nmah208.xml

nmah208.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

I work in Manhattan on 23rd Street near 6th Avenue. We have a small office of 8 people and our boss said he had just heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center. We all headed to the conference room and turned on the TV. From there we watched over the next few hours as the second plane hit and then eventually watched as the 2 towers fell one after the other. By noon some of us were wondering whether it was safe to try and head home, we all live in different areas, some in New Jersey, some in the other boroughs. We were all so frightened but we also were wondering if it was over, there was talk of 6 or 8 planes having been hijacked. It seemed for a while that no place was safe. That's something that most Americans had never though of or felt before 9-11. I don't think most of America considered what it must be like in other countries, where people are killed every day in the midst of some of the most mundane activities like buying coffee or seeing a movie. Since then everything has changed. The most frighteneing part for both my wife and myself was waiting in front of Penn Station for the trains to come in. We did not know that the government had ordered fighter jets to fly over the city and for brief moment we were not sure if the planes we could hear were ours or another hijacked flight.

I no longer take for granted the time I can spend with my wife and my family. I don't put off get-togethers because you never know what can happen next. I'm sure no one that went into the WTC on that beautiful sunny morning had even the slightest idea what might happen to them. When I have the opportunity to take a day off, I do it. I probably spend a little more cash than I use to on my social life, dinners, movies, parties than I did. I hate to quote an overused phrase but I try to "Live for Today" in a lot of respects. My job is no longer one of the most important parts of my life.

Most of the country saw 9-11 from a TV screen, others saw it first hand. We smelled the smoke and debris and saw the ash cover the streets. We saw the people who had walked down dozens of flights of stairs to get to the streets only to end up sprinting to escape the collapsing towers. I talked to a man who's face was cut up by glass who survived because he had gone downstairs to get himself a bagel and coffee before starting his day, he had no idea what happened to his co-workers. We watched as people who on a normal day would not give the other a second glance step forward and lend a hand. My wife and I waited for 4 hours so we could get a train into New Jersey. Police and bomb squads had to walk the tunnel connecting NY and NJ before they would allow any trains through. On a normal day, people are always pushing and stepping on each others feet, but on that day, it seemed there was plenty of room for everyone no matter how packed it got. We huddled around the windows when we came out of the tunnel and looked at the end of Manhattan Island, the tip engulfed in a cloud of smoke. It was an open wound, a gouge ripped into the face of our city.

I don't fly a flag, I never have. I don't fly one now. I don't think you have to in order to feel the pull many people did and still do towards their country. It's a level of solidarity and unity that I have never seen before.