Remembering September 11, 2001

Diane Ellis, Ed. · Sep 11, 2011 at 5:08am

[Editor's Update: Sincerest apologies to Adam Freedman, whose contributions I neglected to add to the symposium when I published this post this morning. Please find his recollections, just below Rob Long's.]

September 11, 2001 is not a day that can be forgotten. But today on Ricochet, we remember it with intentionality. We do it to collectively mourn our loss, to consider our blessings, and to remind ourselves of those things that are most important to us as a nation and as individuals.

Gathering 9/11 recollections from Ricochet Contributors and assembling them into the following symposium has been a tremendously difficult task. Even after ten years, I cannot read about the enormous loss America incurred that day -- the loss of good and decent men and women, of heroes, of friends, of loved ones, of peace, and of innocence itself -- without weeping.

I hope you'll find these recollections as cathartic as I did. And after you've read them, I invite you to share your own.

Rob Long

Ten years ago, I was getting up early to head to a location shoot in Culver City. I was sipping my first cup of coffee when the first tower collapsed. I watched it on television.

On the west coast, we're always three hours behind the big events back east. So that morning, we all went to work. I was sitting in a laundromat which we had rented out for the day, waiting to set up a shot, when it became obvious that we weren't going to get any work done that day, or the next, either. Every video monitor on the set was tuned to the news. Every face was grim.

And then we heard that David Angell, a genius of a writer -- he has been an executive producer of "Cheers" in the years before my arrival there; had created "Wings" and "Frasier" afterward; had devoted the rest of his life and a considerable part of his considerable fortune to philanthropy, both from his own foundation and through certain Catholic charities that he loved -- was on the plane that hit the second tower. He was coming back to LA from Boston.

We called it a wrap. We all went home. A bunch of the writing staff came back to my house where we watched the television and drank quietly, and heavily, and shared stories about David Angell's talent and generosity and decency and quiet rectitude. It's a town filled with rat bastards, we said to each other. But David Angell was different. Only a bad novelist would have given him that perfect, on-the-nose name. A better writer would have said: too obvious.

By the following week, crew members across town -- it always starts with the crew -- started wearing American flag t-shirts with "Fear This" across the bottom. It made us all feel better to be getting angry -- anger is sometimes exactly the right response -- but it couldn't replace the loss, to us, of a great man and a treasured colleague, one of three thousand and more who were murdered that morning, who also left colleagues and friends and children and parents and wives and husbands, whose loss rippled out from a hole in the ground in New York and a shattered building in DC and a field in Pennsylvania, in waves of grief and anger and a hunger for justice for our friends and friends-of-friends, David Angells all.

Adam Freedman

I was in Manhattan that morning. One odd thing I remember was that I had stuck a post-it on my computer with the words "September 11" on it. That was to remind me about a meeting I had scheduled for that day. I was an associate at a big law firm and I was supposed to be meeting with somebody -- a witness, an expert, a client -- I've forgotten the details, but it loomed large in my life at the time.

At 7:45, my secretary got a call from a friend who worked downtown. She cupped her hand over the receiver and looked at me. "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center," she said. My first thought was that some amateur in a Cessna had had an accident. By the time the second tower was hit, I was beginning to grasp the significance of the situation. And yet, my mind resisted it. I kept thinking about my big meeting. My initial assumption was that I'd have to postpone the meeting a few hours or maybe a day. But of course, such thoughts didn't last long. We gathered in conference rooms to watch the tragedy unfolding, feeling utterly powerless. And then the word went around that blood donors might be needed -- at last, something we could do -- dozens of us went to the nearest Red Cross location, only to find that donors were already lined up around the block and that new arrivals were being turned away.

By early afternoon, people were making arrangements to get home, or stay with friends. I lived in Manhattan, so I walked home -- 40 blocks up 3rd Avenue with no cars on the streets, and military jets criss-crossing the skies. Most businesses were closed, but a number of bars were open. I ran into a former colleague I hadn't seen in years; we had no idea what to say to each other. I did not lose anyone close to me, although I later learned that the brother of a close friend had been killed in the attack.

