I lived in Montclair, NJ, which was the home of Yogi Berra. I was coming off of vacation while on a burn-out project that had begun in September 1999. We had dropped our red-headed daughter at her orientation at Clark (pronounced "Clack") University in Massachusetts. She and my wife collapsed in tears. Then went on vacation near Shandaken, NY, and I tried to forget work...except every morning I drove down to Rte 28 to call my boss in Brussels to learn the latest.
That morning, I took the second car -- the company had goven me a new on -- to a garage to get it inspected, and got a bagel. Giggle-jock radio said "Traffic is bad downtown. A plane just hit the World Trade Center. What an idiot! How can you not see the Trade Center?". Strolled up the block to the train station and bus stop. And waited. About 9am, a driver pulled over and said, "You can go home. The Bridge and the tunnels are closed". Walked home, still certain that one of the towers had been clipped by a light plane, like the small planes I used to watch below my windows in 1 WTC in the late-80s. Got home, turned on the TV, and 2 WTC had just collapsed. Had no cell phone service, but could get my son who was managing a hotel in Parsippany. He finally got my wife in Upper Manhattan and our daughter in Worcester. No answer from my office, in the Met Life Building, but checked in with North American HQ in Virginia.
Spent the rest of the day trying to get to my wife, who had gotten a ride to Leonia, NJ...I-80 was blocked near Teterboro Airport, about where east-bound traffic comes over a hill in Masbrouck Heights, where I would look up to see the WTC. Now just giant smoke-blots where the Towers should have been. Police had shut the George Washington Bridge. On the second or third try, I zig-zagged over local streets from a corner of Teaneck and got to my wife in Leonia.
Having worked at the WTC, I guessed that 20,000 people, or more, would have been killed. Lucky thing that the planes hit just before the work-day.
My son, RedskinDan_v1978, joined the NJ National Guard a few months later, wanting tobe in uniform if we had another catastrophe in the area. When he was little, he was afraid of heights and nervous about elevators, so I would take him to my office: 1 WTC, 81st floor. We would ride the express elevators to the Sky Lobby on 78, and then he would play games on my computer as I sat on the air-vents and leaned back against the windows.
When my office finally reassembled, a week after the attacks, we learned that one of our collaegues, Chuck, had had a heart attack on 9/10. His girl-friend, Siggie had been assigned to a trade show at Windows on the World on September 11. Instead, she was at Chuck's hospital bed-side. Another colleague, Beatrice, said, "This thing took money. All they have to do is find out how the money got into the country. We have all those records". And that's how the Secret Service and FBI proved that money had come from Saudi Arabian terrorist financiers who worked for Al Qaeda. Just smart police work.
Our company hired a "critical events counseller" to meet us, a nice Presbyterian minister from someplace upstate. By the time got to us, a week afterward, she had counselled people in the buildings across the street -- Church Street -- from the WTC. She had listened as people described watching bodies fall from the Towers, "two of them like leaves curling in the wind", for instance. She was undone, so we wound up consoling her.
So many more stories, stories that all come back every September.
Yes, this September 11 was the same clear sky, same 70 or so degrees.
