Thursday, September 10, 2009

The 8th Anniversary -- Share Something Relevant

I feel I’ve kept this account of September 11, 2001 and my ensuing experiences and feelings fairly unemotional. I’m still afraid to really let go for fear of what doing so could do for my psyche. Tuesday night my husband, Jay, went to bed angry, depressed and grieving after he watched a television documentary about Sept. 11. I felt for him, but I’m, let’s say, very protective of my mental health. I proceeded to block it out by watching meaningless reality (ha!) television. But then, this morning when I realized I’d need to do at least a little bit of research in order to write this, I found tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Then, tears falling as navigated page after page of timelines on the Internet. I had to step away from the computer. I wiped tears away with the back of my hand. I sniffled, in hopes of holding back the sorrow that still lingers and will live just below the surface of my psyche forever. It didn’t work.

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One of the things that sticks out most in my mind about that day is the sky. I remember thinking I had never seen a sky so blue, so beautiful, so perfect. In fact, it should have been a beautiful day all around. It was one of those crisp but exceptional September days with which New York is occasionally blessed. I think now that somehow it seems terribly wrong that something so horrific, so tragic should happen on a day like this.

The day started off like any other. I was at work early, preparing for the day when shortly before 9 a.m. Jay, somewhat uncharacteristically, called. “Have you heard what's happened?” he said. I asked him to hold on as a colleague was waiting to be let in.

As the front door clattered and clanked its way open, Greg said, “I just heard on the radio; there’s been a plane crash.”

I rushed back to the phone. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, Jay told me. (8:45 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11, departing Boston, bound for Los Angeles)

I had a hard time processing the news – I didn’t understand. I assumed it had been a small plane and that its crash had been an accident. But how could a plane be so off course, I wondered out loud. No, he said, the plane was a jet.

He watched and provided play by play over the phone as the unimaginable happened. “Oh my god,” Jay said. “Another plane just crashed into it,” he said, watching it unfold live on television, narrated by a bewildered Matt Lauer. (9:02 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175, departing Boston, bound for Los Angeles)

The wheels and gears in my brain turned and I began to understand that this was not an accident.

Greg and I ran to a nearby electronics store. We assumed that with a wall full of televisions we’d surely be able to gain a better handle on what was happening. Closed circuit programming, however, meant we left with a poor quality transistor radio in hand.

We tuned into AM radio in time to hear the news that a third plane had crashed, this one into the Pentagon. (9:40 a.m., American Airlines, Flight 77, departing Washington DC, bound for Los Angeles)

Less than 15 minutes later, Tower 2 collapsed (9:59 a.m.).

And chaos ensued. I will never be able to imagine the fear and terror felt by the people who were trapped, those who ran, clawed, tripped, staggered and prayed for their lives as they tried to escape, down narrow, dark, ashy, crowded stairways. (And I know I will never be able to live up to the heroics of those who helped others to escape, those who ran into a dying building to save lives, those who gave up their lives willingly so as to prevent even greater bloodshed.)

In Tower 1 people resorted to leaping to their deaths from the windows of New York’s tallest building, presuming the alternative to be worse fate.

A few short minutes later there was one final plane crash – a plane crashed into a field somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. (10:07 a.m., United Airlines flight 93, departing Newark, bound for San Francisco)

Of course I didn’t know it was the final crash. I feared the attack would be ongoing attack. I didn’t know if it would end.

At 10:10 a.m. part of the Pentagon collapsed, and Tower 1 collapsed at 10:28 a.m.

The Tri-State area – Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Westchester and then some – shut down completely; stores and businesses closed their doors; parents were directed to retrieve their children from school; buses, trains and bridges shut down. Airports had already been evacuated.

And it all happened beneath a beautiful blue sky.

My world was shaken.

From my vantage point 25 miles north of Manhattan the sky remained blue, into the afternoon and then into the evening, making a picture perfect background for the fighter jets that would patrol far above.

When I arrived home around noon, having abandoned the work day, my sister Sonia met me in the backyard. Wordlessly, we hugged each other, tears coming too easily, grateful for our personal safety and the comfort of being able to be with family but still scared and unsure of what was yet to come.

