I remember the day as though it were yesterday. Can it really be twenty years on?
I had picked-up my gym bag and was about to leave for my polling site—it was primary election day—and then onward to the gym and to the shop. I was nearly out-the-door when I heard the kitchen radio (NPR affiliate, WNYC): "We have a report of an explosion in the World Trade Center. We'll provide more details as the story develops."
Instead of heading to the polls, I headed-up to the roof deck of my Chelsea apartment building. It was quiet up there; only me and the Building Superintendent who was hosing-down the wooden lounge chairs. As I stood at the southern parapet of the roof deck, watching the smoke wafting from the top of one of the towers, I remember thinking that it looked like some kind of giant, Modernist cigarette, burning at the foot of Manhattan Island. I was about a mile and a half away. The sky was crystal clear. It seemed like a perfect day.
My super walked-over to me. We were still alone on the roof. "You know," he said, "a plane just flew right over the building. Really low."
"A small plane?" I asked. "Like a Cessna?"
"No. A large commercial airplane," he said. "It was low and flew right over the building."
"Do you think it hit the World Trade Center," I asked him. "It's so clear out."
"I don't know," he said. "There's perfect visibility."
These were the first, seemingly benign moments of a day which would unfold like no other. By the end of the day, four commercial aircraft—full of innocent passengers—and buildings full of people would be destroyed. Nearly 3,000 people would lose their lives. And our nation would never be the same.
I never made it to vote. Nor did I get to the gym. I did head-down to check on the store. There was a police-check at Fourteenth Street, but he let me through when I told him that I wanted to secure my shop.
The walk back home was eerie. It was so quiet! Except for the occasional police siren, there was no automobile noise—or traffic—at all. And the weather was still sublime.
An "exodus" was just beginning to trickle-up Seventh Avenue. A mass of humanity—some of them white with dust, like ghosts—would slowly proceed, on foot, past my apartment all day long. Everyone had to walk home that day: whether to Brooklyn, Harlem, or the Upper East Side.
The most poignant site of the day was the battery of doctors and nurses lined-up like soldiers in front of Saint Vincent's Hospital—stretchers and IV poles at-the-ready—prepared to receive the wounded. But there really weren't many wounded that day. On September 11th, people either walked-home coughing or they would stay in Lower Manhattan forever.
God bless the souls of those lost on that terrible day.