Remembering 9-11 NYC in 2020

The memories are more vivid this year.  We do sustain, forever changed. I remember telling someone then that “excruciating pain was living side-by-side with hope and a celebration of life.”  That is appropriate now as we experience another terrible time of loss.

The photos portray the incredible dignity that prevailed.  Smoke and embers filled the sky and air. A brilliant sky darkened. Marble Collegiate Church set up comfort space and served beverages to survivors walking by in shock, covered with debris. They accepted the drinks and kept walking.  

That morning promised a bright, magnificent day. The primary election was starting the ending of the embittered years of Mayor Giuliani -- years filled with discrimination, personal and professional scandals…and achievements. A NYC daily headline (it has disappeared online) "shouted" that no one would hire this man anywhere. 

The news announced that Rap Brown’s parole request was rejected.  I thought; “This generation will never understand what we went through in the 60s and 70s.”  How could they?

September 11 was my final checkup at Beth Israel Hospital on 14th Street.  I been in LA for five months to work and recover from an illness. I returned monthly to keep my volunteer student coaching with a wonderful sixth grader, Luis, who had become like family. A board member, I had a major role as the US-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, NE, prepared for the 16th of September Grito and an event with Mexico President Vicente Fox on the 22.nd  We put our names on the invitation envelopes with Two World Trade Center where we had a section of a law office on the 36th floor. It had been a difficult night as we worked by telephone well past midnight. I decided not to stop by. The massive Trade Center footprint was an uneasy, complicated experience; the attack on the parking areas a few years before had “only killed a couple of people.”  Terrorists had not finished the job.

I stopped at a Kinko’s to have the event document transformed to a jpeg format -- we did not have that software yet. A young man ran in screaming that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We calmed him; it was probably a small plane.  I had just spent three years working on 46th floor of Chase Manhattan Bank’s corporate offices where we photographed passing airplanes as they floated in clouds every day.

Entering Beth Israel, I was grabbed and questioned without detail about the subway.  At the office, my doctor ran past and pushed me aside. I sat there repeatedly calling our office with no response.  Back on the street, stores had closed and television sets were in every window.  Mobs of people gathered everywhere. Tower II had also been hit; it was not a small plane flying too low.

I walked slowly to Marble Collegiate Church on 29th and Fifth, telling myself this would become an average New York City day soon. I went to finish the jped process or go shopping. Anything mundane. Everything was shut down as managers stared blankly at passerby.   

Rev. Caliandro was standing in front of Marble; frozen in time, his eyes were fixed upward to the sky unable to speak. I sat in the community room as members watched television. Tower II fell first, and I broke, “That’s my office – and these two weeks are the anniversaries of my parents’ deaths (different years).” We began to serve beverages to survivors walking in slow motion, covered in debris with distant looks. I can still see their faces.  The sky had grown darker and we could see the smoke rising all day.

Cell and landline phones were out. Only payphones worked. Miraculously, I received two cell phone calls from Rep. Hilda Solis in Congress and my nephew who had received an invitation to the Pres. Fox event. 

A search for missing staff and board members started. Local shops gave us quarters for pay phones where the lines were long. In slow motion, we each made a call and then got back online.  I imagined London during a World War II crisis. Cristina, the owner of our partner Café Frida and I decided to start searching hospitals at 4 PM. By that time, we found everyone alive; by working late, they delayed starting work and arrived to watch everything unfold from the street. 

Only in New York: The subway was running by the afternoon. I called Luis, my “kid” to check in. I called friends to make sure they were safe on the upper eastside. We went to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. Another NYC tradition: Chinese restaurants stay open! I arrived home at 208th Street in Alto-Manhattan and could not breathe easily. The poisoned air had stretch for miles. I stayed with my neighbors who were from Yemen with five children and scared until college student family members arrived.

The world stopped: no entrance to the city; empty grocery stores; no banking services beyond grasping our hands and praying. The few channels repeated the same traumatizing news stories over and again. I fixated on Lifetime TV tragedies instead. Immediately, and for a month at least, planes circled our area every eight minutes, day and night. A friend overnighted funds two weeks later. The doctor sent medicine to help me breath but I could not volunteer at 
Ground Zero. People were driving in from across the nation. They could do nothing.

