We Remember
Photo: Brendan Loy, Flickr.com
On the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we here at Onboard Informatics remember. These are some of our stories.
-rsh
Tags: 9/11.
Photo: Brendan Loy, Flickr.com
On the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we here at Onboard Informatics remember. These are some of our stories.
-rsh
Tags: 9/11.
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
A difficult day for me and many folks I know. I watched the entire debacle from a rooftop just across the East River and then spent most of the next two days bringing food and water to the firemen downtown. I snuck across Canal Street and didn’t come back for 36 hours.
Somehow I manage to look past the friends I’ll never see again and instead remember how the firemen told the cops to buzz off when they found me helping out and the absolutely amazing and agonizing conversations and shared experiences we had.
The following week, the hard core techno-heads (of which I’m one) gathered at Guernica on Ave B for a fireman’s tribute. Nearly 100 of them showed up and Plasticman and others put on a free show. I’ve never been hotter, happier and sadder all at once.
- peace
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
That morning was one of the most glorious days that year. It dawned bright and sunny with the clearest blue skies.
But I was miserable.
I had gone to bed with a bit of a headache, and woke up with a fullblown something: fever, migraines, queasiness… just sick as a dog. This wasn’t good.
I was working at a startup in 2001, and we had a very important breakfast meeting that morning with a technology incubator group. Our VC was going to be there, as well as several others who were important to our second round of funding. As we had been working our butts off for the preceding six months getting our product ready to launch, and knowing that the next round of funding was contingent on successfully hitting the product launch milestone, we were keyed up about the meeting. It would prove to be a major validation of what we had been working on. The CEO and I were to present our company, our product, get thoughts and feedback from an audience of entrepreneurs, angel investors, and VC investors that morning.
But I was sick. There was no way I could make it.
I ended up calling the CEO and letting him know. He said cheerfully that it was fine, he can handle the meeting, and that I should go back to bed and feel better.
The breakfast meeting was to be at Windows on the World restaurant, at the top of World Trade Center North Tower.
I went back to bed. Next thing I know, my roommate is shaking me awake saying, “Hey Rob, you should see this.” Apparently, a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and the TV was showing pictures of black smoke pouring into the bright blue sky. At the time, we all had thought some moron pilot of a small Cessna or something had gotten lost or had a seizure or something and had crashed into a skyscraper.
Within a few minutes, however, as we were transfixed on the TV, we saw a second fireball bloom on the other tower. The TV reporter’s voice turned from professional calm to something else — something excited, with a note of hysterical dread underneath his cadences.
“A second plane has struck the World Trade Center” are the words I remember. “This cannot be an accident.”
indeed, it was no accident, but an attack on us. My mind immediately went to my CEO, who would have been sitting down to coffee and toast right about then on top of the North Tower of WTC. I called him, or tried, but by then, all of the phone circuits were overwhelmed as worried friends and family tried reaching people in or near the WTC. (He managed to get out just before the towers collapsed, and ended up swimming across the Hudson River to escape. He has never spoken about what he saw that day, but he was never the same man since.)
I tried calling my girlfriend (now my wife) who was supposed to be on a flight to Texas that day to go visit clients. No dice. All circuits busy.
Over the course of that day, friends started to drop by, because none of us were going to work that day. Those that had gone to work and been told to go home. They showed up at our apartment, rather than going home to their tiny studios. My girlfriend showed up after a couple of hours, none too worse for wear, as her flight — as well as every flight throughout the United States that day — had been canceled. We sat transfixed by the sights and sounds on the TV.
I remember so distinctly that when the first tower collapsed, all of us in the room let out a collective gasp. I remember all of us heading to the nearest Red Cross center to give blood, joining thousands, millions of other New Yorkers. A city that was usually defined by people cursing at each other became a single community that banded together overnight. There was no black, white, Asian, rich, poor, gay, straight that evening. All those things that usually divide us became completely irrelevant that day. We were all just New Yorkers, who had been attacked, and who may be attacked again — as we all expected to be.
With seven years of time, perhaps the memory of September 11th has become overly politicized. But I will always remember both the feeling of horror at seeing the towers collapse into grey dust, and the feeling of unity with my fellow New Yorkers in the immediate days following 9/11 when we put all of our differences aside and focused on the things that bind us together.
I remember.
-rsh
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Growing up in and around Lower Manhattan, I passed the Twin Towers hundreds and hundreds of times. Often I would first glimpse them, dwarfing the NYC skyline, from a car window cruising along the I-78 extension towards the Holland Tunnel entrance. On that road, you could see the entire span of The City, from the Statue of Liberty all the way up past the Empire State building and beyond. The Towers loomed so large, Lady Liberty appeared as just another (much smaller) awed onlooker, pearing skyward towards The Towers beyond.
