Back in the day, I used to go to the World Trade Center on a fairly regular basis. I often had business there with the New York Attorney General and the Workers Compensation Bureau; I used to dine fairly frequently at Windows on the World; I shopped in the mall in the underground concourse, and I would deal with the airline ticket counters in the lobby of the South Tower and take the bus just outside the lobby to Newark Airport whenever I was flying somewhere directly from my law office in downtown Manhattan. My practice was only a few blocks away.
Contrary to some of the stuff I have been hearing about 9/11 and the Twin Towers, I never felt safe when I was there on the upper floors. You could feel them sway in the wind. And there was always wind. The space between the buildings was a virtual wind tunnel, making it unpleasant if not impossible to enjoy the outdoor plaza below. I rarely lingered.
On September 11, 2001, we were living in a small rental house in the Arrowhead section of Xenia. We had been living there for a little more than a year. Amy had just started a new job with Provident Bank and was in Cincinnati for a few days of training. The kids were in school. Shortly before 9:00 a.m., I logged onto my computer and went to the “Drudge Report” to read the news. At the top of the page was a photograph of the Twin Towers. One of them was ablaze on the upper floors. I ignored it and started scrolling down through the columns of headlines looking for an article of interest. Something told me to go back to the photo, which I had assumed was a special effect from a movie they were advertising. On examination, I realized this was no joke.
I began Googling, looking for reports on the event. The process was tedious. To make matters worse, I was using dial-up. One of the things I will always remember when I think back on 9/11 was how tied to the Internet I was, even back then. It took me a few minutes to realize that what I was looking at was still unfolding and the best way to get the news would be to turn on the television.
I watched in horror as the second plane hit and I came to the realization at the same time as millions of other people that this was no accident. I watched in a stupor for hours as the whole horrible thing unfolded, the collapse of the buildings, the Pentagon, the plane in Pennsylvania. I wondered what they were telling the kids in school and what we would talk about when they got home. I wondered what Amy knew and how secure she would be in a very new job in a world that had suddenly veered off course and crashed and burned. She called to tell me they had postponed the course and were sending everyone home. I was relieved she wouldn’t have to be alone in a strange city for the rest of the week.
I worried about my friends at the AG’s office, but remembered that they had moved to a different building up the street a couple years before. I wondered about the lawyers I knew who practiced at the WCB, the people who worked at Windows on the World, friends and associates who had offices in the shadows of the towers, as I once had.
If I hadn’t retired early and moved to Ohio the year before to devote more time to writing, I would have been coming up out of the subway at Canal and Church, just a few blocks north, at around the same time I had logged onto the “Drudge Report.” As I hit the street, I would have been looking downtown with a clear view of the towers. It would all be there before me. I would have been a part of those clips that are often shown of people rushing away from the buildings covered in dust. They would have been coming right toward me. I wonder what I would have done.
In the weeks after 9/11, I would have been blocked from going to my office; I wouldn’t have been able to get to my files; I wouldn’t have been able to go to court. My business would have been brought to the brink of ruin. It would have taken years to recover. And I would have been one of the lucky ones.
It was probably more than a year before I next returned to the city. I swore I wouldn’t go near ground zero and I didn’t. I wanted no reminder of the collapse of the towers. But it was impossible not to notice the change in the skyline as we approached lower Manhattan from New Jersey. In Chinatown, which is a short walk from the World Trade Center, the towers were a constant presence. Look down any street and there they were. Something was missing.
I was talking to one of Amy’s relatives who works in Chinatown, a Chinese woman from Malaysia who’s English is limited. I asked her if she had been to work that day. She had, and had seen the whole thing, right from when the first plane hit. She choked up as she tried to talk about it. The tears started and she couldn’t speak. Chinatown had rebounded. The streets were full of people as they always were before 9/11. This is true for most of the rest of the world as well. Life goes on. But, we are haunted.
-vh
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