story234.xml
Title
story234.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-03-12
911DA Story: Story
My family was very lucky.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, as on other work days, my wife Pearl commutes from Brooklyn to her job at the headquarters building of District Council 37, the municipal employees union. Pearl typically gets off the IRT subway at Fulton Street, one stop early, in order to add a few paces to her walk to work. The Council is located at 125 Barclay Street, on the corner of West Street, one block north of the World Trade Center. She gets to her desk before 8:30 in the morning. My son Danny's first class at Stuyvesant High School is at 8:45. Stuyvesant is located four blocks north of the Trade Center.
About half an hour after Pearl arrived at work, a little before 9, a coworker came up to her office on the third floor crying and referring to what would be the first of the two plane crashes. Pearl tried to comfort the woman; they took a brief walk her outside, then Pearl returned to her office. At this point in time, nobody at the union had a clear idea of the dimensions of the disaster. Then the second plane crashed. Pearl's sister Marion called to tell Pearl to get out of the building. A call followed from the woman Pearl just comforted; the woman also urged Pearl to leave the building. With presence of mind, she went about the office telling the few colleagues who had already arrived to leave work. When an office manager asked her who told her to tell people to leave, she said "I told people to leave." Pearl avoided Barclay Street, and left from the building's north entrance on Park Place. Soon Barclay Street would fill with smoke. She headed three blocks north along West Street to Chambers Street, to where Stuyvesant is located. Parents began arriving at the school. After a short delay, she took Danny out of school. The school was keeping the kids in place for the time being but allowing parents who showed up to take their kids out of school.
When they started to walk north, away from the disaster, Danny became worried that I would travel downtown to look for him and Pearl. He decided to call my City College phonemail. I was teaching--at a nearby institution--and I would surely check my phonemail as is my habit. He left a message indicating that he and Pearl were safe, and that they were walking to my sister-in-law's apartment on West 90th Street. I am thankful that they would get word to me.
I teach a biostatistics course on Tuesday mornings, beginning at 9:00, up at the medical center at 168th Street, in northern Manhattan. Perhaps about 30 minutes into the class, a woman named Sharon walked into the classroom to tell me and everyone else that a plane crashed into the Trade Center. Given the timing, we must have been one of several groups of people she visited. Many of us in the class thought it was an accident of a smaller scale of magnitude than what turned out to be. Sharon returned to the class about ten minutes later to tell us a second plane crashed into the Trade Center; there was the implication that this was a terrorist attack reminding us of the attack on the World Trade Center eight years earlier. I was shaken. My wife and son are in lower Manhattan, near the Trade Center. I dismissed the class. I found a phone. I called Pearl at her office but got no answer. Then I called my phonemail at City College. Danny left a message that was reassuring. He said they were alright and were heading on foot uptown to Marion's apartment on West 90th Street. He said in the phone message that they could not travel to Brooklyn because the subways stopped running. I stopped by an auditorium located in the building in which I teach. A news account of the attack and its aftermath was being broadcast on a large television screen. Soon I became more aware of the dimensions of the tragedy taking place that day.
I then left the building. I saw a downtown bus at 168th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. I boarded. As I was riding downtown, I found in my jacket pocket a Sony walkman that I had forgotten that I taken had taken with me when I left the house that morning--both Pearl and I left the house extra early in order to vote in the primary election which was being held that day. I began listening to the radio. I was following the events, and relaying to other passengers the latest news items. But I also began to think about my daughter Emily. I anticipated that Emily, who had recently begun college and was some distance from home, must be just learning about the terrible news, and would be very worried. I got off the bus at 116th Street and Broadway. I walked quickly the short distance to the main Columbia University library. I looked for a computer. I found a bank of PCs. I asked a student to let me use his ID in order to pass through to my AOL account. He obliged me when I explained why I needed to use the computer. I sent an email to Emily telling her that Pearl and Danny were okay, and will soon be at Marion's house. Emily had learned of the attack. She had emailed me only 10 minutes earlier--she was in a panic about our safety. It was fortunate that I reached her. Although there was some local phone service, long distance service was nonexistent at that moment. Email proved to be a dependable way to communicate long distances.
