Member-only story
I Was In Lower Manhattan on 9/11
And now, twenty years on, that means what exactly?
I dropped my son, Aaron, off at middle school, 1st Avenue & 16th Street, across from Beth Israel. Instead of going back home to Park Slope, I stopped at the Union Square Starbucks. My wife, Lisa, called from her office in Garden City.
“They say a plane just hit the World Trade Center,” she told me. No other details were available.
A light plane, I figured. A navigational error like the one that brought JFK, Jr down. Tragic, but not catastrophic. I recalled reading that in 1945 a B-25 collided with the Empire State Building. We rang off. I could have walked outside, maybe 50 feet, seen for myself. But I didn’t. Outside, a small group of people gathered across Union Square West. I heard cries and gasps. That got me moving.
Incredibly, the whole upper tower was engaged, belching forth like a cyclopean smokestack. You’ve all seen the videos. How could it be? Automatically I started walking downtown.
I’d worked as a freelance photojournalist in the past, and would do so again, for the Brooklyn and Queens Eagle. But on that day I had no camera, took no images.
I called my wife back. It took several tries to get through.
