email625.xml
Title
email625.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
email
Date Entered
2002-08-30
September 11 Email: Body
From:
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2001 9:52 AM
Subject: New York Trip
I have followed with some interest the stories that the Daily News has published concerning some of our local citizens who happened to be in New York during the recent horrific events in that great city. I was there, along with my wife and four other locals, from September 10 to September 16. I have some very strong impressions of my visit and of the events that I witnessed. Interestingly enough, those impressions do not totally line up with some things that others have reported. This does not make my impressions more valid than theirs--just different. Thomas Carlyle, in describing his great masterpiece, The French Revolution, to a friend said it was a series of fire pictures strung on a line. We all have our fire pictures and only time will give us the line of understanding that will clarify these pictures for us. I have some strong impressions that I hope to share with your readership and maybe the simple act of writing will help me to understand.
My first and strongest impression revolves around the immediate response of the city and its people to what had happened. The six of us in our party had flown into New York late in the evening of Monday, September 10. We are all experienced in trips to the city and we all have some facility in moving around Manhattan. We checked into our hotel on west 47th Street, and decided to celebrate our arrival by catching the subway south to the area of the island we all love, Greenwich Village. We made our way through some of the Village by walking Houston Street from Varick Avenue to Sullivan Street and having a friendly drink in a local bar on the corner of Houston and Sullivan. The Village was at its Bohemian best: friendly, tolerant, frivolous, comfortable in the knowledge that it was the center of the universe.
We left the Village late and decided that Tuesday might be a good day to sleep a bit later than usual. The general plan was that we would get in motion around 9:00 am on Tuesday and probably head south on our wanderings.
About nine the next morning we decided to stroll over to the Visitor's Center on Broadway and 47th Street, then we planned to catch a subway to the World Trade Center and see Battery Park, the Stock Exchange on Wall Street, and the South Street Seaport. While we were in the Visitor's Center we heard this weird announcement, garbled as only a public address system can garble, that an airplane had crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. The first thought, of course, was that some stupid jerk had crashed his Piper Cub or some such. The announcements started becoming more and more insistent and we made our way over toward Grand Central Station. By the time we had reached Bryant Park, which occupies the area between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and between 40th and 42nd Streets (immediately west of the New York Public Library), we knew something strange and traumatic had occurred.
Bryant Park, which that morning was supposed to be hosting a fashion-model TV show, was instead occupied by many people clustered around radios that had appeared from a myriad of sources. I was overwhelmed with flash backs to my boyhood during World War II, those pre-TV days, when we huddled around the radio to hear Edward R. Murrow and others tell us about the war. One of our number crossed the street to Radio Shack to buy a small, battery-powered, radio.
We sat in the park, drank coffee, listened to the unfolding drama, saw the ugly column of smoke and debris push heavenward, and saw New York swing into action. The attitude of the people in the park was one of disbelief and anger. Then a remarkable thing started to happen for New York: the streets began to clear of traffic. What was moving were emergency vehicles of all types, fire trucks, police vehicles, ambulances, emergency rescue equipment, police vehicles pulling horse trailers, everything one could imagine would be of use in the direst of situations. Again, this is one of my strongest impressions: New York was as ready as any city could be in something of this magnitude and it was ready quickly. The sounds of sirens became the constant of our week in Manhattan.
The whole world has seen the magnificent work done by the police and fire departments in the city. The men and women who rushed to that scene were able to prove the value of their training as well as their courage. For someone like me, their readiness to move into this inferno was awe inspiring and will stay in my mind for a long time.
A concomitant feeling that accompanies this impression is the help that the people of New York lent to the effort. Not only did an army of volunteers appear, but New Yorkers did not take advantage. As we walked the diamond district around 47th Street we saw barred windows with all the jewelry normally displayed gone into store vaults. All this preparatory to looting, but no looting occurred. New Yorkers did not give themselves over to riot as so often occurs in like situations. No cars were burned in the streets, no rioting, no looting, just a stunned city responding to a situation undreamed of.
The question that insists itself on my mind as I explore this strong impression is, "Could my city respond as readily as did New York?" If something of a like nature occurred involving Alamogordo and Holloman, would we rally the way New York did on that September morning? We hear often of Mike Riley holding emergency exercises involving local emergency response agencies. This is to be applauded and, I hope, extended. Holloman has, I am sure, stringent measures in place for dealing with emergencies. But the thought is always there: when it comes to catastrophe, how will we respond? Will our plans work? Most haunting of these questions is, How will I, personally, respond?"
The one thing that marked the response in New York was the cooperation that developed between all agencies. No time for turf battles here. What bothers me some is the feeling that has been expressed in the past by some of our county officials and some of our citizens that the real enemy we face is the federal government. In a situation like New York, the federal government becomes the lead agency in criminal investigation, in providing financial relief, in providing manpower in the form of the National Guard, and in getting military aircraft in the air to protect the situation. Federal government leadership cannot be questioned if we are to survive the terrorist threat. We need to make our peace with the fact that we are all in this boat together.