Jay wasn’t home, and I panicked for a moment trying to figure out where he could have gone. When finally he turned up, he said he had given blood. The newscasters, though, said blood probably wouldn’t be in great demand and that potential donors should wait for a formal request. (Estimated units of blood donated to the New York Blood Center: 36,000. Total units of donated blood actually used: 258)

A short time later, when the fighter jets flew overhead with their high-decibel rumble, I was unsure whether I felt any safer, any more secure.

We gathered with friends and neighbors, taking to the streets and looking for reassurance that everything would be OK.

Eventually day turned into night and the taunting blue sky faded to black.

Sonia stayed the night, not wanting to spend it alone in her apartment. The images on the television – we were transfixed – portrayed an event of apocalyptic proportions. Late into the night we watched as New Yorkers escaping the city by foot, over any bridge or road possible, filled the flickering screen. We watched as cameras recorded pictures of dark, dusty streets, streets eerily quiet except for a faint but persistent and overlapping beeping sound.

(I learned weeks later that the beeping came from personal alert safety devices worn by firefighters, devices that sound automatically if a firefighter “ceases to move for more than 30 seconds,” according to MyRescueTeam.com, an online resource for rescue workers.)

The days, weeks and even years that followed passed in a blur for the zombies left in the wake of the tragedy.

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Eight years after Sept. 11, there are many incidents and instances, many people and many statistics that I still recall, that still cross my mind from time to time.


Before Sept. 11, foreign attacks didn’t happen on American soil – the 1993 garage bombing of the WTC was the exception to which we should have paid more attention. Up to that point all I knew about war, about terrorism, came from the nightly news and took place in far off lands. Images of Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war years lingered in my mind. Soon I would see on the cover of every newspaper, tabloid and magazine, and on every single news broadcast, images of America’s greatest city in tatters. My innocence and the inherent security I felt as an American is gone. I knew: It can happen here.


The potential number of casualties was debated repeatedly in the days following the attacks (some debate still remains); many sources estimated numbers greater than 5,000. There was a concern the city would not have enough body bags to accommodate the dead.

Ultimately, almost 3,000 people lost their lives that day. I say almost because to this day the exact number is still uncertain. (Bodies found “intact”: 289; Number of victims positively identified: 1,527)


Posters of the missing clung to any available scaffolding. Memorial candles burned in the streets on the fringes of the financial district. It seemed there were miles and miles of hand and computer made pleadings touting the lost and begging for help in finding them. The news showed mothers, fathers, spouses wandering dazed and confused through the streets hoping to find …? Could they be so hopeful as to believe their loved one was still alive?


By the end of the first week those people who had remained in the city, determined to not “let terrorists win,” sought escape. My sister Jill, a Manhattanite and singer who had performed at the Greatest Bar on Earth, inside Windows on the World, in the hours when Monday, Sept. 10 became Tuesday, Sept. 11, called to ask if she and a friend could come for the weekend. The smell of death, she said, had become too much to bear. Her complaint had been a common one among survivors.


The media shared images of Arabs, dancing in the streets of their native lands, reveling in the destruction of America, pleased that it was our turn to learn what it is like to like in a war zone, that America was not invincible.


And of course, unfortunately, Americans lashed out. Number of hate crimes
reported to the Council on American-Islamic Relations nationwide in the year following Sept. 11: 1,714.
The man who worked at the gas and convenience mart down the street, Mohammed, I think he was from Pakistan, was sincerely one of the nicest and most caring and soft-spoken people I’d ever had the pleasure to know. The look of pain and sorrow on his face in the weeks after Sept. 11 broke my heart. After Sept. 11 he looked broken, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I still think of him often.


Dan Rather broke down on the set of David Letterman in front of a live audience and openly wept. Some cheered the moment as a human and patriotic while others thought a man in his position should show complete impartiality always. The incident set off debates about whether it was acceptable for news people to wear the then-popular flag pins. ABC went as far as to forbid their people from wearing the pins. Spokesman Jeffrey Schneider told the Washington Post, "Especially in a time of national crisis, the most patriotic thing journalists can do is to remain as objective as possible ... That does not mean journalists are not patriots. All of us are at a time like this. But we cannot signal how we feel about a cause, even a justified and just cause, through some sort of outward symbol."