My firm was closed on the 12th and, at the time, I lived alone. So I spent the 12th in my apartment, watching the news, too depressed even to call anyone. That was the worst day for me. By the 13th, we were permitted, but not required, to go to the office. I went to the office. I didn't do any work, of course, but began, slowly to put together the semblance of a normal life.

Tevi Troy

On September 11th, I was in the Secretary's suite at the Department of Labor, and a number of us gathered in the tiny office of the Deputy Chief of Staff to watch the awful events unfolding on the TV. Within minutes, the building was evacuated and thousands of Washingtonians were on the streets, walking to their homes or checking on loved ones. Cell phone service was non-existent, and in those days before the widespread proliferation of Blackberries and iPhones, no one really knew what was going on. Information spread as it had done for thousands of years previously, by rumor and speculation. I walked the 3 miles back to my apartment and hugged my wife and infant son, and then watched with horror as the towers fell.

Bill McGurn

When the first plane smacked into the Twin Towers, I was on the train on my way to work at the Wall Street Journal, catty corner to the WTC. I saw the smoke coming out, but, having lived in Hong Kong on the 40-somethingth floor of an apartment building and witnessed a fire in a similarly tall building across the street, I thought it was just a fire high up. In any event, no sooner did I step on the ferry to take me to lower Manhattan than the ferry was cancelled.

This was somewhat surreal. While I could see what was going on, I had less idea what was actually happening than someone watching television in Tokyo or Boise. At one point the tower went down, and I noted to a friend from town I’d met on the train that I couldn’t see the tower. It never occurred to me that a tower could go down, and if it did go down I had imagined it falling over rather than collapsing inward. Stuck, with ferries, taxis, and trains halted, I called my wife – and she told me of the attack.

My friend and I decided the best thing to do was to get on the train and go back home. As the train pulled out from Hoboken, it was very quiet. Someone said, “The second tower is down,” and you could have heard a pin drop. I thought to myself, “This must be what Augustine felt when he heard that Rome had been sacked.” Shortly after arriving home, I drove down to Princeton to help Paul Gigot put out the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal – itself no small feat.

During the day I learned that my brother had made it out of one of the towers – but hadn’t been heard from. We were terrified he’d been crushed when they fell. Later we learned that my brother and a friend had helped a pregnant woman down the stairs – a woman who later gave birth to a healthy baby girl. I saw the news about Father Mychal Judge, and how the fireman had lovingly carried his body from the WTC to lay it down before the altar of St. Peter.

Closer to home, three dads from St. Vincent Martyr School, which my girls attended, were missing. They were dead, as we would later learn, but in those early days we were praying some would be pulled alive from the rubble. Late that first night, as I drove home, I recall one of the saddest sights: the home of one of these men, a loving father of several children, with all the lights on. Over the following days, I saw the cars in the train parking lot of decent men and women who went to work that day and never made the trip back home. And the people who jumped: what hell had led them to believe that jumping was the better option? Today we have reality tv, but that’s a reality that our sensitivities do not allow.

I told my wife when I arrived home that we were at war, and all I could think of was the world my girls would grow up in. Days later, when George W. Bush appeared on the rubble, we were all encouraged. I had no idea then that in three years I would be working for him.

Dave Carter

It was a marvelously unremarkable day at the outset. I was researching something or other in my office on base and was looking forward to meeting my son that evening to celebrate his 16th birthday. I had just returned from the Mideast, and felt refreshed. But it all vanished when my friend and mentor, Bob Lee contacted me and said to turn on the news. I saw the second plane hit and I knew we were at war.

The higher the flames reached, the hotter my anger burned. All those innocents, ...all those children. And all those barbaric fanatics dancing in the streets in places I had just been! Never again would my children hear an aircraft overhead without it occurring to them that it might have hostile intentions. Damnit, I served in hell holes across the globe so that those worries would never darken their precious minds!

I contacted Headquarters, Air Combat Command as the Towers fell, and volunteered for deployment. And bless his warrior's soul, so did Bob, though he had already retired. They didn't take Bob back, but they deployed me. I did what I could, but not enough. Never enough. God help us if we ever lose the fire in the belly to defeat these maniacs.

