On the 24th anniversary of 9/11
It’s been almost a quarter of a century. When put that way, it seems hard to believe, doesn’t it?
And yet in some ways a lifetime ago. As the British poet Philip Larkin wrote in a poem looking back on the days prior to a different historical event: “Never such innocence again.”
September 10, 2001, felt like an idyll compared to September 11, 2001, and all the years since then. 9/11 opened our eyes to the vulnerabilities most of us hadn’t seen before or had ignored and denied until then. It gave us a brief illusion of unity – marred by a few sour notes – that quickly dissipated even as an illusion.
And now there are adults who were born after 9/11. Now there are middle-aged people who were young children then.
We remember, although we’ve ultimately assimilated that day into our view of the world and it no longer seems so strange. The pain is still there and the heroism is still there. For the many families who lost loved ones, the scars and the memories remain.
Many years ago I wrote my own reminiscences about that day and how it affected me: here’s that post. The events of 9/11 were the beginning of a learning process for me that took several years and ended up changing my politics and led me to start this blog. All of that was unforeseen at the time.
There are so many videos about 9/11 it’s hard to select one or even a few. There are documentaries that trace the day through cable news coverage, through talks by survivors, or through re-enactments. There are videos that concentrate on air traffic control, or the military response, or the phone calls from people who would die that day. They are uniformly fascinating, compelling, chilling, haunting – even now.
So I’ll just choose one to highlight here.
RIP to all the victims and the many heroes of that day and beyond.
Seems appropriate to post a copy of Gerard’s remembrance of that day.
I saw somewhere that 9/11 is about remembering “that we really are one people”.
No. We are not. Not after yesterday. A cohort of Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen exists. It is a large cohort, but they live in a fundamentally different nation from mine.
Barkis is Unwillin’ to liv wit em’ any longer!
On 9/11/2001 I was working on the 18th floor of a downtown skyscraper, which did not make the toppling of the Twin Towers very reassuring news. Our IT guy’s quick reaction to the news was that “It was a message from Allah.” Which it was. Or at least a message from those who believed they knew what Allah wanted.
My cousin has lived in SoHo for the last 50 years, not far from the World Trade Center. All I remember from her recollections from that time was that the air had a smoky aroma for weeks. Were I to ask her today, I’m sure she would add to that.
Neo: “It’s been almost a quarter of a century. When put that way, it seems hard to believe, doesn’t it?”
Yes, it does seem hard to believe that it was that long ago. It is hard for me to get used to the fact that I have had co-workers in the last few years for whom 9-11 is NOT a personal memory. They were either too young or they were born after that terrible event.
If you will indulge me, Neo and her readers, let me re-post my own thoughts/memories from that day.
I was working in midtown at the time. One of the few in my office who lived in New Jersey as most of my co-workers lived in New York, either in the outer boroughs or on Long Island. So, I was one of the last to leave my office knowing that there would be no way to get across the Hudson River any time soon with everything shut down. (For those of you not aware, everything in Manhattan was shut down in case there was a second terrorist attack such as on the subway, bus, commuter train, or in a tunnel or on a bridge. I have since learned that this is a common tactic that terrorists in Israel use. Have a main attack followed by a second to catch people as they run from the first attack or to get first responders) I wandered around Manhattan for a couple of hours feeling like it was a surreal movie with all the streets empty. There were no cars, buses or taxis. Only the occasional emergency vehicle. I actually walked down the middle of 5th Avenue!
As I walked through an empty Times Square I wondered about the tourists; these people from out of town, what they must be thinking in a strange city with no familiar bearings to help them. Oh, how frightened they must be! Most likely holed up in their hotels. I remember walking past a somewhat older gentleman who was dressed like an Amish (most likely a Mennonite) who looked stunned. We locked eyes. I, to this day, regret not stopping and asking if he was okay or if there was something I could do to help him.
And like a moth drawn to a flame – I eventually made it down to Canal Street in Chinatown (only about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center). There were police tape and barricades that clearly mark going further south as a no go zone – but, there was no one there. Just the locals who lived in Chinatown. I could have walked closer to ground zero; but, the ash, like large snowflakes, falling on my shoulders warned me not to. Looking South from Canal one would normally have seen the WTC towers and other buildings; but, on that day the only thing visible south of Canal was a grey-white haze like one sees on a winter’s day when there is a snow storm in the distance. We know it wasn’t snow.
So I wandered west and somewhat south until I came across the scene where firefighters were trying (but seemingly giving up) to put out the fire that was consuming WTC 7. One of the first responders (Really, I was so stunned that to this day I don’t recall if he was a fireman or policeman) started yelling that everyone had to leave the area as the building was about to come down. “Leave, NOW” he shouted. That snapped me out of my daze and I knew that I had to get out of Manhattan.
