9/11 Names

[JJuggle]

The names of the 9/11 victims are being read now and can be streamed at: http://www.scpr.org/features/2006/se...ary/index.html

[JJuggle]

[bugman]

I came here wondering if anyone had made a post referencing 9/11, and before I even got here I was thinking of you and your family. Interesting that you posted that cartoon. I remember that day so clearly. I didn't personally know anyone in the Towers, Planes or Pentagon that I am aware of. That didn't keep me from feeling dumfounded and a deep sense of loss then and now.

Again Raphael, sorry for your loss. Chad

[JJuggle]

Thank you, Chad.

In as much as politics can be removed from this event, that cartoon summed up so much.

I remember that morning so well too. On my way to work I was listening to an interview with Bernie Goetz, then running for mayor of New York. He discussed his platform, part of which included offering tax breaks to business willing to remove metal gates from their storefronts. I recall thinking what an interesting idea it was.

At the time I worked in a windowless basement office in Holmdel, New Jersey. A colleague came out into the hall to announce that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers. Like most I thought it a horrible, even if improbable accident. My wife called so thereafter. She had a doctor's appointment and was wondering if she should go. I told her that she might as well and she did.

Soon, came the announcement from the same colleague that the second tower had been hit. Of course, we knew then it was no accident.

At that point I called my mother who lives in lower Manhattan. She's far enough north not to have been in danger, but I wanted to check in with her.

She reminded of something that was not very far up in my mind, namely that her brother, my uncle, worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield in one of the towers.

Soon came the news of the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash and the absolutely unbelievable and numbing collapse of the towers. A part of me was, for a brief time, as stunned by the loss of the buildings as for the loss of life. My friends and I had rode our bikes down by the construction site when the towers were going up.

By that point no work was going on and we were all sitting around staring at our computers and each other wondering just what was going on.

I remember also trying to decide what to do about my then second grader at school. I didn't want to respond with reflexive panic and go get her and alarm her. But I also didn't feel like letting rumor and the potentially disjointed messages from teachers and school administrators be her introduction to the events.

I left work and picked her up from school. She'd heard already and was a bit bemused to be leaving school early, but it gave us an opportunity to talk.

I can't remember when I was able to get through to my mother again or what was said, but I remember attending a gathering at our congregation that evening by which time it was pretty clear that my uncle had not made it out.