9/11 four years later

My remembrance of September 11, 2001...

It was a beautiful September morning. I got into the office nice and early like I always did back then. Tim, one of my fav clients, stopped by to drop off some bank statements on his way to a client client downtown.

"Traffic might be a mess," I warned. "I just heard on the radio that a plane crashed into a building down there." He thanks me for the heads up, and proceeded to his job scene.

I went back to work at my desk and listened as the events unfolded. Another plane crashed. Then another. Then another. Both Towers of the WTC had been hit, but were still standing. The Pentagon was also hit. One crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

I was listening to the Stern Radio Show, as I usually do that day. He stayed on the air until about 1:00 in the afternoon feeding information of the events as they came up. For people in offices, such radio shows were a Godsend.

So it seemed...

Until the reports of the Towers crumbling came. I remembered that the office of NYS Department of Taxation was in the World Trade Center. I had been there earlier in the year. I even had my passpart photo taken there as well. That was the first time that I actually stood outside the complex and beheld the majesty of these mammoth structures. I remembered thinking it's a fantastical thing that man's hands can create such structures.

Now it's gone. All gone.

The reports were coming in. One after another the buildings came down, like some perverse domino effect. The early estimates placed the death toll in NYC at around 10,000.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani immediately locked down the city. All roads and paths leading into the city were shutdown. No one was allowed in or out of the city. All you can do that day was sit and listen to the news and hope that everyone you knew were fine.

Later in the day they opened the bridges to let people OUT of the city, but not the subways. My car was in Long Island City that day, so I walked from the Upper East Side, down to the 59th Street Bridge, and over to 33rd and Queens Blvd. It was a long walk. Traffic was a mess. At least I made it out.

From where my wife worked in LIC, they were watching the clouds of smoke and debris from the roof of the Avirex Building.

My friend's mother was teaching a couple blocks away and saw the first plane go by.

My friend's father was working in one of the towers. Another friend had a brother in-law who worked in one of the restaurants at the top. Another friend worked on one a lower floor. She was the only one that I just mentioned who made it out.

I'll never forget that day, the way things unfolded. It's a terrible tragedy. The loss of life was uncalled for. Terrorist strikes are only cowardly attacks. How does killing innocent people achieve any goal?

We've all been touched. It'll remain sad forever.

That's why we always say in NY: 9/11 - Never Forget.