Fr. Bill Miscamble

Ten years ago, I served as the Rector of Moreau Seminary, the principal formation site of my religious order--the Congregation of Holy Cross. It is located on the north side of the Notre Dame campus. I was in my office on the morning of September 11 when two elderly religious brothers who handled the mail for us returned from the post office and advised me that they had heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I immediately went to a television to see what was involved, and I was watching when the second plane crashed into the other tower. I tracked the story as best I could throughout the day and advised the seminarians under my care to pray for all the victims. As the extent of the attacks in both New York and at the Pentagon became obvious, there was a decision quickly made that our Notre Dame community should come together to pray. By early afternoon, we had learned that a priest in our order, Fr. Frank Grogan, was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175. He had served as a sonar expert on a U.S. Navy destroyer in World War II and had been living at the order's retirement community in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts. The niece of another Holy Cross priest was a stewardess on the same flight, as I recall.

We gathered for Mass on a beautiful, sunny day on the South Quadrangle of our campus. The then-President of Notre Dame, Rev. Edward A. Malloy C.S.C. was the principal celebrant and preached at the Mass. I concelebrated in the normal manner, and as we processed to the makeshift platform where the altar had been placed, I was impressed by the large crowd that had gathered. Estimates put it at over 7,000, made up primarily of students, faculty, and staff, but also some folks from the local community who gathered to pray for the country and especially for all those victims.

At this point, the extent of the losses was not clear, but we all knew they would be heavy. In what was a strange and rather surreal day, in which one was not exactly sure if there would be further attacks elsewhere in the United States, I found our praying together as a community deeply reassuring, a sentiment that was widely shared. We were in some way seeking to link ourselves with the victims and those who were working so heroically to come to their rescue.

This Sunday, the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, will be observed with a Mass of remembrance for the victims on the library mall at Notre Dame. We will also keep in our prayer all those who still suffer and grieve the loss of loved ones.

Judith Levy

On September 11, 2001, I had been married for six days. My new husband and I were at home in our apartment in Jaffa. I don't remember how we first heard what was happening, but vividly recall watching my husband in profile as he looked at the television screen -- I hadn't looked yet -- and hearing him say "that's thousands of people" as a tower went down.

I feel guilty to this day, not only because I didn't drop everything and go straight back to New York (it was the first time I felt the downside of being a married person; viz., that you can't just take off on your own initiative anymore) but because I wasn't there when it happened. It was like discovering, less than a week after you've entered a convent or blasted off into space or done something similarly irreversible, that your best friend has been raped and left for dead. You know she is still beautiful, you know she will not die, but you also know that she will never be the same, that she will never be able to put what's happened completely behind her, and that you've failed her by not being there.

Kevin Eder

I was in the 11th grade, sitting in math class. I remember my teacher saying 'oh shit, this is a war!' Went to work that night at the grocery store I worked at, and I remember it being incredibly slow. People must've been glued to their TV's instead of out grocery shopping. I also remember, despite being a supporter of his, being iffy about whether President Bush was up to handling a catastrophic situation such as this. Luckily for us, he was, and our nation is stronger today thanks to his efforts.

Tim Groseclose

On September 11, 2001, my daughter turned one month old. She awoke around 2:30am, and I got out of bed to give her a bottle and rock her back to sleep. Around 3:15 I gave her back to my wife. I was no longer sleepy, and because I’d be reviewed for tenure in about six months, I went to work.

Work was at the Stanford Business School, where I brewed a pot of coffee and drank about 2/3 of it. As I would soon learn, this would not be a good morning to be tanked up on coffee.

As I remember, it was still dark, and I was the only person at the Business School, when I noticed a short story on the Wall Street Journal web page. It reported that a plane—I think the Journal reported that it was a small private plane—had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. “Sounds like one guy trying to commit suicide in a dramatic fashion,” I thought, and I returned to my work.

Shortly after daybreak, Don, the computer guru at the Stanford Business School and a fellow early riser, knocked on my door. “Hey, did you hear we’re under attack?” he said.

I didn’t believe him, but I immediately started checking web sites. I’m sure one was the Drudge Report. I quickly learned that two planes had struck the two buildings, and that they were commercial jetliners, not private planes.

