nmah450.xml

nmah450.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-27

On September 11, 2002, I was at my office working on the computer, anticipating my trip the next day to fly from Boston to San Francisco to attend a wedding, when I heard a coworker announce that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. As a former resident of New York City, and with close ties to families there, and great fondness for the Twin Towers, I was hoping that this was not New York's World Trade Center. I immediately went to the news website on the computer, and was in total disbelief to observe the photograph of the World Trade Center burning. It was a sickening sight.

We were let out of work early, but before I arrived home, I heard, perhaps from a radio that was playing, that one of the Towers collapsed, and later, a second Tower collapsed. As clear as the word "collapsed" means today, my immediate interpretation was that the Towers were still standing, and a few floors caved in at the top. Even when I first saw the Towers fall on television, because of all the smoke and dust, I thought that the Towers were still there, but were only obscured by the dust. Perhaps there are some events that are so horrific and unbelievable, that the mind refuses to accept what the eye is seeing.

I saw the Twin Towers as a building, along with the people inside, as a living soul that was being destroyed. Each time they showed the images of the plane striking the South Tower, I winced as if a knife was slicing against this living body.

Having grown up in New York City, I saw the Twin Towers being built during the period when I took the PATH train from New York to New Jersey while going to college. The two sleek Towers of the World Trade Center were an uplifting sight, and they were such great monuments of our time, and a visible symbol of New York City. Now that it is missing, I feel an emptiness and sadness, each time I think about it, or when I am reminded of it in pictures, movies, or while I am in New York City, looking at a changed Lower Manhattan skyline, to see that the famous landmark is really gone.