Have You Forgotten?

I am proud to be an American and a New Yorker in particular. After living in Providence, El Paso, Key West and then spending another 10 years in the DC suburb of  Fairfax, Virginia I happily returned home in 1989. While I never failed to put down roots, fully embracing the experience no matter where I lived, a large part of my heart remained in New York and I always considered it my home. Always.

I grew up in a close-knit family, the firstborn of 10 children. All of my siblings were in New York as were my parents. It was wonderful to be back home once again where my family could see my children grow up just as I could witness their growing families.

September 11th, 2001 was one of those spectacularly glorious end-of-summer days where you couldn't help but feel anything but happy to be alive. I left my house in southwestern Nassau County traveling north on the Cross Island Parkway to my office in Queens when the first plane hit the World Trade Towers.  It seemed a perfect morning for blasting music on the car's CD player rather than listening to the news so I was oblivious to that deadly fact. Minutes after I arrived at my office I learned what happened and immediately sought more information from local news websites. The pages were painfully slow to fully load but the images of the deadly destruction was unmistakable.  The security cam TV in the office of one of the Vice President's had been switched to the local news channel.  Not a lot of information yet available, initial reports indicating that a small plane had somehow managed to tragically go off course.

That evening I was supposed to see Tom Selleck in "A Thousand Clowns" on Broadway, a belated birthday gift from a friend and I was looking forward to it. I wondered if this awful accident downtown would affect our plans. My department and the rest of the company continued to work, and I frequently checked the TV news. One of my co-workers was distraught because a good friend of hers worked in one of the World Trade Center towers. She was reassured when she received word from her friend's mom that her friend was not in the tower that was hit. Later we would learn that her relief was short-lived.

I was concerned about my own sister who worked in the World Trade Center but resisted the urge to call my Mom at home or my Dad at work and burden them with what I was certain would be yet another phone call from frantic siblings worrying about my sister's welfare. I tried calling my friend with whom I was to go to the city but it was impossible to complete any cell phone calls. I tried reaching my children but it was near impossible to get through to anyone by telephone.

When I checked the TV news coverage a while later I thought I was witnessing yet another replay of the earlier crash but was horrified to learn that it was a live feed.

My department canceled any service calls we had scheduled for the WTC area. The company I work for never closed that day, schedules were adjusted and warehouse and office employees moved about like zombies, half-heartedly working and gathering in small groups to discuss what was now being reported as a likely terrorist attack on our country.

I continued to monitor news updates on the Internet and was at my desk when it was reported that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. It was overwhelming news and my eyes burned with the tears I could no longer hold back. I had so many friends in Virginia that worked in the Pentagon and the DC area. It was incomprehensible. All air traffic had been halted across the nation and there were rumors of dozens of flights still unaccounted for. Then the devastating news of a plane that had crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania that was believed to have been headed back to the DC area and possibly the White House. My friend related to me that people were starting to leap from the shattered windows of World Trade Center offices located above where the planes crashed rather than be consumed by the unstoppable inferno. It was not in the news. I did not want to believe her and inwardly resented that she would tell me something so disgustingly evil. 

But she was right.

The office finally closed early at 4:00 PM and I began the eerie ride home retracing the route I had taken just that morning. It was early rush hour but the parkways were uncharacteristically nearly empty. When I exited onto the Southern State Parkway I saw that emergency vehicles blocked all traffic going west towards the city. 

I was anxious to see my seven children but concerned about how could I ever help them to understand the pure evil that had occurred on that day.

My commute to work in the weeks after were completely foreign to what I had been accustomed. American flags seemed to have sprung up on hundreds of cars and there was soon a shortage of American flags of any type to be had. People were kindly and forgiving of any inadvertently discourteous driving. Smoke and haze hung over the low-lying areas of the area for days, weeks and the odor was indescribable, odd, haunting.

During the days after the murderous terror attack on my beloved New York City I remained glued to the television absorbing the horror as the details unfolded. During that time I discovered Fox News Channel and fell into the habit of leaving the TV on all night so I could wake up to the most current news.

A few weeks ago I received an email news alert that a terror raid was being conducted in Queens, New York. No details such as WHERE in Queens. When I got to the LIRR station on the way home from work I noticed helicopters hovering overhead, the raid was just blocks from my workplace.

I thought back to my sister returning home from the city the day terrorists murdered thousands of Americans covered in the dust and ash of the fallen towers - and many of her co-workers. I thought back to the heart-breaking TV broadcasts of the loved ones of thousands of victims holding their photos up with contact information in a vain attempt to locate them. I, like many New Yorkers, lost friends and neighbors and I remembered them, as I frequently did. I thought about how I had resolved NOT to be afraid when I got on an airplane, how I refused to be cowed to the threat of terrorism, how I would continue to live my life in spite of any threat. For to do so would give undeserved power to those terrorists.

In a September 27th article “The Terrorist Threat Still Exists” Diane Dimond asks what we should be concerned about, what should we be doing to combat further attacks? One reader commented that he was “mostly scared of the CIA and germ warfare”. I responded that:

I am not scared about the latest terror threats in my own neighborhoods, but I am ANGRY.

ANGRY that so many could FORGET the impact of 9/11 and the subsequent finger-pointing that found fault in those that failed to "connect the dots".

ANGRY that our government would see fit to dilute the reality and unforgiving danger of terrorism by eliminating even the word TERROR from their language.

ANGRY that I am reminded of September 11th every time I hear or see a plane flying overhead.

ANGRY that for even the briefest of moments that I wondered about the lovely Muslim family that moved into the house next door. They came here for a better life much in the same way that my grandparents did.

ANGRY that after September 11th I felt unbridled, unrelenting hate for the first time in my life. 

I agree with the comment that the CIA is being systematically weakened. It is already occuring. People should rightfully be SCARED of the CIA, but those people should be the terrorists. And germ warfare? Well, gas masks are no protection against senselessly exploding buildings and the bodies of those that chose to jump to a horrific death rather than be incinerated in a burning skyscraper.

On September 12th, 2001 we were truly One Nation, Indivisible. Sadly, in the years since this is not so much the case. 

Have you forgotten? I have not. To do otherwise is to allow the terrorists to prevail by destroying us from the inside out.

God bless America and all heroes that fight to protect us each and every day.