September 11, 2001

The morning of September 11, 2001 dawned bright with promise of a beautiful cloudless late summer day. It was the morning of New York City's mayoral primary, and I hurried to the West Street headquarters of the Queens Board of Election to angle a few hours as a per-diem election inspector. I had just won a spot in a deserted corner of Maspeth and was awaiting transportation when a young man with a Walkman attached to his ears announced that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

My reaction to this was not to recall the earlier Trade Center attack which had taken several lives, but rather the 1930's accident of a World War II bomber slamming into the Empire State Building. Surely this was some foolish person pulling a daredevil stunt. The building drew them like magnets. In the 1970's, Phillipe Petit had successfully scaled the towers and walked a tightrope strung across. New York was known for publicity hounds and kooks. Surely this was more of the same.

But within minutes, with the news that the second building had been hit as well, I was disabused of my complacency. With the cancellation of all elections in New York City, we were directed home. The young man with the Walkman insisted that we could easily see the Trade Center from our location and proved it by directing me to a location just across the street from the Board of Elections that provided a clear line of sight due South to the buildings.

At this point both buildings were standing, but the one with the radio antennae was wreathed in blue-black smoke. Just weeks earlier, I was an eyewitness to the Father's Day fire in Astoria which took the lives of three firefighters, put two in intensive care, injured sixty and rendered dozens homeless. This nightmare had taken place when fire sparked by gasoline carelessly applied by a thoughtless youth to a building exterior ignited a pilot light and exploded an improperly stored propane tank.

At the time, that had been the worst fire in New York City history. Fire companies poured into Astoria, not only from every part of New York City, but even from adjacent states. I had never before seen Connecticut and Long Island firefighters at a New York blaze. Little did we know that this terrible catastrophe would be a mere footnote within weeks.

When I walked away from the terrible sight of the burning building, I was met by the sight of many confused people who were trapped in Long Island City because every form of public transportation had been suspended. I urged them to quickly run across the Queensboro Bridge walkways and make it into Manhattan before the shocked Manhattanites roused from their stunned amazement and poured into Queens, thereby sealing off that route.

While I cooked with rage, I ran across the street to the Army recruiting offices in Queensboro Plaza, hoping to volunteer clerical services to help them free up men for more important work. My fury knew nothing of security checks or pre-employment screening. If I could not personally exact vengeance, I knew the men who could. Of course, all those offices slammed shut as every soldier, sailor, policemen, firefighter, construction worker, court officer and medical professional ran to the sight of the horror like dalmatians after a racing firetruck.

Coming home that day, I was met with a shocking, not sight, but sound. No planes in the air. Every airplane, helicopter and advertising blimp in America was grounded. Perhaps for the first time since Kitty Hawk, there was not an aircraft in the skies.

For one who had grown up directly under the flight paths of LaGuardia and JFK, who had been taken down to Astoria Park to view the tourist helicopters and news-copters traversing their well-worn paths along the East River, it was truly eerie.

Like many others, I headed immediately to the Astoria General Hospital to donate blood, but the call never came. You either left on your own two feet from that burning hell or you were scraped off the sidewalk, There was no middle ground.

For days we all watched News Channel 1, a cable company that temporarily usurped our normal networks all of whom had been brought down along with their World Trade Center-housed transmitters. Although we watched and prayed, we were all disappointed. Except for a small pocket of survivors discovered early, there would be hoaxes, mistakes and liars, but no good news.

My brother in law, and his fellow correction officers did yeoman service on that burning pile of chemicals that had once been our proudest tourist trap, but what was recovered could have been handled with tweezers, so thoroughly had the weight of falling girders and crematorium temperatures done their job.

Like all such events, the World Trade Center produced its share of gallows humor. One wife of a World Trade Center based financial company called her husband frantically trying to find out whether he was alive or dead. He reached over, picked up the phone from the nightstand of his hotel room bed where he was engaged in illicit assignation and answered. His wife said, "Thank God, I've got you, where are you?" Since he had been otherwise engaged, he was unaware of world events and snappishly replied, "At the office, where do you think I am." Her reply? "Turn on your television."

Then there was the African American man saved by a rude boss. This young man was new to the City, having traveled in from out of state to take his first job in a company located at the very top of the Towers. Because the Towers had earlier been attacked by fanatics wielding car bombs, an elaborate security procedure had been developed involving twenty minute or more lines to check ID.

No sooner had this young man had cleared the line for ID's and transferred through two banks of elevators to get to his office, when his boss sent him back down for coffee. From the Concourse level where the man was headed for coffee, he spotted the first plane hitting his building. He proceeded straight down the stairs and did not get off until 125th Street in Harlem. He called his kin from the only other place he knew in the city besides his work and home-Sylvia's soul food restaurant.

That day has past, but will never be forgotten. I was thankful that my father, who had survived the Blitz in London, did not live to see this terror bombing as well. God rest the fallen and those who have loved them.