Were you there?
By blackhedd Posted in User Blogs — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Were you there when the towers fell from the sky?
Were you there when the light died that day?
Were you there when we laid them to rest?
Ah, I remember. And I tremble.
Exactly four years ago, a great pall overshadowed New York City. And a brave, brash people were called upon to respond to the worst kind of tragedy and sadness. And we measured up well that day.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was bright, warm and golden, the most idyllic imaginable early-fall day, and the first of a string of such days. Not until Friday would there be any cloud and rain. By then we were accustomed to looking up and seeing fighter jets in the sky.
My office in lower Broadway was closed up tight until the following week. The police, and later the Army, wouldn't let us get anywhere near it. Thankfully everyone in my charge got out that day. My assistant walked all the way to Brooklyn on her office shoes.
I remember the sinking fear we felt when we heard about the simultaneous attack on Washington. And wondering what hound of Hell was next to bray.
And all the emergency rooms in the City bracing for an onslaught of wounded and dying which never materialized. Because the attack was so perfectly lethal that there simply were no wounded.
And lower Manhattan was covered with fine, tan, glutenous dust for weeks. Bizarre stuff that you couldn't clean off your shoes no matter how hard you brushed.
And the smell. For months, the City smelled like a charnel house when the wind was just so. I know people who to this day can't forget the smell.
And the sadness of the dead and their families. People just like us, innocent, going about their lives. Sadness and pity, and loathing for a cowardly, unseen enemy.
And most of all, I remember the City coming together. All of New York was out on the subsequent Friday evening, when the rain came, and we held our candles aloft in the dark, in silent testimony.
And a brash, brave City lost all of the boundaries which keep people apart. And for a brief moment, what unites us was visibly stronger than what divides us.
And the Spirit of September 11 lasted for months.
We're back to the brave, brash City of legend now, but all New Yorkers who were here that day remember, I hope and I pray, the unity of that difficult time.
And I hope and pray that it lights the way forward.
Why are the images of that brave, sad day not the iconic images of our time? Why have they been suppressed? Where are the special magazine editions, the documentaries, the retrospectives? Why does our culture seek to suppress the memory of that day? I don't know.
We must therefore remember it ourselves, unaided by the images of the media machine. We must remember the horror, the sadness, and the response of brave, brash New York to that day that shook the world. And we must pledge to fight forever against those who would repeat the attack, and against those who would forget it happened.
And above all, we must remember that a great City and a great People came together in sympathy and unity, and can do so again.
Ah, I tremble!
I was in New Jersey for a disaster recovery test (the irony of which still resounds for me) that day. Needless to say, our test was cancelled fairly quickly so they could start preparing for the real disaster.
From New Jersey then, the two most obvious landmarks were the WTC and the Empire State. After the WTC fell, it made the largest dust cloud that I'd ever seen and probably ever will-- from the center to the edge was about 1/3rd of the way to the Empire State, and that was only half the width, plus it seemed as tall as it was wide.
Our group ended up heading out I-80 west into Pennsylvania; on the way we passed what looked like about 50 ambulances, all with their lights on, headed down I-80 the other direction. None of us knew then that those ambulances would almost all return empty.