My September 11th Story

If you were in New York City on September 11, 2001, then you have a September 11th story. Our parents generation had the "where we were when President Kennedy was shot" story, and their parents generation had "where we were when Pearl Harbor was hit" story. Follows is the story that I will, hopefully, share with my own children someday.

I was living with my Zaydie down on Grand Street and working as an Account Supervisor at The MWW Group. My boss at the time, who will remain nameless because I do not need to give him any more PR than he already has, was in Israel working on new business development. I was in charge of the team, which on that day, included Julie, Schuyler and Kate. That morning, we were supposed to issue a release for one of our technology clients based in Washington, D.C. That meant that I had to get to the office by 8:30, as PR Newswire was supposed to send out the release at 9:00 a.m. I had told Schuyler, Kate and Julie that they should all be in the office by 9:00 because we were going to be pitching the release heavily starting early. Julie was coming from Brooklyn, and Kate and Schuyler were both coming into the City from Hoboken.

People have heard this countless of times, but the blueness of the sky that morning was incredible. It was absolutely crisp, clear and cloudless. As I was walking on Grand Street, away from the East River, I actually stopped in the middle of Grand Street between Lewis and I think it's Columbia Street, and looked straight down where East Broadway started and ran straight into the World Trade Center. It was magnificent that morning, as the buildings were every single night when I would come home. I got on the bus, plugged into my CD player (no iPods then) and heading towards work.

I was one of the first people in the office that morning, and headed to my cubicle. I logged onto my computer, made myself a cup of coffee, and started catching up on the morning news. That's when Loreto, the secretary, called to tell me that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I was shocked, it was such a beautiful day how could that happen? I walked into the conference room where there was a TV about the size of an entire wall, and I tuned into one of the stations as they were all broadcasting the same thing, and sat there watching. People started filtering into the office slowly and pretty soon all the seats in the conference room were taken. Julie and Kate were already there, but Schuyler was still on her way in. When Michelle walked in, who was one of the Senior VP's, she sat down across from me and I remember that she opened up her yogurt and started eating as we all chatted and watched history unfold. We had assumed it was a small TV helicopter that hit the tower as, from the TV set, it didn't look like the hole was so big. I remember Michelle had just put a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth when I turned back to the TV and we all watched the second plane ram right into the Trade Tower.

And that's when we all knew that it was an attack.

Schuyler just walked through the door and I was relieved to see her, because I knew she changed from the Path to the subway at the World Trade Center stop. We watched some more and then people started to panic. Kate's good friend was college worked at the World Trade Center, so she went to her desk to try to call him, other people ran to the phones to call friends and family members to tell them that they were ok, or to inquire if they needed help. Julie and I decided to go downstairs and walk to 5th Avenue to see if we could watch what was happening now at the WTC. The streets were flooded with people, most who looked dazed, many who were oblivious because they didn't know what had happened, and the sounds of the sirens were defeaning. That was all you could hear, sirens heading downtown towards the building. We got to 5th Avenue and milled around with people in the streets. Some cars and buses were driving by, but mostly the streets were filled with people.

And that's when the first building came down. We watched it fall in disbelief, and then all we could see was smoke billowing up for miles. Julie and I ran into Eric on 5th Avenue and he walked backed with us to the office, telling us that we had already missed the first building falling down. He had seen both towers fall.

We got off the elevator at our floor and Loreto told us that the Pentagon had been hit and that they were evacuating the building. I was confused, I didn't know which building she was talking about, and then she said they were evacuating our building and we all had to go home. I went back to my desk to collect my things and to answer my ringing phone. It was my boss from Israel, the first thing he said was that it was safer in Tel Aviv then in New York, and then he chuckled. I was shocked at how blase he was, but didn't say anything. And then, in the next breath, he asked me if I issued the press release and how pitching was coming. I was speechless, utterly speechless. Was he for real? The anger welled up inside of me and I spat out that they were evacuating the building and I would have to get in touch with him much later because we had to go. He told me he would call me at home later that evening and then we hung up.

