9/11

Parent Cafe
181

<p>I saw the first tower fall in front of my eyes. I was in my physics class on the 8th floor of my school five blocks away. It was such a surreal moment… it took a while to fully realized what was actually happening. As I was being evacuated, I remember hearing a loud rumbling sound; it wasn’t until later that I learned that was the 2nd tower collapsing. There were people also walking north, completely covered in white dust. I was trying to call my parents, but nobody’s cell phone was working; eventually found a pay phone that worked after walking 3 miles. </p>

<p>Post-9/11, when I returned to the neighborhood months later, I could still smell the burning. Trucks were still hauling out debris and loading it on to barges in the Hudson River. There were police checkpoints. Posters of missing people were plastered all around. One of the most striking images was looking south, and not seeing the Twin Towers. </p>

<p>Seven years later, I was graduating and was looking for a job in construction management. The project that I was assigned to? The 9/11 Memorial & Museum. It’s been an honor and privilege to be building this, hoping this will help bring some closure to the families who have lost loved ones.</p>

182

<p>Another one who will not be watching the countless hours of television coverage. I know the importance of remembrance but for those who live in NYC and experienced the event first hand, it can be like taking the scab off a wound that has never fully healed. </p>

<p>As a 2 time WTC survivor (1993 & 2001), I never felt totally safe in the building ever since my job moved back into it in Summer of 1993 I worked on B-3 and the bomb went off one floor above us. With new IDs, checking in, examining of packages, nothing could have prepared us for a plane hitting the building. I remember one of my co-workers calling us from the street as he out out getting coffee telling us to get out of the building, now!! As a result we were among the first people out of the building. We did loose co-workers who were on the upper floors of the WTC. The body of the sister of one of my co-workers has never been recovered. A friend an a co-worker died 3 months after the attack on the WTC (heart attack), he was never the same after that day.</p>

<p>I remember standing in front of Brooks Brothers, trying to contact my family and let them know that I was out of the building. Because I stopped looking at Tower 1, when I saw someone jump, I did had not even realized that a second plane hit when we heard the boom, I thought that there was just an explosion in building one from the fire and the fuel. People started running, I got knocked down, people fell on me. I said a prayer, I remember what God told Lot and his family as they were leaving Sodom and Gomorrah and I never looked back. </p>

<p>I am grateful to the man who when I asked him to use his Nextel phone, told me to come into his office to use the phone to call my family. When I asked my sister to pick my my daughter from school and I would meet her at her job, he asked me where did I have to go because he and his wife had to pick up their daughter. He and his wife drove me to my daughter’s school. My daughter saw me, hugged me and then starting crying because the back of my sweater was wet. She saw all of the blood on the back of my sweater and I had to explain to her that I was not hurt, that a lot of people fell on me and it was someone else’s blood.</p>

<p>When I got to my sister’s job, the first thing that I told her was that I would never go back to work in that building again. She told that there was no more World Trade Center. I just kept rattling on, “but you don’t understand”, she took me to the TV in her office and showed me the film of the building falling and I just sank to the floor and starting crying. For days I only watched the cartoon network (the only station where there was no news).</p>

<p>I am grateful that I was able to walk away only sore, with some scrapes and bruises. I thank God for every day since 9/11 and all of life’s moments that I have had that those who passed never got to experience. To have been able to walk out of the building twice, is truly a blessing and I do not take a day for granted.</p>

183

<p>god bless you, sybbie</p>

184

<p>sybbie stunning first hand report. wow</p>

185

<p>Sybbie, my heart goes out to you. I’ve experienced that much tragedy in my life. I am one of those people who was a toddler at the time of the attacks, so the closest memory I had of that to that day was the weekend before. My parents had just gone to a wedding in Buffalo and then went to NYC just two days before the attacks (we live by gloworm). My mom had gotten one of those cutesy mini snow globes you would get at an airport showing the statue of liberty and the skyline. We all just talked about the representation of freedom and other positive things. It just stings me to thing if my parents had stayed there just a few more days, then what would have happened.</p>

<p>-------------------------------------------If it is to be, it is up to me…</p>

186

<p>OMG Sybbie. How incredible. Thoughts and prayers are with you as you get through this day.</p>