So, I headed north with the clear intention of getting to Penn Station where NJ Transit trains leave New York. By this time I had gotten so used to walking down the middle of the street that I almost got hit by a taxi on 7th Avenue a couple of blocks from Penn Station. When I finally arrived at Penn Station I entered through one of the doors that leads to the main Amtrak waiting area. It was crowded, more than it has ever been; but, it was eerily quiet. I looked up at the departure board and could only see everything was on “stand by” thinking that I will be there for a long time. Then almost instantly the train that I wanted flipped to show the track number. Good Heavens! The track was on the other side of the huge waiting area. In normal times I would have said there is no way that I would ever get through this crowd and I would wait to catch the next train. However, I said it will be this way all evening I had better try. So, I started to push my way through the crowd and surprisingly people let me through! I was, even more surprisingly, one of the first on the train so much that I got a seat.
Very quickly the train filled up to standing room only. It was then the conductor came on the PA and announced that this train would run as a local, not an express. He continued (and I can still hear his voice): “We can expect this train to be at full capacity, so, please make as much room as possible for everyone to get on.” Then his voice strained and cracked: “we all know what happened today; so just thank God that you are alive.” His announcement and the strain in his voice as he was fighting back tears is something I will never forget. It is etched in my memory.
On the ride home as we stopped at the elevated Rahway Station which is about 30 miles south of Manhattan as the crow flies I could see a plume of smoke. It looked like it was just down the block; but, in reality it was from the WTC.
Although this is all etched in my memory I do recall at the time it seemed like a surreal b-movie. It was the next morning when I drove to my train station (I was always on the 5:00 AM train) things became “real” for me. The parking lot was usually empty with me being the first or second car to arrive. But, the morning of Sept 12 – I just had to count them – there were 26 cars scattered around the lot.
26!
That meant that 26 of my fellow commuters did not come home the night before. Fellow commuters that I may have shared a nod with in the morning, or a quick smile on a Friday afternoon (TGIF), honestly they were people I didn’t know; but they were not with their loved ones on the night of that frightful day. Over the next few days and a couple of weeks those scattered cars in the morning became less and less. Only one was still there over a month later. It was finally towed away.
Over the next few months I was always scanning the commuter crowd in the morning or, especially, in the afternoon looking for familiar faces. They were not people who I knew personally; but they were familiar faces that I had seen on a regular basis. While most were probably okay, there are many faces that I was never to see again. Maybe they are okay and just their job was gone or moved. But, there are many that I will never know about.
While Lower Manhattan has been rebuilt and the new PATH station is nice. Parts of the original WTC “footprint” can still be found. If anyone ever finds themselves in the PATH station in the new WTC, when you enter from the Oculus side go to the farthest away escalators and go down to the train platform (usually it is for trains to/from Newark). There you will find an inlay on the platform marking part of the original footprint. You will also find part of the platform is see-through showing the foundation from the original WTC.
May we never go through such an ordeal again.
Neo – sorry for this long repost!
I was 68 on 9/11/2001. I was riding a stationary bicycle at the gym. When the news came on that an airplane had hit one of the twin towers, I thought some careless pilot had violated New York airspace and accidentally hit the building.
Soon, however, the second building was hit, and it became apparent that this was intentional.
It took me some time to wrap my mind around the fact that it was done by Islamic jihadis. I was vaguely aware that they were hostile to the West but had no idea they believed they could bring this country down by attacking our infrastructure.
The few months after the attack Reminded me of the WWII days. People were united and unabashedly patriotic. Unfortunately, that didn’t last very long.
As a retired airline pilot, I could imagine how the killers got into the cockpits. At the time, the protocol was to cooperate with the hijackers and try to get the airplane on the ground as soon as possible. No omen had imagined they would be suicide bombers. That lack of imagination was fatal for those airline crews and their passengers. An unimaginable horror.
The heroism of Todd Beamer and other passengers on United Flight 93 was inspirational and saved the aircraft from hitting anything of importance. There’s a detailed account of that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
The book, “Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11” by Lynn Spencer, is a gripping account of how the air traffic control system desalt with the many, many problems that the jihadi hijackers created. There were many close calls, quick decisions, and good airmanship that saved other aircraft from crashing. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it.
Never forget!
charles,
Thank you for taking the time to write and share your first hand account.
J.J. mentions the united feeling and attitude prevalent in the U.S. on September 12th and for months after.
How many could imagine that 24 years later a Muslim would be the front runner in New York’s mayoral race? Or that the mayor of London would be a Muslim man 15 years later?
Islamists took full advantage of every opportunity in the past quarter century as the west became bogged down and mired in disunity and confusion.
