Where were you on September 11? I received a phone call that morning from the town landfill here in Huntersville to service a computer system problem. One of the local radio stations has a morning called “John-Boy and Billy” who are a pair of redneck jokesters. I heard them talking about “a small plane hit the Trade Center” and “We’re under attack” but we were still in the incredulous mode of “how the heck could someone accidentally fly a plane into one of the towers?” we were not yet aware it was a true attack on our nation.

When I got to the site, I learned it was no joke… luckily, of the two stations the television was able to receive they both were showing footage of the burning building. The second plane had just hit and the inferno was at it’s crescendo. People were jumping out of the building to avoid the flames and emergency crews were headed into the carnage. Unconfirmed reports from the Pentagon were also coming in. As the world would learn, it was pandemonium.

WTC 2 Falls behind the scenes

I had two friends who worked at the Trade Center. All lines were busy into New York so there was no way I could contact them. One of the other employees next to me had a sister who worked in the towers, and he was pacing, praying, calling, crying… As I watched the television something in me knew that the buildings were going to come down. I’m not an engineer but I know my basic physics and for me, it was a waiting game. The primary angle on the television had the second tower hidden behind the first and at one point there seemed to be a flurry of dust in the background and before the newscasters could confirm, somehow I knew as it happened that the second tower that got hit had been the first to fall.

I also knew, sickeningly, but maybe mercifully, that there would be no bodies to bury. Each floor, an acre in size, when pancaked, would shoot it’s contents explosively out the windows, but correspondingly, the descending building would create a vacuum which would then suck the contents back upon itself on top of the next floor to pancake. Explode, suck, grind… explode suck, grind… one hundred and ten times. Twice.  Three thousand human beings. Ground to powder. Only a handful of intact bodies and an even smaller number of survivors were discovered in the bottom floors and basement.

Later that day I was able to get through to friend #1 who made it out on the last ferry to Staten Island before Manhattan was locked down. He could not explain the eerie silence and shock of those looking out in awe at the gaping hole in the cityscape, replaced by a black plume of ever-rising smoke. I tried contacting Friend #2, who I had only seen about 10 days earlier, and we had lunch at the fountain between the towers. I had written him off for dead but after 5 weeks he had called me back saying he was in England and could not get back to the States for all that time. Most of the people in his company had been killed and what was left moved uptown to a new smaller office. I hadn’t learned until nearly 8 years later that I had lost a classmate. Our class reunion lost two of its members: one to the towers and one to suicide.

The Sphere in Battery Park

This is the Sphere. Battered but not broken.

It was about 7 years later I finally made it back to New York to see The Hole. I visited The Sphere in Battery Park which was located in the fountain where my friend and I had lunch. It has been nine years now and it’s shameful that we haven’t rebuilt the site or even put up a memorial. Even more shameful is the thought of erecting a mosque, funded mostly by the home nation of the majority of the lost and wayward individuals who perpetrated the act. Our national sin of omission has enabled an even greater international sin of commission, but that’s for another discussion.

America, what’s your 9-11 story? Where were you, and how has it affected your life? What say you?