I had worked out as usual, a regular day. Went to work at 9 and immediately got a phone call about the first plane.
I don't think it even occurred to me how many people i would know working in the towers, being that i live on Long Island, the place that half the financial district of Manhattan settles with their families, in a town filled with cops and firemen, stockbrokers, transit authority workers, bankers, etc.
When i got a call about the second plane, i thought it was another freak accident, somehow related to the first. A small plane, i was thinking. i relayed the messages to my office and we listened to the radio.
Then the towers started falling. Our phones stopped ringing. I remember thinking "thats impossible".
30 people from my town died.
90 from the town next door, where i grew up. My dads next door neighbor, a successful woman in her 30s with 3 small kids and a young successful husband went in that morning for a few hours, and never came home. They found... half of her.
People i went to high school with.
My kids friends father.
A friend's son.
A few of you wrote me that day to see if i was ok and i was touched that people i didn't really know were worried about me. I sometimes think of all the petty things we deal with throughout the day that bothers us. I know it always will, but in perspective, how silly are we to be annoyed. We are alive, aren't we?
I'm not good at patriotic sentiment. But we all know the damage that day has done, and the good that must come out of it.
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