Description:AAM page for where were you during an event challenge on another site. Journaling reads:
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, started much like any other workday morning for me - up at 5:30am to get to the LIRR by 6:30am so I could catch my train. Then the two-hour commute by train and subway that took me from Deer Park, Long Island to Grand Central so I could walk the two extra blocks to the corner of 40th and Lexington. Unlike normal, I had decided not to bring my digital camera which I was almost never without. I had said goodbye to Dad the morning before on my way out the door as he had been down to visit for a week or so, and had left Monday morning for home. I assume that I stopped by my favorite deli on the corner of 41st and Lexington to grab breakfast, but it’s a detail like so many of the small details of that day that will remain lost in the blur that was to follow…
I went up to the office I shared with one co-worker, and took the extra few minutes I had before I had to start work to munch on whatever I had grabbed to eat then started work. I was working on one of my larger accounts because it was due out by the end of the week, and my smaller ones for the day had been finished the day before. I tended to keep my radio on 101.1 the ‘Oldies’ station in NYC that plays everything from the ‘50s through the ‘80s. The first time I heard them talking about a plane going into the side of the Trade Center I thought I’d misheard the report, but a few moments later they repeated it. My first thought being the voracious reader that I am was, “What fool thought War of the Worlds would work a second time!?” I kept working until about five minutes later when once again they were talking about it. My office-mate was down at the copiers so she hadn’t heard any of this of course. I went next door to my boss’s office, and asked her if she’d heard it. Well, Lorraine thought it was a joke as well. It didn’t help that when they were talking about it they made it sound like a little two-seater had hit the side of the tower because what possible damage could that make? Lorraine started to shrug me off until one of the other women from the department walked in, and asked Lorraine if she’d been listening to the news. When Liz backed up the story I had heard Lorraine immediately switched on her radio to find a news station to listen to.
We were safe since we were several miles from Ground Zero, or at least as safe as could be expected since the reports kept coming in of further atrocities. However, if you went to the roof on the 17th floor you could see the burning towers as they crumbled and fell. Shock and disbelief managed to cripple the city for quite a few hours that day. Within two hours many of the employees had left to try and make their way home since most of us lived on Long Island, in New Jersey or in Westchester County, and the trains were all shut down with no expected start time for running normal schedules. I had to use the company email - which thank heavens was still working - to contact both Mike and Dad to let them know we were ok because all the repeaters for cell phones had been located on top of the towers so my cell phone wouldn’t even work until after Lorraine and I got into Jamaica later that afternoon.
I went back to work. As I said I had a large account due out later in the week, and even as horrible as this was it didn’t guarantee the account wouldn’t still be waiting later. It was also the only way I knew to cope with what was going on without turning into a weeping ball of goo. All I really wanted to do was curl up into a ball under my desk and cry - not exactly productive or logical. At about 12:30pm Lorraine found me as we were the only two left in the department, and said the LIRR was starting runs to Long Island at about 1pm so we packed up our work, and walked to Penn Station. As you can imagine Penn Station was a zoo that afternoon - even with all the people who’d tried to walk over the 59th Street bridge to get to Brooklyn as a way back to Long Island.
Many people, including several of my co-workers, didn’t return to work until Friday or Monday, but I went back each day that week. Not because I was so brave as to believe nothing could happen to me. In fact many of those days I worked with tears in my eyes and knots in my stomach. There were fighter jets flying through Manhattan - not over - through. I did it because it was the only way I knew to keep going forward. Sitting at home watching video footage of the crashes and people who chose to take their chances flying out of windows thousands of feet above ground rather than burn to death was not something I could do without risking becoming a turtle whose head might stay permanently in its shell.
While I was lucky enough not to have lost anyone to the atrocious acts of that day, or to have been injured myself I will never be the same…
Incredible journaling. I still can't scrap my photos. It's really strange I keep finding things in strange places from my days of working at the WTC (old keys, old photo I.D.s...). Anyway, I know I will never forget the details of that day. TFS, Lori.