I remember it well. Where I worked, there was a energy trading group that had TV’s. I went there after the first Tower went down, and as I watched, the second went down. We were all sent home. My Wife knew someone on the PA plane or the Pentagon, not sure which. And yes, I have memories of JFK, RFK and MLK. I was Senior in HS when JFK happened. I have seen so much horror and hate.
When I read that some blame Trump for Kirk’s murdered, my mind just reels.
@ Shirehome > “When I read that some blame Trump for Kirk’s murder[ed], my mind just reels.”
Not too different from the mindset that blames rape victims for wearing those short skirts.
Never mind that many of them never did.
For 9/11 films, I always recommend The Path to 9/11, with Harvey Keitel as John O’Neil, if you can find it. It seems that it was suppressed after its initial airing because it was less than complementary about the Clinton regime. O’Neil was a fascinating figure. He was convinced something big involving Al Qaeda and Bin Laden was in the works, but got nowhere, and he didn’t help himself by having a messy life, both personally and professionally. He left the FBI and became head of security at the World Trade Center in August 2001, and died when the second tower collapsed.
Same reason so many tried to claim that 911 itself was an inside job planned by the GWB Administration (or Israel, or the aliens from Rigel XII, or maybe it was all of them in on it together). Or that Bush knowingly lied about WMDs, or planned the devastation of New Orleans by Katrina. Or any number of similar things. Remember, there are still people who insist Trump planned his own failed assassination as a head fake.
The thing is that some people psychologically, emotionally, need that stuff to be true, because actual reality is so troublesome and inconvenient.
(I actually suspect that the exact same impulse underlies the old saw that ‘the husband/wife is the last to know’ about an affair. If someone really, really doesn’t want their spouse to be betraying them, they can twist the evidence in their own mind to come up with explanations that preserve their emotional needs at the expense of facing the truth.)
Ever notice how many commentators and observers, on both Left and Right, really, seriously, don’t want to talk/hear/think about 911? They want to memory hole it because it messes everything up. I see articles from the isolationist right about Iraq and Afghanistan that don’t even mention 911, instead acting as if we invaded both places on a whim. The Left doesn’t even want to think about it, ‘some people did some stuff’, ‘it was a tragedy’ (almost like an accident), not an act of war.
911 makes a mockery many, many dreams, and leaves many dreamers frustrated and and flummoxed.
There is only one Islam. It is the one that murders in pleasure. If you are still doubtful look to 9/11 and October 7. Every week across Europe the orcs rape and kill. And still they come.
I’m in the Midwest. About a week after the attack, I called an insurance company’s regional office to do some business. Asked if they’d heard from higher (NYC near the Towers). They hadn’t and were carrying on as they could, which was fairly competently, but eventually you need Higher., Not sure when that would come around. Got straight a few days later.
But the sense of being….headless…isolated….fragmented stayed with me. Which is one reason I think redundancy in various issues such as energy is inconvenient and expensive and worth every dime.
Some water pumping and filtration locations near me fixed up their landscaping pretty quick. If you weren’t aware of 9-11, you wouldn’t notice there’s no way a truck can get up to the buildings. Nice fieldstone retaining walls, great lush turf, good sized shrubs, all hiding berms. But..pretty. Other things happened; “alternate route” signs along interstates. In case somebody takes out an overpass, I suppose.
I had been laid off the Friday before.
The day of, I was on the Internet when someone posted that a plane had hit the WTC. Thinking it was a small plane, I still didn’t want to think about it so I logged off and ate breakfast. My sister called me and told me to turn on the TV.
I spent most of the day online, and my most useful contribution was announcing over and over in one set of newsgroups that we had a new one for telling everyone you were all right. And rumors were flying, and news articles were carefully reporting that a plane had gone down in Pennsylvania but it was unknown if it was connected.
Then Jerry Pournelle posted a letter from the father of a passenger (and rapidly got asked whether he had contacted the news agencies).
Which, of course, made all the other rumors more credible.
It’s impossible to convey that day to anyone who doesn’t remember it because they know what happened, and we didn’t.
We knew the absolute minimum of what had happened, and not the limit.
And in the ensuing 24 years we’ve had to endure all sorts of whackjob conspiracy theories. The supposed dancing Israelis is a favorite among the Jew-hating sector of the right.
@ Marisa – and the dancing Muslims was dismissed as Islamophobia, despite videos.
AesopSpouse was in negotiations with a newly formed company to be their in-house patent counsel as soon as they had secured some venture capital, and they had an appointment lined up in NYC. In the WTC. On 9-13.
That never happened, the company folded, and we pursued other options.
Could have been worse.
To all the victim, direct and indirect, contemporary in time and later as their losses sank in: RIP.