I'm not going to say how that conversation changed my life, because it didn't, but what it did do was make me realize just how shortsighted some people are. And I made a pledge at that point to no longer make my life about my job, but to make my job a part of my life.

I hung up with the boss and asked Julie to wait for me while I ran to the bathroom. I remember sitting on the toilet with my legs shaking, begging for my bladder to hurry up and praying to G-d that nothing should happen to our building with me on the toilet. I could think of nothing more embarrassing then to have something happen and there I was with my skirt around my knees.

I met Julie, Kate and Schuyler in reception and we all took the emergency stairs down, along with everyone else in our building. When we got outside, we had no idea where to go. The subways had stopped running, and so were the buses, and we all thought that the end was near and we didn't know what to do.

Eric and one of his supervisors came out the door and joined us. I remember watching his supervisor, who was so panicked that she knocked over an older woman in her mad dash out of the building. This 20-something year old mowed down an 80 something year old woman and just kept going, she didn't look back, her panic propelled her into, she was in survival mode and it was every man for themselves. Some suit helped the old woman up and she continued to her destination, I don't remember if she was hurt, but I don't think she would have stopped either. Panic had gripped her too.

Eric mentioned going down to the World Trade Center, and Kate mentioned trying to get in touch with her friend.

And that's when I remembered that my little sister worked on the 40th floor of Tower One. And for the first time that day, I felt the panic. I got out my cell phone and tried to call my Mother to find out where my sister was, and if she had heard from her, but the phone wasn't working. I told Eric I would walk down to the World Trade Center with him, but I needed to buy shoes. For the first time all summer, that morning, I decided not to wear my sneakers to work and was wearing a pair of black Stuart Weissman loafers. They pinched my feet and gave me blistered if I walked more than three blocks in them, so I knew my feet would be shredded by the time we got downtown. Eric didn't want to wait but Julie offered to walk with me, so we made our way uptown. Kate's roommate owned a restaurant on 57th between 5th and 6th, a kosher style deli called Wolf's, and Julie, Kate, Schuyler and I decided to go there and try to figure out what to do. On the corner of 57th and 6th there wa a Foot Locker and I bought a new pair of New Balance sneakers for the long walk downtown. Regardless, Julie and I had to walk home, so the sneakers were necessary.

We all ended up sitting upstairs at Wolfe's and watching CNN for five hours until the subways started working again. Schuyler's roommate came to join us and a couple of her other friends stopped by too. At some point, Jared (Kate's roommate and the owner) put food down in front of us, but I don't remember if we ate. I finally got through to my Mom and she told me that my sister happened to have been in New Jersey at training that day. We discussed whether or not I should try to come back to Queens, and my Mom asked me to stay in the City and make sure my Grandfather was ok. I acquiesced. In hindsight, I probably should have gone to Queens, for the next week would be one of the hardest weeks of my life.

Somehow, Julie and I got on a downtown F train at 57th Street. The train was packed and everyone was on top of each other. But no one complained, no one pushed, everyone was either talking to one another about what was going on, or they were silent. People maintained eye contact, no one was afraid of anyone that ride. We were all one people, and we all had no idea what was going on.

I got out at Delancey Street and watched the throngs of people, most covered in grey ashes, walking slowly over the WIlliamsburg bridge to Brooklyn. The Lower East Side looked like a ghost town, there were no cars on the streets, only thousands of people. The gutter was littered with papers, which I walked through on my way from the subway towards the apartment. I didn't stop by my Zaydie's store on Ludlow street, I had assumed he had closed up shop and headed home when the towers were hit. I didn't find out until later that he didn't hear what happened until he got to shul that evening.