While Pearl had briefly stopped to wait on a line in order to make a telephone call, Danny, who had kept turning around to look at the disaster while they were walking uptown, turned around once more and observed the Trade Center towers collapse. He witnessed people flying out of windows. It was awful. He worried that one of the towers collapsed on his high school, perhaps killing his schoolmates. They were about half a mile north of the disaster at that moment.
Although they walked about a mile north disaster to Houston Street, they managed to get a cab for the rest of the journey to 90th Street, which was helpful because Danny had broken his right foot in a soccer game ten days earlier. While they were traveling in the cab up West Street, Pearl observed groups of teenagers walking uptown. She told Danny that they had to be Stuyvesant kids. She wanted to disabuse him of the idea--at least for the moment--that a tower collapsed on the school building. Of course, a number of hours later we were sure the towers hadn't collapsed on the high school. The next day when we were settled at home we got Daniel to write about his experience. He wrote a moving yet clear-eyed account of the day.
In the late morning, I met Pearl, Danny, and Marion at Marion's apartment. I got there about 15 minutes after Pearl and Danny arrived. We were extremely grateful to be together. While at Marion's I received an email from Emily, acknowledging word that we were okay. She wrote that she was going to give blood.
We have been keeping an eye on Daniel; thus far he seems fine given what happened. On Monday September 17, we fulfilled a promise we had made to him earlier this summer. We moved Danny into the room that was Emily's, a move to which he looked forward for a long time. Danny, Pearl, our friend Stan, Danny's friends Robin and Gus, and I spent Friday and part of the weekend rebuilding a section of wall and painting the room blue; it had been pink. We wanted to restore some normalcy to our lives. The following weekend I took him to see the Mets play the Braves.
Senator Haigel was right. The events resembled Pearl Harbor. Except this enemy is more elusive.
There is a firehouse in my neighborhood, one long and three short blocks from my apartment building. Once I had occasion to call the city's emergency number because I observed smoke coming from the roof of a private house that is next to my building. Firefighters from the neighborhood firehouse arrived in less than a minute from the moment I called. No exaggeration. Our fire department is one of the reasons why New York is a great place to live. And our firefighters are among the best of the best people you can find in New York. The attack on the Trade Center led to the death of half of the 27 firefighters assigned to the neighborhood firehouse. A firehouse in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn lost everyone. Marion saw immediately that the attack had a Middle Eastern imprint: First there is a strike aimed at killing civilians and drawing rescuers to the site the attack; then there is a second strike ten minutes later that is not only aimed at killing additional civilians but is also aimed at killing rescuers. Such losses make me heartsick and angry.
On Friday, September 21, the last day of summer, Pearl and I visited lower Manhattan. The site of the attack reminded me that Pearl's parents lived in London throughout the blitz. And like the aggressors in the blitz, these perpetrators of the attack on New York and Washington represent Nazism. The evidence is clearly available. The Times reported on September 22 that a Urdu-language, Pakistani newspaper sympathetic to bin Laden wrote that, to quote The Times, "Jews were responsible for the attacks on the United States." A reprint of a Middle Eastern newspaper found in Peshawar, Pakistan reported that although 4000 Jews held jobs at the Trade Center none were killed because of advance information in their possession. Like the Nazis, the bin Laden sect commits odious acts of evil, and projects the evil in its heart onto a conspiracy of Jews. Like the Nazis, they require on the part of the host population blind conformity although in the case of the Taliban host it is conformity to rules about beard length in men and the absence of schooling for girls. Finally, they are the equivalent of Nazis in the sense that the World Trade Center became a crematorium, a killing ground for the slaughter of innocent people. The grey ash we have seen covering parts of New York surely contains a mixture of incinerated building materials and the incinerated remains of victims who did nothing more than try to earn their bread or save lives.