Once downtown, I would *always* crane my neck way, way back to take in The Towers’ full magnitude. First as a child in the backseat – then as an adolescent in the front seat – finally as an adult in the drivers seat. That last part being the trickiest, since it is a bit of a challenge driving forward while staring a quarter mile into the sky. I can readily recall feeling as though people looked down on my as a tourist gazing at the sights – but I could simply never shake the feeling of awe every single time I saw The Towers. Though I’m a New Yorker – I didn’t really care what those other people thought anyway
There was a restaurant at the very top of The Towers, Windows on the World. I believe we celebrated my grandmother’s 80th birthday up there back in the late 1980′s. View – incredible. Food, well, eh… However when I returned in the late 90′s to celebrate my anniversary with my girlfriend, the place had new management. View – still incredible. Very good food. I recall the well-known sommelier who cheerfully accepted my contention that our bottle of champagne was “off”, even though she thought it was just fine. I think she knew I was trying to impress. It must have worked. That girlfriend became my wife.
Of course I can’t forgot those elevators. I’ve gone fast in a straight line, I’ve fallen fast (jumping from a plane is all its cracked up to be), but the feeling of rocketing skyward in those elevators was something to behold. And then of course there was The Sway. They say those tall buildings were meant to sway back and forth with the wind. I’m sure they were right, but it didn’t make it feel any less natural – or less scary.
On 9/11, I remember walking north. Walking, walking, walking like a refugee. I had been downtown, very, very close. After one unsuccessful evacuation attempt from my location, I chose to wait several hours before trying to leave downtown. It was snowing – what I don’t know. I lived on East 76th Street at the time – something like 5 miles from The Towers. I walked and walked with Jennifer & Stephanie. I remember the first time I looked back – I had just crossed Houston Street. I couldn’t see The Towers – just smoke. Endless, grey, billowing, thick smoke. I remember the smell – an acrid burning horrible smell. I remember the jets – fighter jets flying overhead. I remember the sadness – for the untold victims, for the city, for our country.
But these days when I reflect on 9/11, I try and think a bit further back – to The Towers I remember as a kid on my drive to see Aunt Phyllis, to a City I love, to another time. So much has happened since that day, but I will always have my memories of The Towers.
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I was working on Long Island at the time, and was at an award’s breakfast when about mid-way through one of the executives came in and whispered something to the owner of the company. At that point the owner got up to the podium and announced that a plane had hit one of the towers, but at the time didn’t have anymore details than that.
Needless to say that ended the breakfast. People that had loved ones who worked in the city scrambled for their cell phones so they could check in. I remember one of my friends flying out of the restaurant we were at because his sister worked in one of the towers and he was trying to get ahold of her (thankfully she had chosen to work in a satellite office on Long Island that day).
That day put a lot into perspective.
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
On the morning of 9/11/2001, I was in the DMV hoping to beat the crowd. But the crowd was already there: a woman with 3 unruly children; a man that was very upset about nobody recognizing how important he was; people trying to get their bureaucratic obligations out of the way before heading off to work; people that seemed to simply want to be around other people; elderly men and women that seemed to keep getting lost in the shuffle; and then there was me–the young fool who was glad he wasn’t any of them.
Part of the horror of 9/11 was the swift break from the monotony. It was just another day in NY; it was just another day of New Yorkers trying to co-mingle with one another, without actually being affected by one another. And, as the voice of a frantic radio DJ boomed through the DMV’s speaker, we became enmeshed. Nobody was unruly; nobody was more important than the other; nobody had to go to work; nobody was lost in the shuffle; I no longer saw myself as different than any of them; and (for a few minutes–before we ventured out into what was now a much different world) we all seemed to want to just be with each other.
It was a different NY.
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Each Night I go home, I pass Ground Zero. I live only blocks away. I lived only blocks away on the dreadful day. Each time I pass, I am still in awe that something like this happened, blown away at that the loss the so many suffered, and so many watched. I watched!! I stood on my corner 7 blocks and watched the second plane hit the tower. I still see the woman to my right shaking and holding her mouth, mumbling oh my god, oh my god. I recall asking myself why i was just standing there, and ran home to see what was going on. I turned on my tv, and turned on my IM- I realized that there were so many people I knew that could have be in the buildings or that area- I started to panic. Before I could get too crazy my whole apartment started to shake, tower two was falling, and chaos ensued. I had Jon on Im , he was trapped in his office ( of monsterdata) just a few blocks from the towers, I couldn’t use my phone, and smoke and dust were filling my street- I grabbed my three dogs and said “lets go’!!! We ran, we ran fast, stopping to help the walking wounded who were, I’m not sure how to describe it, but lets just say they were moving up hudson street, with blood, tears, and parts of the buildings all over them- it was surreal. As I write this its still surreal.