The Chamber lost its records and had no backup system. I buried myself inputting information and documents -- slept with my newsletter and the invitation to the Fox event for weeks. Staff and board gathered that week to hold our own wake. We shared the odd NYC reliance on the Towers: it had been easier to give directions by saying “to the left or right of the Tower,” etc.   A board member shared his experience watching the attack from the ferry. When interviewed, each person in his group of five witnesses, described the attack with completely different recall. Later we attended the funerals for all the Mexican workers to show our support.

That week, I joined my my sister-in-law’s nephew Peter who worked at the NYS Stock Exchange across from the Towers to talk and pray. Peter had decided not to attend the Windows of the World breakfast that day. He and his colleagues watched “jumpers,” the people who chose to jump to their deaths to avoid the fire. Many colleagues were so haunted that they never returned.  The emptiness and rising smoke continued for a very long time.

The subway stop park across from Beth Israel was a central gathering place, always crowded with memory placards, art, music and people who carried photos of missing loved ones, asking for help. The memorial that stays with me forever is Grand Central Station which set up a massive photo display of those missing and lost. Families added notes and more photos. This was a daily experience and a year later when the display was dismantled, we grieved again. They were truly gone. 

My friend Ana, an engineer, came to stay for one night during the first week so we could leave for Washington, DC. We saw the popular Broadway show, Aida.  A tribute to Broadway! The shows continued every night playing to empty audiences.  Thought alone in the theatre, we whispered.  Café Frida was crowded as everyone hugged, cried, and gave thanks to being alive and committed to re-building. o

Ana was alarmed by the poor air quality and confirmed the information I had.  New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman and Mayor Giuliani had provided alternative facts. The masks provided to protect ground zero first responders and workers were of Holloween mask quality. Honored journalist Juan Gonzales reported on the danger with those findings in the Daily News. Complaints went unanswered.  No one acted. The responders continue to suffer greatly and die horrible deaths because of official negligence.  The Senate tried to stop new funding two years ago until Jon Stewart and a dying policeman appeared before Congress. Today, it was reported that the current administration had siphoned off that money for other uses; no details yet today.

In 2020, as we face the Covid-19 pandemic, Todd Whitman and Giuliani remain untouched by the masks and other horrors. Giuliani’s strong presence and our sudden fear of change captivated the press who called him, “America’s Mayor.” The scandals continued as he nominated his buddy Bernick Kerick to head the newly formed be Department of Homeland Security. A security review landed Kerick in jail as the prison named in his honor took the sign down.  President Trump pardoned him.

My apartment overlooked a the glowing Spanish tile roof of Inwood’s Church of the Good Shepherd, the home of too many funerals which now has a garden with enameled forever portraits of lost firefighters and policemen and a cross made of medal from the Towers. Street naming ceremonies were ongoing as fire houses displayed photos of their lost brothers for a year. The grief for Fr. Mychal Judge, the fire department chaplain who became the first certified fatality was palpable. He had been killed by a jumper while giving last rites to a fallen firefighter.

We each navigated the return to a semblance of normalcy. The banks opened again. Once empty supermarkers were filled. With no work, entrepreneurs met to set up barter and business sharing arrangements. Many of us continued to take public transportation while others refused. People panicked from loud noises.  They greeted each other with, “So where were you?  Do you use the subway or buses?” Survivor guilt was rampant.

Luis and I created an experiential, art and photography project.  We visited our favorite sites and declared that "we were taking our city back."  

That first month, churches and synagogues added services as lines wrapped around the street corners. At Marble, we immediately gathered with local Imams to pray for peace, unity and justice. Sister Carol spoke with everyone that we never know if our own lives will last an hour, a day, a month, or a long time.  She challenged us to make a decision: Do you want to live that time depressed or experiencing a full life?”  That still guides me today.

Every New Years Eve, journalist Harry Smith and top Broadway stars performed at the world’s largest Cathedral St. John the Devine for hundreds of families who then joined a candlelight procession. And, each year, Smith ominously asked, “Will they come back?”

 
Someday I will share funny remembrances like the hysterical young guy on line who wanted to meet me because he had never communicated with a person who seemed to have lived so long.