I want to see justice done to the individuals whose aim it was to launch the attacks on New York and Washington, the Cole, and our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, as on other work days, my wife Pearl commutes from Brooklyn to her job at the headquarters building of District Council 37, the municipal employees union. Pearl typically gets off the IRT subway at Fulton Street, one stop early, in order to add a few paces to her walk to work. The Council is located at 125 Barclay Street, on the corner of West Street, one block north of the World Trade Center. She gets to her desk before 8:30 in the morning. My son Danny's first class at Stuyvesant High School is at 8:45. Stuyvesant is located four blocks north of the Trade Center.
About half an hour after Pearl arrived at work, a little before 9, a coworker came up to her office on the third floor crying and referring to what would be the first of the two plane crashes. Pearl tried to comfort the woman; they took a brief walk her outside, then Pearl returned to her office. At this point in time, nobody at the union had a clear idea of the dimensions of the disaster. Then the second plane crashed. Pearl's sister Marion called to tell Pearl to get out of the building. A call followed from the woman Pearl just comforted; the woman also urged Pearl to leave the building. With presence of mind, she went about the office telling the few colleagues who had already arrived to leave work. When an office manager asked her who told her to tell people to leave, she said "I told people to leave." Pearl avoided Barclay Street, and left from the building's north entrance on Park Place. Soon Barclay Street would fill with smoke. She headed three blocks north along West Street to Chambers Street, to where Stuyvesant is located. Parents began arriving at the school. After a short delay, she took Danny out of school. The school was keeping the kids in place for the time being but allowing parents who showed up to take their kids out of school.
When they started to walk north, away from the disaster, Danny became worried that I would travel downtown to look for him and Pearl. He decided to call my City College phonemail. I was teaching--at a nearby institution--and I would surely check my phonemail as is my habit. He left a message indicating that he and Pearl were safe, and that they were walking to my sister-in-law's apartment on West 90th Street. I am thankful that they would get word to me.
I teach a biostatistics course on Tuesday mornings, beginning at 9:00, up at the medical center at 168th Street, in northern Manhattan. Perhaps about 30 minutes into the class, a woman named Sharon walked into the classroom to tell me and everyone else that a plane crashed into the Trade Center. Given the timing, we must have been one of several groups of people she visited. Many of us in the class thought it was an accident of a smaller scale of magnitude than what turned out to be. Sharon returned to the class about ten minutes later to tell us a second plane crashed into the Trade Center; there was the implication that this was a terrorist attack reminding us of the attack on the World Trade Center eight years earlier. I was shaken. My wife and son are in lower Manhattan, near the Trade Center. I dismissed the class. I found a phone. I called Pearl at her office but got no answer. Then I called my phonemail at City College. Danny left a message that was reassuring. He said they were alright and were heading on foot uptown to Marion's apartment on West 90th Street. He said in the phone message that they could not travel to Brooklyn because the subways stopped running. I stopped by an auditorium located in the building in which I teach. A news account of the attack and its aftermath was being broadcast on a large television screen. Soon I became more aware of the dimensions of the tragedy taking place that day.
I then left the building. I saw a downtown bus at 168th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. I boarded. As I was riding downtown, I found in my jacket pocket a Sony walkman that I had forgotten that I taken had taken with me when I left the house that morning--both Pearl and I left the house extra early in order to vote in the primary election which was being held that day. I began listening to the radio. I was following the events, and relaying to other passengers the latest news items. But I also began to think about my daughter Emily. I anticipated that Emily, who had recently begun college and was some distance from home, must be just learning about the terrible news, and would be very worried. I got off the bus at 116th Street and Broadway. I walked quickly the short distance to the main Columbia University library. I looked for a computer. I found a bank of PCs. I asked a student to let me use his ID in order to pass through to my AOL account. He obliged me when I explained why I needed to use the computer. I sent an email to Emily telling her that Pearl and Danny were okay, and will soon be at Marion's house. Emily had learned of the attack. She had emailed me only 10 minutes earlier--she was in a panic about our safety. It was fortunate that I reached her. Although there was some local phone service, long distance service was nonexistent at that moment. Email proved to be a dependable way to communicate long distances.