To those who lost family, friends, or even a piece of your believe in the world, our hearts go out to you- you are not alone- too many of us were there- too many of us have a story.
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
That morning I woke up and bounced out of bed, excited. I was energized for the day; up early…I loved being the first one in the office. Even though I had a standing Tuesday 9am meeting at 75 Wall St, I always stopped into my office at 200 Park Ave first to prepare.
I took the 4 train down to Wall St from Grand Central. I ran up the stairs with extra pep, at the end of the day I was headed to finalize my wedding plans…choose my menu, seating, pay my final deposit…at Windows on the World restaurant. The week before, I had requested a Tuesday 8am (9/11/01) meeting with the catering manager. He denied my request due to a large breakfast event that was being held that morning. We agreed on 5pm instead, 9/11/01 on the 107th Floor of Tower 1.
When I got to the top of the stairs of the subway stop in front of Trinity Church, people were stopped in the street -staring up, not moving, just staring. The plane had just struck the first tower. Burning pieces of paper were floating through the air.
It almost reminded me of the mess that a ticker tape parade makes…except this paper was burned. As I walked back towards the stock exchange, I was able to see a hole. I couldn’t tell which tower it was -and of course was hoping it wasn’t the one that was going to host my wedding reception. I had no idea what had happened or what was about to happen.
A co-worker reached me via my pager, telling me that an aircraft had hit the tower. A frequent business traveler, I thought about how crowded the airways were and what a horrible accident- was air traffic control not paying attention or did a pilot lose control of a small plane?
As I stood on the street corner looking up thinking these thoughts, a fire ball erupted along with a huge explosion. The second tower had been hit. I knew this was an attack.
I didn’t know what to do. The only word that came to my mind was…which would be the same word all New Yorkers would mutter that day….surreal. I ran into two co -workers who were down for a meeting with another Wall St. Firm. The three of us began to walk towards the east side and then found ourselves running to escape the dust and rumble of the first collapse.
I was in a suit and heels. I took my shoes off and began to run barefoot, a woman in the middle of all of this turmoil, stopped me by grabbing my shoulders. She reached down into a shopping bag and pulled out a brand new pair of sneakers that she had just purchased -pulled them right out of the box, laces not even laced. She insisted I put them on and then she disappeared running.
The crowds were pushing on the piers near South Street Seaport to get on boats to get off Manhattan. I knew if I left the island, I wasn’t going to be able to get back on it – I wouldn’t be able to find my fiance’ or to get to my two dogs. Leaving the island wasn’t an option.
My co-worker, Michael, and I pushed our way off the pier through the crowds and headed north, up the east side of Manhattan. Our third co-worker, who happened to be our boss, was insistent we get on the boat.
Michael needed to get back to Long Island and I needed to get back to the Upper West Side. We left him (and it was really hard to do) on the pier as he screamed in fear at us and told us if we didn’t get on the boat we were risking our lives. It was one of the most intense moments of my life.
I will never forget the people we walked with and walked past. The looks on people’s face, the smell of the burning and collapse, the gray debris all over everything. I still cannot bear to watch any of the coverage of what occurred 7 years ago.
What I choose to remember about that day was the pure kindness that came out in all people, New Yorkers and the visitors that were with us that day. Store owners handing out food and water to the crowds streaming out of lower Manhattan -taking no money. The kindness of strangers, looking out for one another, our heroes -NYPD and NYFD rushing to the scene. Helping each other. Supporting each other. Uniting as a city, as a country.
I send my prayers out to the families of all the loved ones who lost their lives seven years ago today in this horrible tragedy.
I remember.
