I took a job in Miami in January 2001 and moved my family from New York City in mid-year. I was scheduled to fly out of Miami the afternoon of September 11 to Philadelphia for business when I saw on the office TV that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. At first I thought it might be a small jet, some of which routinely departed from Newark Airport, turned north in New York harbor and followed the Hudson River up to Albany and other destinations. I had done this flight and was astonished at how close we came to the World Trade Center at the Harbor turn, and that I could see people working inside the World Trade Center offices.
Then the second plane hit the building and I knew that this was no accident. My flight to Philadelphia was grounded, and after the third plane crashed, my office closed. I drove home and my wife and I picked up our 3 year old daughter from school. We were devastated. We both had years of history in that building: business meetings in the towers, meals and events at Windows on the World, commuting through the PATH trains, taking the E train to the Vesey Stret station for various downtown activities.
We would eventually learn that my wife’s cousin John, a NYC firefighter, was lost in the devastation. We often socialized with him and his wife before the attack. Along with his wife, he left two young children behind. Lists of victims that followed included familiar names and we have visited the onsite memorial many times. The three of us attended John’s funeral in Westchester County, also attended by Mayor Giuliani (who attended the funerals of all police and firefighters lost in the World Trade Center).
It was a tearful, solemn affair with no body or trace of John. His widow seemed to shrink under the weight of losing her husband in a war that none of us knew we were in. We came back to New York City for the first time in November for Thanksgiving with my wife’s family. I immediately went down to the World Trade Center site and was overwhelmed by the smell of burnt matter. Dust filled the frigid air three months after the buildings fell. It was a sad and gruesome experience and I kept thinking that somewhere in that rubble was some trace of my wife’s cousin.
I can’t say that my visit to the site provided any sense of closure. Masks were often requested of those wanting to help, and a friend of mine in Queens bought all the masks he could find and brought them to the sight for the workers. We eventually learned that many responders and volunteers digging up the rubble would develop health problems from the fumes.
We will never get over the shock and loss, which for us is very personal, of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. We have grieved for all the families who suffered loss that day.