Remembering 9/11

Loving NYC, not comparing grief, recognizing heroism

September 18, 2023

I just read one of the most heartwrenching books I ever have, “The Only Plane In the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11” by Garrett M. Graff. It is a marvel of reporting, talking to so many people who lived through 9/11 or who lost a loved one that day. Absolutely remarkable heroism, including hundreds of firefighters who went up in the buildings trying to save people with the knowledge that it would likely mean their own deaths, as well as civilians who risked or lost their lives that day.

When 9/11 happened, I was months out of college, living in Texas and having just started a full-time job as a sports reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I had first visited New York City in June 1999, upon my return from a semester studying abroad in Toledo, Spain. A close friend of my Dad’s, Jim Kelley, picked me up at JFK and showed me around NYC for two days (he lived a couple of hours away in Connecticut), springing for two rooms at the Hilton not far from the World Trade Center. We toured the Twin Towers on that first trip of mine to NYC. I have pictures on film in an album somewhere at my parent’s house, but not with me to share. I returned several times to NYC over the next two years as a reporter with the Notre Dame Observer, but I hardly knew NYC in person as of the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Like most people and especially most Americans (more than most, I am sure, working at a newspaper), I read, watched and listened to extensive coverage of 9/11 both in the immediate aftermath and in the months, years, and now decades that have followed. And I have lived in NYC for 12 years since then, until moving to Spain in June 2022, at a time I had never loved NYC more. In fact, staying in NYC throughout the worst of COVID gave me a fierce sense of defending anyone who would dare attack my city, as if the Greatest City in the World needs me to defend it or as if it belongs to me even a tiny bit among the tens of millions of New Yorkers who have lived there.

Yet because I wasn’t a New Yorker and never had been when 9/11 happened, I’ve always felt a bit guarded about how to even talk about 9/11, how to remember it. To not remember that day, to not remember the thousands of lives lost and the many more thousands acutely impacted and the entire world that changed course as a result of that day - well, that would be like pretending it didn’t forever change the world. But to just post on social media, is that too flip for those who have nightmares daily or lost a family member or have lifelong illness due to fumes inhaled? I have many friends and acquaintances in NYC or who lived in NYC who had narrow escapes, who saw the Towers fall from their apartment or office or school a few blocks away, who lost somebody near to them. I don’t want to be disrespectful.

Reading this book somehow brought the horror and the loss of that day to me in a new, deeper way. Perhaps it’s the combination of distance (in the form of years) from then coupled with 12 years of living in NYC and knowing it and loving it in an intimate way.

It was harrowing to read the accounts of family members who spent that day unsure if their wife or son or husband had made it out or would survive. You have firefighter Dan Potter and Bank of America employee Jean Potter who worked on the 81st floor of the North Tower, husband and wife, he thought she had probably died and she thought he was far from the scene safe; neither was right, they both survived. He was pictured in his firefighter’s uniform on a bench in a famous photograph, shot at a moment when he thought his wife had been killed. You have Genelle Guzman, an office assistant from Trinidad with the Port Authority on the 64th Floor of the North Tower, who was the last person to be brought out of the wreckage alive, 27 hours later. You have her office-mate, engineer Pasquale Buzzelli, who was on his way down the stairs when the North Tower collapsed and miraculously “surfed” (not consciously) down with the collapsing building, falling 18 floors and being trapped but not crushed under wreckage; his 7 1/2 months pregnant wife Louise at home in Riverdale believing he must be dead; he was one of the last to be rescued and one of two known to have survived a fall like that. He has said in interviews he feels survivor’s guilt.

You have the Cartier family, two of whom worked in the towers - James Cartier, an electrician working in the South Tower, did not survive; but he had called his brother, John, to come rescue their sister, Michele, who worked at an investment brokerage in the North Tower, calling at a time the North Tower had been hit but not yet the South. John came on his motorcycle and found her outside in the wreckage, somehow. You have firefighters like Capt. Jay Jonas and Lt. Mike Warchola (on what was to have been his last day on active duty), who helped save a woman named Josephine Harris. You have 24-year-old Welles Crowther, an equities trader who was also a volunteer firefighter - he made three trips to the skydeck to try to save colleagues and others in the building, and ultimately was killed that day. The man in the red bandana.

There are so many heroes throughout the day. I can’t recommend highly enough reading the book. One was Rick Rescorla, a British soldier who was leading security for Morgan Stanley and defied orders saying they didn’t need to evacuate the South Tower. Of more than 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees in that tower, just 11 died, including Rescorla and two of his security colleagues who tried to rescue people.

So many heroes.

And some, many, who were far from the events of the day, commented that it was the last day of their youth. The last day that America was ever so carefree. I was 21 then, crossing from youth to adult, and I agree with the sentiment.

America has never returned to the pre-9/11 innocence. Will it ever, someday in the future, regain that spirit?

NYC has been rebuilt. It’s a city that at its essence is constantly shifting. That is the heart of New York City, it’s a place of immigrants and dreamers, ambitious strivers aiming to change the world. Which means it is ever-changing. But not, usually, due to one man-made tragedy.

It was said in the book, the saying “Never Forget” has been too often coopted for the wrong purposes, that some prefer “Remember.” Remember those lost, remember those who were heroes.

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