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2001 9:52 AM
Subject: New York Trip
I have followed with some interest the stories that the Daily News has published concerning some of our local citizens who happened to be in New York during the recent horrific events in that great city. I was there, along with my wife and four other locals, from September 10 to September 16. I have some very strong impressions of my visit and of the events that I witnessed. Interestingly enough, those impressions do not totally line up with some things that others have reported. This does not make my impressions more valid than theirs--just different. Thomas Carlyle, in describing his great masterpiece, The French Revolution, to a friend said it was a series of fire pictures strung on a line. We all have our fire pictures and only time will give us the line of understanding that will clarify these pictures for us. I have some strong impressions that I hope to share with your readership and maybe the simple act of writing will help me to understand.
My first and strongest impression revolves around the immediate response of the city and its people to what had happened. The six of us in our party had flown into New York late in the evening of Monday, September 10. We are all experienced in trips to the city and we all have some facility in moving around Manhattan. We checked into our hotel on west 47th Street, and decided to celebrate our arrival by catching the subway south to the area of the island we all love, Greenwich Village. We made our way through some of the Village by walking Houston Street from Varick Avenue to Sullivan Street and having a friendly drink in a local bar on the corner of Houston and Sullivan. The Village was at its Bohemian best: friendly, tolerant, frivolous, comfortable in the knowledge that it was the center of the universe.
We left the Village late and decided that Tuesday might be a good day to sleep a bit later than usual. The general plan was that we would get in motion around 9:00 am on Tuesday and probably head south on our wanderings.
About nine the next morning we decided to stroll over to the Visitor's Center on Broadway and 47th Street, then we planned to catch a subway to the World Trade Center and see Battery Park, the Stock Exchange on Wall Street, and the South Street Seaport. While we were in the Visitor's Center we heard this weird announcement, garbled as only a public address system can garble, that an airplane had crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. The first thought, of course, was that some stupid jerk had crashed his Piper Cub or some such. The announcements started becoming more and more insistent and we made our way over toward Grand Central Station. By the time we had reached Bryant Park, which occupies the area between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and between 40th and 42nd Streets (immediately west of the New York Public Library), we knew something strange and traumatic had occurred.
Bryant Park, which that morning was supposed to be hosting a fashion-model TV show, was instead occupied by many people clustered around radios that had appeared from a myriad of sources. I was overwhelmed with flash backs to my boyhood during World War II, those pre-TV days, when we huddled around the radio to hear Edward R. Murrow and others tell us about the war. One of our number crossed the street to Radio Shack to buy a small, battery-powered, radio.
We sat in the park, drank coffee, listened to the unfolding drama, saw the ugly column of smoke and debris push heavenward, and saw New York swing into action. The attitude of the people in the park was one of disbelief and anger. Then a remarkable thing started to happen for New York: the streets began to clear of traffic. What was moving were emergency vehicles of all types, fire trucks, police vehicles, ambulances, emergency rescue equipment, police vehicles pulling horse trailers, everything one could imagine would be of use in the direst of situations. Again, this is one of my strongest impressions: New York was as ready as any city could be in something of this magnitude and it was ready quickly. The sounds of sirens became the constant of our week in Manhattan.
The whole world has seen the magnificent work done by the police and fire departments in the city. The men and women who rushed to that scene were able to prove the value of their training as well as their courage. For someone like me, their readiness to move into this inferno was awe inspiring and will stay in my mind for a long time.
A concomitant feeling that accompanies this impression is the help that the people of New York lent to the effort. Not only did an army of volunteers appear, but New Yorkers did not take advantage. As we walked the diamond district around 47th Street we saw barred windows with all the jewelry normally displayed gone into store vaults. All this preparatory to looting, but no looting occurred. New Yorkers did not give themselves over to riot as so often occurs in like situations. No cars were burned in the streets, no rioting, no looting, just a stunned city responding to a situation undreamed of.
The question that insists itself on my mind as I explore this strong impression is, "Could my city respond as readily as did New York?" If something of a like nature occurred involving Alamogordo and Holloman, would we rally the way New York did on that September morning? We hear often of Mike Riley holding emergency exercises involving local emergency response agencies. This is to be applauded and, I hope, extended. Holloman has, I am sure, stringent measures in place for dealing with emergencies. But the thought is always there: when it comes to catastrophe, how will we respond? Will our plans work? Most haunting of these questions is, How will I, personally, respond?"
The one thing that marked the response in New York was the cooperation that developed between all agencies. No time for turf battles here. What bothers me some is the feeling that has been expressed in the past by some of our county officials and some of our citizens that the real enemy we face is the federal government. In a situation like New York, the federal government becomes the lead agency in criminal investigation, in providing financial relief, in providing manpower in the form of the National Guard, and in getting military aircraft in the air to protect the situation. Federal government leadership cannot be questioned if we are to survive the terrorist threat. We need to make our peace with the fact that we are all in this boat together.
September 11 Email: Date
Saturday, September 22, 2001 9:52 AM
September 11 Email: Subject
New York Trip
Collection
Citation
“email625.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed June 29, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/37468.