While Pearl had briefly stopped to wait on a line in order to make a telephone call, Danny, who had kept turning around to look at the disaster while they were walking uptown, turned around once more and observed the Trade Center towers collapse. He witnessed people flying out of windows. It was awful. He worried that one of the towers collapsed on his high school, perhaps killing his schoolmates. They were about half a mile north of the disaster at that moment.
Although they walked about a mile north disaster to Houston Street, they managed to get a cab for the rest of the journey to 90th Street, which was helpful because Danny had broken his right foot in a soccer game ten days earlier. While they were traveling in the cab up West Street, Pearl observed groups of teenagers walking uptown. She told Danny that they had to be Stuyvesant kids. She wanted to disabuse him of the idea--at least for the moment--that a tower collapsed on the school building. Of course, a number of hours later we were sure the towers hadn't collapsed on the high school. The next day when we were settled at home we got Daniel to write about his experience. He wrote a moving yet clear-eyed account of the day.
In the late morning, I met Pearl, Danny, and Marion at Marion's apartment. I got there about 15 minutes after Pearl and Danny arrived. We were extremely grateful to be together. While at Marion's I received an email from Emily, acknowledging word that we were okay. She wrote that she was going to give blood.
We have been keeping an eye on Daniel; thus far he seems fine given what happened. On Monday September 17, we fulfilled a promise we had made to him earlier this summer. We moved Danny into the room that was Emily's, a move to which he looked forward for a long time. Danny, Pearl, our friend Stan, Danny's friends Robin and Gus, and I spent Friday and part of the weekend rebuilding a section of wall and painting the room blue; it had been pink. We wanted to restore some normalcy to our lives. The following weekend I took him to see the Mets play the Braves.
Senator Haigel was right. The events resembled Pearl Harbor. Except this enemy is more elusive.
There is a firehouse in my neighborhood, one long and three short blocks from my apartment building. Once I had occasion to call the city's emergency number because I observed smoke coming from the roof of a private house that is next to my building. Firefighters from the neighborhood firehouse arrived in less than a minute from the moment I called. No exaggeration. Our fire department is one of the reasons why New York is a great place to live. And our firefighters are among the best of the best people you can find in New York. The attack on the Trade Center led to the death of half of the 27 firefighters assigned to the neighborhood firehouse. A firehouse in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn lost everyone. Marion saw immediately that the attack had a Middle Eastern imprint: First there is a strike aimed at killing civilians and drawing rescuers to the site the attack; then there is a second strike ten minutes later that is not only aimed at killing additional civilians but is also aimed at killing rescuers. Such losses make me heartsick and angry.
On Friday, September 21, the last day of summer, Pearl and I visited lower Manhattan. The site of the attack reminded me that Pearl's parents lived in London throughout the blitz. And like the aggressors in the blitz, these perpetrators of the attack on New York and Washington represent Nazism. The evidence is clearly available. The Times reported on September 22 that a Urdu-language, Pakistani newspaper sympathetic to bin Laden wrote that, to quote The Times, "Jews were responsible for the attacks on the United States." A reprint of a Middle Eastern newspaper found in Peshawar, Pakistan reported that although 4000 Jews held jobs at the Trade Center none were killed because of advance information in their possession. Like the Nazis, the bin Laden sect commits odious acts of evil, and projects the evil in its heart onto a conspiracy of Jews. Like the Nazis, they require on the part of the host population blind conformity although in the case of the Taliban host it is conformity to rules about beard length in men and the absence of schooling for girls. Finally, they are the equivalent of Nazis in the sense that the World Trade Center became a crematorium, a killing ground for the slaughter of innocent people. The grey ash we have seen covering parts of New York surely contains a mixture of incinerated building materials and the incinerated remains of victims who did nothing more than try to earn their bread or save lives.
I want to see justice done to the individuals whose aim it was to launch the attacks on New York and Washington, the Cole, and our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Collection
Citation
“story234.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 15, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/5693.