I Will Always Remember

I will always remember where I was on 9/11 when I heard the first reports and then watching those planes going into those towers. I will never be able to wash away the vision of human beings, in one last desperate, futile attempt to live, jumping from those towers.

I will always remember passing the Middletown, NJ Train Station that evening coming home from work, seeing the un-retrieved cars. 37 residents of that town died that day. I saw their cars day in, day out for weeks, until they were claimed.

I will always remember passing the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, twice a week, driving on the West Shore Expressway towards my Brooklyn office. There, for all to see for months and months after: so many emergency responders, law enforcement, Sanitation workers, civilian volunteers, working together in mournful silence, sifting through tons of debris in the heartbreaking attempt to find human remains and personal affects of the victims. A huge American flag planted there as they worked, attached to the top of a gigantic crane. Instinctively, rush hour traffic — fast-paced, always-in-a-rush-New Yorkers — would slow down just long enough to pass that site, as if in silent homage to the patriots there and to the magnificence of that wavering symbol of freedom.

I saved, and still have, New York Post articles from those days, and from the first anniversary, to show my daughter, then just 4 years old, when she got older. I wanted her to see what heroism is, and to understand why we stand for our anthem, put hands over hearts for our flag, and why this is the greatest country on the face of the Earth.

God Bless America

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