I kept on walking, through the litter, and looked up at the sky and the big gray cloud of smoke that was billowing over the water. When I got to that corner, the one between Lewis and Columbia, I stopped again and this time the magnitude of what happened hit me. In the place where that morning the Towers had stood, there were weak rays of sunshine making popmarks in the smoke of Ground Zero. It was unbelievable. I bent down and picked up one of the pieces of papers that were lining the gutter where the fall leaves should have been and read the memo. I don't remember the names on the memo, or the company, I just balled it up and threw it back down onto the floor. I wouldn't realize what I had done until a few days later. I walked into the apartment, dropped my bag onto the floor, and put on CNN in the living room. I didn't move again until Zaydie got back from mincha and joined me.

I didn't sleep that night, glued to CNN instead. At the first light of morning on September 12th, I ran out of the apartment in my PJ's to the deli across the street to pick up The New York Post. On the cornere were exhausted firefighters, they each had a styrofom cup of coffee in hands and their eyes were red rimmed. They were covered in dust, some had make shift masks or bandanas tied around their necks. This would become a familiar sight for me in the days to come.

The Mayor closed all traffic from 14th Street down to the tip of Manhattan, and so nothing was allowed in or out of the Lower East Side. Zaydie insisted on going to open the store each and every day, even though I implored him to stay home as there was no way he would do any business. He wouldn't alter his daily routine and so I let him go, and I continued to stay plugged in, to watch what was going on, to try to understand.

They started using Grand Street to shuttle body parts from Ground Zero to the morgues. I heard that the firefighters in the fire department down the block had almost all been killed in the buildings. The shelves of the supermarket were starting to go bare. And I still didn't sleep. My boss kept calling from Israel, trying to get me to do homework, and I refused. Kate's friend had died. People I knew who were at the conference at Windows of the World that morning were gone. Person stories of death started to filter through. Everyone knew someone who was related to/married to/mother of/father of/husband of/wife of/sisters and brother of someone who perished.

And still I did not sleep. I couldn't get the images out of my mind. The images of people jumping from the Towers, the woman who waved a white hankerchief out of the windows as an SOS, the firefighters who walked through the black dust and smoke in a daze, the big black cloud that came racing out onto the streets like a hand trying to grab people and pull them into hell. I couldn't get the sounds out of my head. The beaten sirens that wailed sickly after being pummeled by the bricks and steel of the buildings, the cries of the people who were looking for their loved ones, the screams from Ground Zero as people ran to get out of the way.

And then I thought about the fact that the people who were covered in grey, who walked over the Williamsburg bridge, who I watched intently when I emerged from the subway, were not just covered in the residue of the buildings. They were covered in the remains of the people who were in the planes, and who were in the buildings. Their hairs, eyelashes, bags, clothing, coats, pockets carried people, pieces of people. I thought about that memo that I had held, written by someone who was probably no longer with us, and all that was left of her existence (I remember enough that it was a woman's name) was the piece of paper that probably sat in her in-box hours earlier.

I didn't sleep for three days straight. Mercifully, my Dr. called in a perscription of Ambien, which was getting low at the pharmacy when I went to pick it up that Friday morning. On Saturday, provisions started to arrive on the Lower East Side and on Saturday night, I took a car service up to 116th Street and Broadway and for a few hours, escaped the reality that was since September 11th on the Lower East Side.

Today in class, one of my classmates read aloud the opening of a story about September 11th from someone who was living 8 blocks from the Towers that day. He wrote how "the skies rained people", which was a very real and haunting image. He ended the paragraph saying that 9/11 was the day that changed the world. The class was silent. One guy quipped that it wasn't the day that changed the world, and I listened for a while as the debate went on around me. My first though was, this is an inappropriate conversation to be having in our writing class. It has nothing to do with creative writing, our job was to analyze the opening sentence not to discuss the content of the article. I finally had enough and opened my mouth, and all I said was that for someone who wrote that article one year after 9/11 and who lived 8 blocks from the Trade Center when it all happened, for him and for people just like him, 9/11 really did change the world.

If you lived in New York City that day, and you watched the event unfold, then you cannot say that some aspect of your existence didn't change.

It's simply impossible.