story10297.xml

story10297.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-01-04

I remember missing my flight from New York to Austin on September 7th, 2001. Being that the 8th was a Saturday, I decided to do something I had not done in the many frequent trips to the city and actually ascend the Empire State Building.
It was a beautiful semi-clear day, only a few high wispy clouds overhead. I am a Photographer and I shot a few images of the Twin Towers, standing majestically in front of the Statue of Liberty, barely notcieable in the distance. Due to a bizarre series of instances, most of my meetings the following week, including two in the Towers themselves were canceled. Thus, I would be off from travelling a week, due to return on the 18th of September.
That fateful morning I drove my little girl to school and gave the entire class New York Souveniers, something I had promised them I would do the next time I went. When I got to my car it was moments after 8AM CDT and the news was already breaking. "This is a day that will be like Oklahoma City..."began the report. Instead of heading to work, I rushed home, in time to see the second plane had just hit the other tower.
I immedietly tried to rationalize this...There was afterall a plane crash in California a few years ago where two planes collided. And, considering the fact that both jets were close to Newark Airport, it could certainly be plausible that this was an accident.
But the reports coming in now were grave and moribund. "This is no accident, said Katie Kouric of NBC News." When the third plane hit the Pentagon, I knew we were in trouble. Well, I was now on my way to Houston with a good friend in a planned trip to see the Astros play the Giants. Barry Bonds was on the all-time Homerun quest, and besides, I am a good friend to Larry Dierker, then the Astros manager. We would end up at his home, listening to this tragedy unfold. On the way to Houston, we decided to stop at a hotel along the way and catch a visual of what we were hearing on the radio. We arrived in time to see the South Tower crumble to the ground. All feeling simply left me at that moment, and it still does to this day when I recall it.
We were uncertain as to whether the games would go on, but as we heard of yet another plane lost somewhere over Pennsylvania, the games seemed utterly irrelevant to the day.
A week or so later I flew back to New York. The plane was almost totally empty, quiet. I went down to St. Johns Church near where the Towers once stood. The Church by this time stood as a lone sanctuary amidst all of the pain. It was covered with firefighter memories, pictures of those still missing and never to be found. There was an overcast raw chill in the air, and the smell...that smell was unforgettable. The ashes were still smoldering, debris was everwhere. The quiet muffled sound of a legion of dump trucks carrying the rubble drove by. The people at once applauded. "What a strange reaction" I thought as the bent steel and chunks of cement slowly processed by as if on their way to a funeral. I took an unforgetable image of this traffic light in fromt of the steel girders still resting in the ground. The light was stuck on green, an ironic sight in a world that had come to a complete stop.
I remember just how alive New York was on that 8th of September and now how collectively dead it seemed. I made my way down the street and there was a Moslem man kneeling on his prayer rug outside, the rain began to fall harder and harder, as if to wash away his cries for peace in a world where all innocense was now lost, and time seemed anguishly suspended in the chill of the New York fall. Images that burn in my mind and still create a stir are everywhere, but perhaps one stood out among the rest. Along the way, I saw where someone took their fingers and wrote in the dust that had covered a window, "I don't know you, but I miss you already."