-Jennifer Seagrave
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I was not in NYC that day but in CT and like Rob was not feeling too good. I called in late that day and switched on the TV and saw that one of the towers was on fire. I too thought some bozo flew his little plane into the tower and just hoped that everyone was going to be OK. Just a few minutes later I saw this massive plane in the background – a big ole airliner – and I said to myself what the heck is that plane doing flying so low and all of a sudden it slammed into the other tower. The tv announcers said that we were under attack. I immediately called the office and told them what was going on and to switch on the tv’s. My colleagues and I ran the data center for Gartner and said get in here immediately, we need to do some re-routing and back ups and that Gartner was sending everyone home. I rushed to get to the Trumbull CT office and as I approached I was shocked at the sight – SWAT teams lined the streets to the office complex and would not let anyone in. When they approached me, with their semi automatic weapons – I was scared to death. As I was responsible for the data center, I explained and explained but they would not let me in. I had to call the CEO of Gartner on his cell phone to speak to the head officer to let me in. Once I arrived to the building, again I was shocked to see the SWAT teams all over the roofs of our data center building and the NASDAQ data center building which was across the street. I spent the next 2 days working on disaster recovery watching the TV crying my eyes out for the people who were killed. Several weeks later, our local newspaper ran a story with pictures of the 300 or so people who were killed in the attacks that actually lived in my local area. I remember that WE ALL CAME TOGETHER and WE STAYED TOGETHER. As Lee Greenwood sang in his song – “I’m pround to be an American”.!
on Sep 11th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I hesitated before posting this. I wasn’t sure that I should, that I had a right to. I spent some of my time growing up here, and I also remember my father taking me past the Twin Towers, but they had no real meaning to me outside of this context. My family moved away from NYC when I was young, and the rest of my time growing up was spent in Israel and Florida. Most everyone posting here will have some much more personal connection to this. They lost their footing, or their friends, while the world shook as the towers fell. I do have a story, a couple–they’re just not mine. Let me explain.
At that time I was running a (really) small consulting company. We had a contract with a health care company in South Florida, and I was working at the client site doing an early-morning migration with the team. My friend and fellow consultant, Patrick, had grown up in Sierra Leone, and I had an interesting childhood, myself. Suffice to say, we both somewhat understood how bad the bad that bad people do could be. Remember when most Americans couldn’t say the same? And all that meant on September 11th was that, after the first plane hit, we knew enough to be scared and angry for just a few minutes longer than most of the people in the room.
I remember feeling a complete…disconnect with those people for the minutes in between the impacts:
“Oh my God! What an awful accident!” and “What kind of idiot flies that low? I hope no one was hurt!” and “What are the odds of that?!”
No, really. What are the odds of that?
This is after the news of the first plane, the reaction of the fundamentally, relentlessly optimistic. Which in that room included everyone except me and Patrick, who just looked over at me and gave me one of his raised eyebrow looks. You’d have to know Pat, but he could put volumes of interrogative thought into one of those. And I nodded. I’d love to say nodded “knowingly”, or even “sadly”. Truthfully, nodded “numbly” or “dumbly” is probably more apt.
More planes, fire, building and people falling to their death, calmy clutching their Zero Haliburtons, real wrath of God type stuff, and now it’s:
“What are the chances of a second accident?”
Seriously, this was asked by someone. Out loud. I wanted to cry—and I’m not saying that…the way I normally would be, I mean it as a simple statement of fact, that I actually wanted to cry. Later on, when I finally got around to processing all this, I remember feeling that this was actually a really beautiful thing. Like letters to Santa and gym memberships. It was so…hopeful.
Most of my little team seemed to be holding their stuff together, but once the reality of it transcended the surreality of it for some people, histrionics ensued. I’m not really good with that. Exhibiting the better part valor, I bailed—nominally to “check the servers”, like they were running low on oil or something. In the lobby a woman, one of our nurse-pracitioner beta testers, was sitting in the corner on the floor by a potted plant because she had lost her access card. Weeping inconsolably. Leaning on my knack for turning a phrase, I threw out, “what’s wrong?”. I’ve asked stupider questions, but not many. What the hell did I think was wrong? As it turns out, I was wrong about what I thought was wrong.
“They…all…hate…me…now…”
Punctuated by these huge, wracking sobs. Which made no sense to me, until it clicked that she was Muslim—Egyptian, I think. I had no idea what to do or say, there was nothing in my life to that point which had in any way prepared me for this. I typically tell the truth, sometimes brutally, and the truth was that “they”, whoever “they” were for her, probably did hate her at least little bit right now. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t correct, it wasn’t useful, or generous. It just…was. What do you say to that? “Tomorrow’s another day”? “This too shall pass”?
I said nothing, and hugged her. To this day, I rate this one of the top five smartest things I’ve ever done. A few minutes later I called her husband to pick her up, and stopped back every few minutes to check on her. I swear, when her hubby showed up I thought he was going to cry too.
