My 9/11 Story

This is a re-post from September 11, 2009.


On September 11th 2001 my husband and I were living in NYC. Our daughter was just six months old. At the request of some college friends, I put my experiences on and around Sept. 11th on paper to share with others who lived far away. Below is what I wrote a week or so following September 11th.  Reading this evokes such strong memories and emotions for me. I ask that if you read this you give a moment of silence to Stephen Frazer, a guy I never met but who for me still embodies the random, mindless, pointless loss that was September 11th.
  

If you've seen every bit of TV footage, or read 'till you cried, you'll have to indulge one more New Yorker reflecting on the Tuesday, Sept. 11th attack on the WorldTrade Center.

My daughter and I were headed to our pediatrician Tuesday morning when sirens rang out from everywhere.  A decade in Manhattan has reduced sirens to background noise, like music in a restaurant.  But this was an explosion of noise that made me get up, go to my window, look down on the streets and the frenzy of emergency vehicles heading south and wonder, "what the hell just happened?"

I didn't turn on the TV until my best friend called.  I stared at the screen in disbelief, both Towers already burning.  The voice on the phone works just four blocks from the World TradeCenter.  She was a little frantic, but thankfully she was in her apartment, worried about her colleagues.

When my friend raised the possibility of collapse I said, "the Towers won't collapse". I said it with absolute certainty, never imagining that 30 minutes later I'd be proven so wrong.  When the first tower collapsed, I saw it on TV via an aerial shot from due south.  The Channel 2 anchors and I thought it was another huge explosion.  Then I saw something through the smoke that I'll never ever forget, the sunlight reflecting off the slanted roof of the Citicorp building on 50th Street.  Next I made out the silhouette of the Chrysler Building and realized that the Tower, which in a sane world would be blocking that view, was no longer there.

"It's gone, it's gone, it's gone".That's all the came out of the television.

My husband arrived home just after the first Tower collapsed.  He had his first follow-up visit with his doctor since knee surgerywork and was headed back to work when thousands of people started pouring out of the subways and buses.  A stranger told him what happened.  Grasping for something normal and planned, we headed to our pediatricians' office next door.  On the corner of Second Avenue people were already gathering to look south.

"You can't see it?",I asked.

"Oh yes you can", my husband answered.

Sure enough, an enormous cloud of smoke loomed downtown and was winding its way up Second Avenue.I turned and went to the doctors.The second Tower collapsed while daughter got her shots.Within an hour fighter planes were circling the city.I was never more aware of living between the Empire StateBuilding and the United Nations.The former now once again reigning as the tallest building in NYC.

Meanwhile, at my office on 4th Street and Broadway, co-workers had grabbed binoculars and ran to the roof garden.From a birds' eye view enhanced with state-of-the-art optics, they witnessed a scene of helplessness and horror that I can't even begin to imagine.Two nearly fainted after looking through their lens for only a few moments.Another watched the first tower collapse and wondered if her father made it out, another wondered if her father, brother, and boyfriend did the same.  They did.

Now that the frenzy has ended, New York City is just a city in mourning.There will be no miracle rescues on the six-o'clock news.We've all hunkered down for a fall filled with memorials and grim discoveries.All the tip toeing and solemnity has brought a silence to this city so eerie and unnatural I almost yearn for a few more honking horns.Instead I get sirens coming from Ground Zero.The typical New Yorker prides his/herself on being tough, insular and self-sufficient, characteristics that make September 11^th and its aftermath of that much harder to bear.Perhaps that's what God intended.Perhaps our sudden, enormous need for help from any and all who offer make us seem a little more human and a little less "New Yorker" than before.

In the end it's all about a guy named Stephen Frazer and the thousands of others like him. He's young, handsome, in his thirties.Stephen has a wife named Suzan with a 'z' and a child.  He worked at AON in World TradeCenter.  I was introduced to Stephen via many flyers posted in my neighborhood.  Scarcely a day goes by that I don't run into Stephen, at the bus stop, pasted to a phone booth or on the hospital wall alongside hundreds of others flyers.  Suzan with a 'z' leaves her number and begs you to call if you have any information on her beloved Stephen.  The flyer has two color pictures on it; in one Stephan is sitting on a couch in a T-shirt and wire rims, in the other he's feeding his baby.  He hasn't bothered to change out of his office clothes, something my husband often forgets too.  Looking straight at the camera and wearing no glasses, he's holding a baby spoon and smiling the purest, happiest, goofiest new-dad smile you'll ever see.  The baby covered with strained carrots (or perhaps sweet potato) will grow up without a single memory of him, and it will take Suzan a lifetime to explain to that baby just how wonderful his/her father was.  One day I'm going to take one of his flyers down and put it in my purse, before someone else takes him down and he's lost again.

Years ago I worked a few weeks at the World TradeCenter.  I don't know exactly which floor I worked on, but I know I was high enough up that I could lean my head against the glass and look down at the helicopters flying beneath me.  I loved that.