The Night Before

The small memorial at Orange County Choppers. 

I have little recollection regarding the night before 9/11/01. I remember that the semester was just getting started and that I had class early the next morning. I know that I was preparing for a trip into the city for the ASVAB and that I was working on scheduling a meeting with the President of the college to discuss starting an ROTC partnership with Southern New Hampshire University (a partnership was later formed with MIT). I can also faintly recall hearing the sounds of the Giants’ Monday Night Football game coming from a dorm room a few feet away but there is little else that my memory possesses.

Overall, it was just another cool New England night with the biggest concern of those around me was starting off the year right and making sure that they got to class on time the following morning. When I woke up on Tuesday morning I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary and I went about the early morning preparing for class and taking a slow walk to the Academic Building. It really was a beautiful beginning to the day with only a few thin clouds in the sky, a light breeze coming off of the bay, and the temperature remaining crisp and comfortable.

When I walked through the doors and glanced up at the television perched in the corner I could see that something was going on but didn’t really take the time to watch and process what was transpiring. I was running a little behind getting to class but managed to get there by 8:50am, there was little else on everyone’s mind and the conversation quickly lead to an early dismissal about 5 minutes later. As I retraced my steps back through the building, I once again looked up at that same television just as the second plane struck the South Tower.

This is when we all knew that this wasn’t simply an accident and as the news and speculation streamed across the screen I quickly pulled out my cell phone and called my dad to make sure that his meeting at the World Trade Center the day before didn’t carry over into the morning. Thankfully, it seems as though I was one of the last to place a successful call as cell phone service was nearly nonexistent by the time I got back to my dorm room and turned on the news. As Peter Jennings shuffled through the information we all turned up the volume of our televisions and walked outside to try and catch our breath. And as the fighter jets screamed above our heads low enough to read the warnings on the underbelly of the planes, we could hear the reports come in that the first tower had collapsed.

The rest of the week remains absent from memory as days seemingly condensed into seconds while minutes felt like weeks. Fifteen years later and I still have those memories etched in my mind. And I am sure that fifteen years from now they will remain as vivid as they are today.  

Things Could Have Been Different…

Another year has come and gone and I can still remember the chaos that surrounded us all on this day 13 years ago. The memories, which I wrote about on this blog last year, still remain and the emotions that flooded both my heart and mind, while faded, still linger. I was one of the lucky ones in that I didn’t know anyone who lost their life as the Manhattan skyline forever changed but, unfortunately, I know many who have since lost their lives in resulting wars.

I think about them from time to time and wonder if I had been able to make it through basic training. I wonder how things would have been different if my body had held up. These are the thoughts that crowd my mind during this day. I guess you could say that I am also fortunate in this regard as well because if I wasn’t discharged the following summer, there is no guarantee that I would be here today.

This is a day of remembrance and reflection for me. Even having working in Manhattan for a number of years, I have only been to ground zero once. However, I can remember the chill that came over me changing trains in Brooklyn… do I take the A, C, or E to work today? I remember that year, I couldn’t take the E, I had to take the A train and get to mid-town as quickly as possible. While it wasn’t necessarily logical, I couldn’t bring myself to walk onto the E train as it waited for passengers at the station.

Now, far removed from those days in New York City, I was sitting and talking with my colleagues about where they were that morning. Some of us were in college, a couple were working, and a few were still sitting in their grade school classes not fully comprehending what was happening as the events unfolded. I guess you could say that none of us could comprehend at the time.

For the first time, I am witnessing the change in the perception of events that I so vividly lived through. The age gap is slowly widening and I am meeting more and more people for whom the memory of this day seems more of the abstract variety rather than the visceral. I will never forget that day and I will forever be grateful for the twists that occurred in my life since then that not only allows me to look back but appreciate all that has changed, all that has happened, and all that could have been different.