to have the usual amount of traffic but it seemed more orderly now. Armed soldiers were about along with a greater number of police throughout the station. I took the usual subway downtown, got off at the Wall Street station and made my way up the stairs to street level. The air was clouded with a lingering smoke and a foul odor, it smelled like burnt plastic perfume. The area was in shambles, debris still littered the street, phone and power cable were strung through the gutters. I walked towards the stock exchange and then down Broad Street to my office. National guardsmen were stationed at the intersections and barricades blocked traffic from entering Wall Street.

There were a few people in my office when I arrived and we shared our greetings with more sincerity then we had in the past. When I got to my desk, I took my laptop out of my brief case and plugged it into our network. When I opened my overhead cabinet, I saw that my carefully folded yellow tie was where I left it, and I was ashamed of myself. I paused and looked around. When I was sure no one was watching, I took the tie and stuffed it into my case. So many innocent people were killed and so many brave people gave up their lives trying to save them, and I was afraid to get my tie dirty.




Copyright ? 2003 James F. Matulevich