Remembering 9/11

I was alone in the elevator when the first plane struck and did not hear the explosion. It wasn’t until, as I stood on line waiting to pay the cashier, I saw a young woman huddling against the wall sobbing and shaking. I asked the cashier what was wrong with her.

The cashier replied nonchalantly. “I guess some plane crashed into the Trade Center just now and she saw it.”

I paid for my coffee and left. In my mind, I excused it with a mental image of a single engine prop crashing into the side of the tower, and dismissed it with the thought I would hear about it that evening on the eleven o’clock news.

But the guard at the gate wouldn’t let me return to my office. “There’s been some sort of incident next door,” he said. “They’ve shut down the elevators.”

From the lobby of Seven World Trade Center, I could see through a wall of glass across a causeway into the heart of Tobin Plaza, the fountain in the center of the Trade Center. On a day bright, clear like today, by noon there would be crowds would gather in that plaza to eat their lunches and perhaps enjoy a little music, part of a whole summer of lunch time programs. Looking over now, I saw pieces of paper drifting down and what appeared to be thin white wisps of smoke.

I was irritated that my breakfast routine was being affected by some looser out to make the evening news, but there was nothing I could do, and my coffee was getting cold, so I went across the lobby to the conference center where there was a bank of pay phones. I had left my cell phone (a cumbersome analog) in my office and I wanted to call my wife and find out what was going on. I thought she would be amused.

The recorded message I got didn’t make sense. After several tries, I gave up and found a comfortable seat in a lounge where I was soon joined by a few people from another company. We were all sitting there when we heard a tremendous explosion. No one said anything but instead we all looked at each other. Then someone stuck his head in the door.

“Another plane just hit the other tower,” he said solemnly. The impossibility of that statement hadn’t quite sunk in when he added, “It’s a 757. They’re evacuating the building.”

We were under attack. My coffee mates were quick to comply with the evacuation order. I, on the other hand, stayed right there and leisurely finished my coffee and Danish. When I finally returned to the lobby, it was nearly empty. Now looking across to Tobin Plaza I could see what appeared to be the wreckage of a jet engine belching flames and thick black smoke in a place where the huge bronze statue had stood. The two security guards at the desk directed me to get out of the building through the loading dock. On my way out I passed the front glass doors of the building, the very heavy green glass doors I always used to enter the building every morning, and where I’d come through about an hour earlier. All the glass was shatter and broken. Out on the street, smoke hovered over parked cars.

I was guided down to the basement of 7 World Trade and out the loading dock. As I came into the morning air, I looked up and saw, directly overhead, a black yawning chasm near the top of the north tower; flames and thick black smoke poured from the wound. At that moment, I understood the seriousness of it, realized many people had died. I moved on quickly, walking north a few blocks. The sidewalks were filled with people standing quite still and looking up into the bright morning sun trying to comprehend what they were seeing. I did not look back. I knew now that I would be seeing this on television for weeks to come.

I found a pay phone within a few blocks and waited in a short line for my turn to call. I could not see the buildings, but I heard when the crowd collectively gasp in horror. “They’re jumping,” someone said. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to stand there looking. Some women turned and covered their eyes.

When it was my turn, I called my wife. She was already awake, having received many phone calls from friends wanting to know if she’d heard from me. I told her I was alright and that I wasn’t sure what to do next. I hadn’t been able to get back up to my office. My briefcase, my keys, all my personal papers and stuff were up there. I told her I thought I might stick around awhile to see if later I might have the opportunity to get back in and get things from my office. Then I told her I loved her and I had to get off because the line behind me was getting longer by the minute. I promised to call her later.

I walked back to Greenwich Street and took one more look. The crowd gasped again in unison as more bodies fell from the gaping hole. I thought I saw two people holding hands as they fell. That was enough. I turned north again and walked. As I did, I passed an army of people walking and running the other way and I marveled at man’s insatiable appetite for disaster, pain and carnage.

My idea was to go up Greenwich about eleven blocks to the Allstate building. I knew people who worked there and thought I might be able to use a phone. I was ten blocks along when I ran into a guy from my office. Marc was standing in the middle of the street trying to make his cell phone work. He told me the Allstate building was closed. I asked if I could use his cell phone. I dialed the number and listened but there was no ring. I hung up and tried again. As I waited for a ring, the south tower, tower number 2, began to crumble and implode. My back was to it. Marc, who was facing it was saying look, look, the tower’s falling. “The tower’s falling,” he kept telling me. I could not turn to look. I had worked in that tower for many years before taking this new job a year earlier and the first thought that ran through my head was the faces of those co-workers. I thought right then “This changes everything. Everything.”

He looked at me incredulously. “You didn’t see it!” he said.

“Come on," I said, "let’s find a bar that’s open. I think we both need a drink.”

We walked several blocks before we found a restaurant with a lounge. Above the bar, the television was showing rerun after rerun of the collapsing tower. At first they told us the bar was closed. I pointed to the television. “We just walked out of that,” I said. A few minutes later, a young man appeared at the bar and ask what we would like to drink. I ordered a whiskey.

Marc and I were sitting at a table watching the television and sipping our drinks when the second tower collapsed. I finally got up and went to a pay phone by the restrooms and called my wife.

She was hysterical. “You told me you were going back in!” she screamed. “I thought you were dead.”

We had a friend who lived in an apartment in the 90's on West End Avenue and we agreed I would go there to wait until the commuter trains began running again. Because the subways had also stopped running I had to walk, a long walk that took me several hours. On every block there were people standing around listening to radios from stores or cars. The first time I got scared was walking through Times Square. There were several huge digital screens that always projected news and they were showing the planes hitting the towers over and over. I looked up into that clear blue sky wondering if there was still something up there aimed at midtown.

When I got to our friend's apartment I watched the television coverage for awhile but the walk had tired me out so I took a nap. When I woke up it was almost 4:00 pm. The trains were reportedly going to start running within the hour so I decided to wait that hour and then take a cab to the Harlem station. Just before I left, Seven World Trade Center, which had been on fire most of the day, finally collapsed. All the things I had in my office - my briefcase, my cell phone, a one-of-a-kind artist's rendition of the New York Stock Exchange and several mementos that sat on my desk all disappeared. I found myself even years later looking for something only to realize it had been in my office that day.

When I got home an hour or so later Barbara and I held each other a long time. And later went to a supermarket to get some food. I don't remember what it was that brought it on, but as we walked the aisles something got us laughing, and I remember the absolute quiet and the angry looks that met our laughter. How could we explain that we could laugh because I had survived.

Turning 65

It's been a few months since I posted to this blog and now it's September, always an auspicious month for me - the beginning of Fall and the stretch leading up to the biggest holidays of the year. I thought I should write about what it's like to be full retirement age, but in fact - according to Social Security - I'm not. That won't happen until next September when I turn 66. And who knows, with the government looking for new ways to save money and balance the budget (without raising taxes?) maybe next year it will be moved to 68 or even 70.

Anyway, for those of you youngsters who want to know what it feels like, I can tell you that aside from a few more aches it's pretty much like it was when I was 64.