USA/NY: NYC – September 11 20th Anniversary – My Story
Today is thr 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks — an event that unfolded right in front of my eyes a quarter century ago, yet still feels painfully recent. I remember that morning with absolute clarity. Even now, twenty five years later, it remains nearly impossible to believe it actually happened. The World Trade Center towers were an inalienable part of New York and of my daily life. I saw them every morning and night from my apartment across the river in Jersey City. I walked through the WTC complex on my way to work on Wall Street. I had been to the top three times — all the way to the open air rooftop observation deck and the Windows of the World bar. Those two towers were the defining anchors of the Manhattan skyline, a magnet for people from all over the world. On September 11, 2001, I took the PATH subway train from Jersey City as usual, having chosen to live there specifically for the view of the elegant twin towers — and occasionally the moon rising between them. I came out of the subway around 7:30 a.m., still sleepy, a paper cup of weak drip coffee in hand, walking through the underground mall past the closed stores and out into the bright morning light at the southeast corner of the complex. I worked at 60 Wall Street, just a couple of blocks away, on the 43rd floor of the former JPMorgan tower — one of the tallest buildings downtown after the WTC. The day was stunningly beautiful, blue-skied, almost too perfect. I remember thinking, I wish I wasn’t going to work today. I should’ve taken the day off and driven upstate to hike in the Catskills. I grabbed another equally terrible street cart coffee, walked past the bronze statue of the businessman on the bench, passed the New York Stock Exchange, and rode the elevator up. Computer on, spreadsheets loading, coffee on the desk — just another ordinary Tuesday morning. Then at 8:45 a.m., a massive boom shook the building. It felt like a sonic shockwave. Papers drifted through the air outside the south-facing windows. People ran toward the northwest side of the floor, where the view opened toward the towers. The North Tower was on fire near the top, a dark gash across its facade. CNN on the office TVs reported a “small plane” had possibly hit the tower, though the fire looked far too large for that. We all watched in disbelief, but not yet in fear. Everyone called friends and family. Then at 9:03 a.m., right in front of my eyes, a dark-bodied commercial airliner appeared from the south, flying fast — and slammed into the South Tower in a massive explosion of fire and debris. The flash came first; the sound wave followed a fraction of a second later. It was happening not on TV, but outside our windows. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the thought terrorist attack was ringing like a loud alarm, but shock overwhelmed everything. Skyscrapers were being hit, and I was near the top of one. Panic took over. Everyone ran for the stairwells — 43 floors and twice as many flights of stars on the way down. A long, frantic, sweaty descent. On the street – total chaos. No clarity. “NYC under attack.” “WTC on fire.” It felt completely surreal, like a Hollywood disaster movie unfolding in real time — impossible, unnatural. We walked north toward the NYPD headquarters, which offered a direct and clear view of the towers. Both were burning now, the South Tower worse, thick black smoke billowing. Having just evacuated a skyscraper myself, I somewhat naively assumed everyone in the WTC had done the same. I didn’t yet grasp that people were trapped at the top floors of the burning tower— or jumping out. I stood there, mesmerized, thinking firefighters would eventually put out the flames, repairs would begin, and the iconic towers would rise again, shiny and new. Then at 10:00 a.m., the unthinkable occurred. The South Tower collapsed — a devastating downward disintegration, as if the top floors were crushing the structure beneath them, like a Jenga tower losing its base. A massive grey cloud of pulverized concrete erupted and rushed toward us. Everyone ran north, up to Canal Street. I outran the cloud and stopped, still unable to process what I had just witnessed. Further north, around Spring Street, I saw people walking past me like ghosts — covered head-to-toe in white dust, faces masked in ash. The sky had turned from brilliant blue to November-like dark grey. At 10:28 a.m., the unimaginable happened again. The North Tower collapsed in the same agonizing slow motion pancake pattern crumble. Shock, disbelief, horror. People talked about more planes hitting other cities — Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco. I kept looking back, expecting somehow to still see the towers standing. Eventually I reached 34th Street, where ferries were running to Hoboken. Passengers stood in utter silence, many covered in ash – like zombies or undead – staring at the burning skyline where the towers had stood just hours earlier. Back in Jersey City, I walked to the waterfront and watched Manhattan burn into the night. Around 5 p.m., another building in the WTC complex – Building 7 – collapsed. I took photos throughout the day and night and the next morning. By dawn, the skyline was altered forever. It took days and weeks to process the shock. The images of the second plane striking the South Tower, and both towers collapsing — in front of my own eyes — haunted me day and night. Every plane overhead gave me jitters. The air was filled with ash and who-knows-what for days. I couldn’t return to work for weeks. Eventually I assembled a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and the photos I took — just for myself, to make sense of it all. Three months before that day, around May or June, I had been scheduled to attend a meeting between LabMorgan — JPMorgan’s dotcom incubator unit — and a representative from another area of Chase Bank. The meeting was set for 9:00 a.m. on September 11 at Windows on the World, at the very top of the North Tower. I remember being incredibly excited — it felt like a big break for a junior kid fresh out of business school. But sometime in August, I was deemed too junior and replaced by my manager. On the morning of September 11, she was running late and never made it up to the restaurant in time. The other person from Chase sadly did make it to the meeting. Everyone who was inside Windows on the World when the first plane hit was trapped above the impact zone and perished. Reflecting on it today, twenty five years later, that day fundamentally altered my worldview and life goals and ultimately reshaped my life. Life is too short and fragile not to live it fully. A decade later, overcoming my fear of flying, I quit my corporate job and set out on a journey to visit every country, region, and territory in the world — experiencing diverse cultures and meeting people, witnessing millennia-old world wonders, trekking wildlife migrations, and living each day to the fullest as if it was a gift.
