9/11

 Where were you 25 years ago today?

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you already know my 9/11 story.

I was a single mother living with my parents and my children on Long Island. I was working for a law firm that had offices in Manhattan, but I was assigned to the Long Island office.

Most of my career has been spent either in lower Manhattan or Jersey City, New Jersey, directly across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. But on that day, I was working on Long Island.

I remember riding in my car on my way to work and listening to the radio. My favorite DJs were talking to a man who had seen the first plane hit the World Trade Center. While he was talking, the second plane hit, he was stunned. The DJs were stunned. No one knew how to react.

When I got to work, my colleagues and I gathered around the one small television that was in the office. Remember, this was before the Internet was fully developed, and before streaming services were available.  We  watched the buildings burn. Most of us had friends or relatives working in Manhattan. Our firm had an office in lower Manhattan, and many of our colleagues were in the city. Cell phone service was sketchy because of the situation, and it was hard for people to locate friends or relatives who were in the danger zone.

We watched as familiar streets flashed across our TV screen.  We watched as the Pentagon was attacked. We watched as the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. We watched as the World Trade Center collapsed. It was a horrible, horrible day.

And the aftermath was just as bad. For a week, my DJs played no music, but rather, spoke to people, trying to find missing friends and relatives. There were signs posted all over the city, describing the missing. There were no planes in the sky, and when I went into Brooklyn a few days later for a court appearance, I could see Manhattan burning across the river. 

There are no words.

Jen was in middle school, and she remembers how the principal called for any students whose parents worked in Manhattan to come to the auditorium that day.  He wanted to be certain there were adults at home when the students arrived. Becca was in elementary school; the teachers rode home on the school buses with the students to make sure that there were parents or relatives home.

I was lucky, I wasn’t in the city and I didn’t lose anyone close to me.  One of the secretaries in my office lost her husband, a firefighter.  And an attorney I’d met briefly died when the South Tower collapsed.  I have friends who came home covered in dust.  And a friend who lives in Battery Park City and was displaced from her home for months.  I have a friend who worked in the Trade Center but was home that day, taking his son to the boy’s first day of preschool; there are so many stories like that.

There were two music events: America: A Tribute to Heroes (the multi-network telethon aired on September 21, 2001) and The Concert for New York City held at Madison Square Garden on October 20, 2001.

I also remember how baseball lifted the spirits of a broken city.

September 21, 2001, Shea Stadium.  For the past ten days the stadium served as a drop off spot for donated supplies.  The first responders at Ground Zero needed bottled water and so many other things.  But now it was time for baseball to resume.  The Mets would take on their arch rivals, the Atlanta Braves.  There’d be a solemn ceremony before the game…

And then:

(I’ll come back to this in the 21st…)

And then the Yankees made the World Series!

And this happened:

Not to be outdone, Broadway reopened on 9/13/2001 and brought joy back to the traumatized city.

So many stories.  So many memories. 25 years.