Once the first tower fell, I called my wife. Still groggy from a fitful night of sleep, she couldn’t understand what I meant, when I said “it fell.” “It’s gone,” I said, trying to hold back tears.

There was no use staying at work, so I returned home. I arrived in time to see on television the second tower fall. I remember the anchor—I think it was Peter Jennings—narrating in a very cool and professional manner, almost artificially cool and professional. As best I can remember, his words were, “And there goes the second tower,” his voice filled more with resignation than any other emotion.

I remember learning that morning that as many as 100,000 people worked in the two towers. That’s about twice the population of my hometown, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and its environs. For several hours, all I could think was, “Please don’t let the death toll be more than 50,000.”

I eventually learned that it was not. While we all, rightly, focus on the awful tragedy, at the time many of us thought that it would be much worse. Someone did a great job in getting people to evacuate the buildings.

George Savage

In the pre-dawn twilight of 9-11, I was heading down my Northern California driveway for a run and tuned my portable radio to the local news in the middle of what sounded like a retrospective on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. A plane? Something didn't add up, so I turned around and switched on the television just in time to see the second plane hit the South Tower.

Jim Kazalis, my wife's cousin, was working in the World Trade Center at the time as a computer security analyst. His wife Cathy worked as an accountant in a Jersey City office with a commanding view across the Hudson to Lower Manhattan. She saw the attack and its aftermath and spent the day not knowing whether Jim made it out or not.

Jim had been at his desk on the 67th floor of Number 2 World Trade Center for just over half an hour when he felt a muffled explosion, followed seconds later by the scream of a co-worker. Looking up over his cubicle divider he saw clouds of looseleaf paper swirling in the air between the towers. His boss told him to evacuate, so he locked down his computer, cleaned his desk, neatly pushed his chair back in and made his way down to the 44th floor Sky Lobby. Upon arrival, an announcement was made and repeated that a plane had hit Number 1 World Trade but that the South Tower, Number 2, was structurally sound. Tragically, at this point some of Jim's colleagues boarded an elevator to go back to work. Moments later, United Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 540 miles per hour.

After the initial shock of impact, picking himself off the floor and realizing that, somehow, he was not dead, Jim made the slow, halting trip down the crowded stairwells. Emerging into the Mezzanine he witnessed a horrific scene of carnage outside--burned bodies strapped in airline seats, a burning steel girder falling from above. As Jim exited the tower, a group of about eight New York firefighters were trying to get in, a building service person struggling to open the revolving doors to make way for them and their heavy equipment. They rushed in just as Jim got out. Number 2 World Trade Center collapsed about 15 minutes later.

Peter Robinson

In Hanover, New Hampshire this weekend, my wife and I dropped off our oldest son to begin his freshman year at Dartmouth—36 years after our parents dropped off my classmates and me, including Richard Woodwell. After our four years at Dartmouth, Woody, who grew up in Pennsylvania, became a banker, married, and had two girls. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Woody was at work at his firm, Keefe Bruyette, on the eighty-ninth floor of Tower Two.

Woody was, as I say, a husband, a father, and a successful professional, but I remember him as a man of nineteen or twenty, a fraternity brother, as deliriously and hilariously alive as any character in “Animal House.” Pulling an all-nighter one night, Woody and a couple of buddies decided to drive to the Tally House, the 24-hour diner at the bus station in Lebanon. “Tally rallies” were standard among us—I can attest that there was nothing quite like a bowl of chili at three in the morning—but Woody chose to distinguish this instance by wearing only boxer shorts. At the diner, Woody found a placard in the window: “No shirt or shoes, no service.” Woody returned to his car, found a girl’s sweater in the back seat, then rummaged in the trunk, where he kept his golf clubs, and placed a club cover on each foot. Woody marched into the diner in perfect, triumphant compliance with the rules.

High spirits, a good-natured rebelliousness toward authority, ease and skill at handling money—he served as treasurer of his fraternity—and the love of Dartmouth College that we all shared. Those of us who arrived in Hanover 36 years ago cannot begin to imagine the grief of Woody’s widow and daughters, but the Class of ’79 knows a grief of its own.

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