Eight years on, to the hour.
I passed by the World Trade Center site this morning. The Fire Department Pipe Band played a lament on the corner of Cedar and Church Streets. They gather here as they have gathered for each of the anniversaries, as they will gather for the next hundred years.
Many of us who worked in the World Trade Center remember in our own way. Many don't come in to work on 9/11 and will never do so. Some gather in places such as Jeremy's Ale House in lower Manhattan where they paused eight years ago before they walked some miles across the Brooklyn Bridge.
I vary the routine each year. In 2002, I spent 9/11 morning in London, and flew home on a near-empty American Airlines flight to JFK that night. In other years, I have stayed away from work and gathered with others in lower Manhattan.
Today, I come in to work, and will pass by the WTC site in the morning, in mid-day and on the way home. I see what is, and remember what was.
I worked on the 103rd Floor of the World Trade Center, and was there late September 10, 2001. I remember it, and the many fine people I knew there, so very well.
2 comments:
We remember August 28, when three year old Bobby and I went to visit your office on the 103rd floor. When we got out of the subway on that clear day Bobby craned his head back but could still barely see the tops of those buildings that pierced the sky. He loved the elevators that whooshed us up to the 75th floor in under a minute, and excitedly pointed out New Jersey and the tiny bridges to Brooklyn from the windows in your office. Downstairs again we listened to live music on the sunny plaza while we ate lunch with hundreds of other sitting, standing, chatting, strolling, laughin New Yorkers. Afterwards we took the ferry over to Hoboken and kept looking back to those awesome towers, whose reach didn't shrink all that much with the distance.
Less than two weeks later we watched on TV as those buildings, the dual totem of a vibrant business, cultural and educational life in lower New York, exploded and then imploded. Watched in horror, at the immense, immediate loss happening right before our eyes. We will never forget, our hearts will never fully recover. And we are only grateful that you were not there that day.
Who can forget those elevators, you had to love them.
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