The migration continued. No, really. I told my team they could go home and they wanted to finish the job. This website was for our friends in Brazil, and while here it was “The Day of…”, there it was”Tuesday”. So we migrated a website, synced databases, tested, tested some more, and called it good. We usually celebrated this sort thing with champagne, but I don’t think anyone faulted me for leaving it corked. It was the last major milestone we met for any of our projects before I sold the company, about a month later as planned.
That’s it, that’s what I got. Patrick does the eyebrow thing, I nod. A woman I don’t know indicates horrific emotional distress, and I completely fail to make her feel better. We launch a web-based outpatient care utility, on time. You can see why I hesitated to share.
I know why Rob wanted us to do this, I get it. The problem is that, while most memories dull with time, like a cheap kitchen knife does whether it’s used or not, this one seems to stay bright and very sharp, no matter how firmly you keep it on the shelf. He’s right, that day should be remembered. I just can’t thank him, though, for making me remember it well enough to write it down with anything like clarity. I think I could probably go the rest of my life without remembering it that well, and be happier for it. Not smarter, I guess, but happier.
So be it, I remember too.
- Liam
on Sep 12th, 2008 at 2:38 am
7 years ago, I was in LA. That morning, a student in my class was telling everyone two planes hit the Twin Towers. “No way! Is he still dreaming? He must be joking”, I was thinking to myself. — It was still early in the morning. Our class started at 9am which was 12pm EST, Twin Towers had collapsed by then. The professor didn’t give any lecture. Instead, we watched TV, the news. We watched how Twin Towers got hit. We were speechless. The whole room was quiet. I really couldn’t believe it and regreted that we didn’t go to Twin Towers at all when we were in NYC. I called my uncle and aunt in Long Island and made sure they were ok. My uncle was standing by to go to Manhatten and help those wounded people if there was any. He told me later it was a scene that no one would ever forget. Oh well who could forget it when dead bodies were digged out from the dust?
When I commuted from Jersey City to office, I passed by Ground Zero every day and felt sad every time I was there. I bet everyone thought about it at least once “what if my family or I was in one of the towers or one of the planes”… It’s really hard to imagine, isn’t it? I know people will never forget 911, or the shock and the grief that day brought to the whole city and the whole world. But we are lucky that we are still alive, our families are intact. Life is so short, let’s pray for people who died in the tragedy, let’s make every day the best day in our lives.
on Sep 12th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I was walking down Park Avenue from Grand Central about to turn east to the office on 31st. I saw the huge clouds of smoke from the first plane and thought that one of the buildings on the other side of the block must be on fire. I did not realize at the time it was the World Trade Center which was 2 miles away.
The work day never really started. We soon left the office but none of the trains were running North from Grand Central and I was not able to call home, so a friend from the office and I just started walking north. We figured that the Empire State Building was a reasonable target and so was Grand Central, so we walked further north. We did not really know what else to do. Everyone was walking north filling the streets and sidewalks. There were no cars on the streets except an occasional, very loud stream of emergency vehicles. I saw the ladders from my village in Westchester stream by which meant they were calling every service they could to get help.
We walk until we saw a relatively empty pub, then popped inside and sat for a couple of hours and watch in horror as the towers came down. Eventually, I made it home on Metro North. We lost one man from our village who was in the airplane that was brought down by the passengers. He left a daughter behind. Our village erected a memorial down in our local park which has straight line view right down the Hudson to the towers. We watch the smoke from the rubble from a distance for days.
on Sep 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
It was a crystal clear fall day and I was home but not by choice. About a month earlier, my company at the time had massive lay-offs and I was one of the lucky ones who lost their jobs. I was lucky because had I not lost my job, I would have been attending an event in the North Tower, which would have started at 9am that morning.
Instead, I had scheduled the air ducts to be cleaned in my New Jersey apartment. My phone rang and it was my dad asking me if I had heard what happened to the World Trade Center. I hadn’t yet turned on the television, as I was more concerned about having a strange man in my apartment than the news, so I was unaware of the events. We stayed on the phone, watched the second plane hit with disbelief and eventually the crumble of both towers.
I quickly hung up with my dad to call my husband and ask about the safety of our many family members and friends that worked in Manhattan. My father-in-law, who worked in the building next to the Trade Center for over 20 years, had a meeting that day, in New Jersey. My sister-in-law, who worked for the same company as her dad, had a doctor’s appointment and also was in New Jersey.
We were among the lucky ones – all of our friends were safe, although some just narrowly escaped. I was glued to the TV for days. I didn’t go out, even to the grocery store. I just kept thinking how fortunate I was to have lost my job one month earlier.
Four years after the attacks, I brought a son into this world on Sept. 11th and now I am able to celebrate a life on this day that we will never forget.