187

<p>Sybbie, what a powerful story. I can only imagine what these anniversaries must be like for you. I am avoiding all coverage, and I’ve been struck by how fresh my feelings about that day are. I can’t bear to live through it again. How much worse it must be for you.</p>

188

<p>Sybbie, thank you for sharing your story. My thoughts are with you today, and may peace be upon you.</p>

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<p>I don’t miss it because I never had it. As the child of a Holocaust survivor, how could I? Nothing like this could ever truly surprise me. I’ve always understood that life-changing tragedy can (and often does) strike at any moment. I consider myself fortunate in that way.</p>

189

<p>remembering…not watching</p>

<p>sybbie. thank you for sharing your story.</p>

190

<p>Watching/listening to James Taylor (“Close Your Eyes”) and Paul Simon (“Sounds of Silence”) brought me to tears. I also have to go to the funeral of a friend’s mother later today (the friend who lost his son 3 years ago in a car accident and is battling bone cancer). This is an emotional day. I don’t know how those of you in NY, DC, PA and others who were more immediately affected by this day are getting through it.</p>

191

<p>I am watching the reading of the names.</p>

<p>Although I am not a particularly sentimental person (I’m the only mom I know who didn’t cry when I dropped my only daughter off at college the first time), some things this morning have brought me to tears.</p>

<p>Seeing the picture of the 3 year old who died, hearing the name of the volunteer firefighter from a nearby town whose fatherless son has fallen into drugs and crime despite the efforts of many to help him, seeing the niece of a friend of mine salute her uncle ( my friend’s brother), listening to children the same age as mine eulogize their parents and feeling grateful that my kids haven’t had to do that, remembering the year I spent working in Two WTC right after graduation and most affecting to me personally, the mother who recited lines from “Love You Forever” to her dead son. I read that book to my kids every night for years and could never stop crying as I did so.</p>

<p>I am so grateful to live in the United States and to have had the privilege of raising my family here.</p>

192

<p>“I feel somewhat guilty about this, because the way we live post-9/11 is a little more like how most of the poor souls on the rest of this planet have lived all along.”</p>

<p>We still live great lives, not even close to how most of the world lives. Get out for yourself and see some of the world, (no not Europe) it’s a mess.</p>

193

<p>I am watching because I see it as a key for the nation to help us move forward and break the log jam. I wasn’t going to watch but I changed my mind and found a notebook that I wrote in at that time and I remembered.</p>

194

<p>Thank you Sybbie.</p>

195

<p>Paul Simon was wonderful-very moving. I just saw the short documentary on CNN narrated by Tom Hanks-Boatlift. It is also on Youtube. It is the very inspiring story of all the boaters who came together-government and private citizens-to evacuate almost 1/2 million people from Manhattan on 9/11. Ordinary citizens doing the right thing. “A hero is a man who does what he can.” Romain Rolland</p>

196

<p>Thank you, sybbie</p>

197

<p>After 9/11, I was particularly haunted by the story of the Whittington-Falkenberg family, who died on the plane that hit the Pentagon. There were two little girls who were the same ages as my sons. I just checked the news and saw this story, about two friends of the older daughter, who are now 18:</p>

<p><a href=“http://riverdalepark.patch.com/articles/friends-reflect-on-sept-11-zoe-would-have-been-18[/url]”>Friends Reflect on Sept. 11: Zoe Would Have Been 18 | Riverdale Park, MD Patch;

<p>There are so many profoundly sad stories. I think the worst thing in the world would be to be a person who is capable of causing something like this. And I am not claiming superior virtue. I think that people are products of their environment and upbringing.</p>

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<p>Yet many of the extremists have not been brought up in an extremist environment. Many of them are living in Western countries with all of the material and intellectual advantages and freedoms and they actively choose to associate with others who believe in terror, death and destruction as a means to their end.</p>

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<p>Sybbie, I for one had no idea of your story. Remarkable. To you and all those with particular personal stories, I am hoping this is a day of peace. </p>

<p>The memorial pools remind me of a wall of tears.</p>

200

<p>Sybbie, thank you for the courage of sharing your story on here. I am so moved by how many human beings were directly impacted and simply had to go on…not even be counted among the impacted. also am troubled seeing so many first responder survivors struggling now with illness and having to prove it is resulting from 9/11 dust. Healing prayers to all the families who lost loved ones and also to all the survivors whose lives were forever altered.</p>