And the country was on high alert. In the area I lived in that meant that bridges and parks over and surrounding reservoirs were closed to the public out of fear of possible biological attacks. All cars entering local airports were searched by armed National Guardsmen. And due to the fact that we lived only seven miles from Indian Point nuclear power plant, everyone had an emergency evacuation plan should the plant be targeted. Our plan was to drive east as long and far as we could and hope for the best; driving north would take us closer, and the roads and bridges running south and west would be so clogged in an emergency that surely there would be no realistic chance for escape and survival. An evacuation plan is one thing I haven’t felt I’ve needed since I moved to Ohio in 2003. It’s also one of the reasons I was so quick to accept that impending move.


My husband has a personal policy: He won’t fly on Sept. 11. Not ever. If business demands he be somewhere other than home on Sept. 11, he’ll fly the day before or drive. He doesn’t do this out of fear or superstition. He does it in deference to those who died, a ritual of sorts.


Statistics suggest 20 percent of Americans knew someone hurt or killed in the attacks. My husband and I both went to Pace University in Westchester County, N.Y., well known as a business school, churning out finance professionals by the thousands. We don’t know that we know anyone who died in the attacks. But neither do we know that we don’t. Got it?


The way he handled the days, weeks and months following the attacks made me a Rudy Giuliani fan for life. The man showed grace, class and compassion. In 2001 he attended 200 funerals related to Sept. 11.


The Clear Channel Radio group deemed 150 songs “inappropriate” to play in the days immediately following the attacks. One radio show openly discussed the list. I still have a hard time understanding why Everclear’s “Santa Monica” made that list. Must be just four words from the chorus: “watch the world die.”


In the first year after Sept. 11 more than 422,000 New Yorkers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. An August 2009 USA Today article stated that 10 percent of those people are still suffering.


A photo of United 174 slamming into Tower 2 was everywhere and the video was replayed over and over. In short order, I had had enough. I couldn’t watch it any more. This singular moment in history meant too much to America for the incessant, gratuitous coverage it received and for it to be reduced to an overwrought pop culture clip. I feared, should its exploitation continue, the image would lose its meaning, that we as Americans would become desensitized to its significance. I still fear this, and I still avoid it. I don’t want to be desensitized. It means something to me.

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And here’s where I plead. Because I think maybe, over these eight long years, we have become desensitized.

Sure, the eighth anniversary will make the news. You’ll remember it, you’ll be sad, you’ll be respectful. At least for a few minutes (I hope).

But that’s not enough.

My friend Joe agrees. “I think it sucks that ‘never forget’ has been reduced to 1 day a year,” he said in a recent Facebook post. “I suggest that instead of thinking about that day, we think about the names. I’ll give you three: James ‘J.J.’ Carson, John ‘Ice-man’ Murray, Joshua S. Vitale.

“It ain't just a bumper sticker,” Joe continued. “Honestly, as cool as this Facebook thing is, I don't give a fuck what you had for breakfast. Put the mouse down and get on with your day. You are sitting at Penn Station and need us all to know that you are bored? No. Stop. And you know who you are. Use this medium to share something relevant.”sitting at Penn St. and need us all to know that you are bored? No. Stop. And you know who you are. Use this medium to share something relevant.re sitting at Penn St. and need us all to know that you are bored? No. Stop. And you know who you are. Use this medium to share something relevant.tale. And we all know too many.

Tell me what this day means to you. Tell me what you carry with you. Tell someone else. Tell the world.

Share something relevant.

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Take a moment to learn about a few of the people lost to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, like:

Joseph Agnello
Jeannine Marie Damiani-Jones
Jamie Lynn Fallon
Juan Garcia
Rodney Gillis
Stephen G. Hoffman
John Ogonowski
Robert Penninger
Waleska Martinez Rivera
Timothy Ray Ward

More at:

http://www.legacy.com/Sept11/Home.aspx

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/lists/by-name/index.html



Timeline data from http://www.patriotresource.com/wtc/timeline/sept11.html
Statistics and figures from http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Kristy. I am part of the 20% who knew someone that died and appreciate that you took the time to write this blog.

    ReplyDelete