Autumn Marathon

9/11/01

On Friday, September 7, 2001, I flew from NY to Boston for business meetings and flew back the same day. What I remember about that trip was how unusually clear and blue the skies were.  Approaching NYC, you could see the whole expanse of the LI shore, the city skyline including the WTC, and all the way up to CT.  The weather on 9/11 was almost identical.

My 9/11 memories have a lot in common with those of fellow New Yorkers of that time. I narrowly missed being present in my Twin Towers office because our young children had just started school, so my wife and I lingered with them in the schoolyard. Arrived at Chambers Street in time to see the gaping holes in the buildings and the ghastly, tragic site of the jumpers. Saw the south tower, including my office, fall while walking homeward on the Brooklyn Bridge. The ash cloud went directly through our downtown Brooklyn neighborhood: for days, we picked up singed papers that had blown across NY harbor from the towers. The flyers for missing people (almost of whom had died) on every street corner. The constant drone of helicopters and military flights for several months afterward; the constricted chest and feelings of grief every time we passed the debris pile (which continued to smolder for months) at Ground Zero.

We think of 9/11 now and again, especially on occasions like this 10th anniversary, but not very often. Life has moved on: our kids are nearly grown, the city is a different place. But when I do think of it, my mind sometimes reaches back to that Friday before 9/11 and what strikes me is, what a very different, nearly unimaginable world we lived in that day.