This one event, this one heinous, unbelievably evil event, changed our world forever.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I was working as the Assistant Security Director for Macy*s in the Garden State Plaza, Paramus, New Jersey. At 8:46AM I was walking through the store with a member of the Macy*s Evaluation Team who was there inspecting the security program for our store. We had just finished testing the EAS system at the 2nd floor mall level entrance when my wife, Gina, called me on the phone. She told me that she had just heard that an aircraft, a civilian passenger liner, had crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. I excused myself from the evaluator and went down to the employee's lounge to watch the live broadcast on TV. I had been to New York City many times with Gina and was familiar with the World Trade Center and the beauty of the Twin Towers, so I was fairly stunned at the picture I saw - one of the towers burning, a long plume of smoke stretching out over the Hudson River as the building burned. At 9:03AM I was just asking myself how in the world something like this could have happened as I was staring at the screen when suddenly a second airliner appeared from the left side of the screen and slammed directly into the second tower. The room was instantly filled with anguished cries of dismay and surprise from the associates who were there, and I found myself standing there with my mouth open.
I knew instantly that this was no accident. We were under attack, and had no idea by who or why.
Then my phone rang again; it was Gina, who was breathless and near tears as she said, "Did you see it? Another plane crashed into the other tower!"
"I saw it, baby," I replied in a very quiet voice, my eyes still glued to the TV screen in the lounge. "And this is no accident. We're under attack, I'm sure of it." Thirty four minutes later all doubts held by anyone as to whether or not this was a deliberate attack vanished when a third airliner struck the Pentagon. Sixteen minutes later a fourth airliner went down in Pennsylvania, with the target later being discovered to have been Washington, DC.
At 9:59AM the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, with the North Tower collapsing at 10:28AM. 2,996 people, including 343 NYC firefighters and 72 NYC and Transit Authority police officers, died.
And at that moment in time, our world changed forever.
I don't remember much of the rest of the day. I do remember going back down to the employee lounge every chance I got to look at the TV and see what else was going on, and by the end of the day I was almost in tears. How anyone could commit such a despicable atrocity on innocent people simply astounded me.
Later that night I got a call from my immediate supervisor, the Director of Security for the store, who informed me that the Vice President for Security of Macy*s feared that more terrorist attacks would be coming and that the Herald Square Macy*s would be a likely target as it was the flagship store for the chain and was the world headquarters for Macy*s. The VP had directed that every Security unit in every store in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut send their Assistant Directors to the Herald Square store to augment security there starting the next day. This meant a 2 hour car trip to the NY Waterways Ferry Terminal in Hoboken for me, followed by a ferry ride across the Hudson and a bus ride to the store - all told, about a 3 hour trip one way. But I understood why it needed to be done, so the next day I got up extra early, put on my suit, got in the car, and headed out to New York City and the Herald Square Store.
After arriving at the terminal and purchasing my ticket, I went to the end of the building that faced the river and the docks where the ferries came and went. That wall of the terminal was glass from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, and always gave a spectacular view of New York City with the Twin Towers sitting on the right side of the landscape, near the end of the island. As I walked up to the glass wall and looked out at the city across the river, I looked to the right and saw not the two majestic towers standing proudly in the New York City skyline, but a thick, heavy, and huge plume of smoke rising from where the towers had stood the day before. You could smell the smoke in the air coming across the parking lot, but to see it up close and personal was something entirely different.
I stood there for several long moments, looking at that plume of dark smoke rising into the sky, and thought just how terrible this whole thing had been. I tried to imagine what the people trapped in those towers had gone through - by now we had all seen the footage of people jumping and falling to their deaths rather than being burned alive - and my mind just couldn't grasp it. I said a quick, silent prayer for those lost and missing as the ferry pulled up to the dock, then got on board and went into the city.
The next day when I got to the ferry terminal and went to the back wall to look out at the city again, I noticed three or four flyers that had been taped to the glass. All of them had someone's picture on them, and they each said something like, "MISSING" or "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" with the last known location being one of the two towers.
That day there were three or four. The next day there were ten times that many. By the end of the week you couldn't see out of the glass.
I stood there that day, looking at the faces of the thousands of people who were gone from this world in an instant, and suddenly the depth of the tragedy hit me. Each picture was an innocent life lost, and each picture meant there was at least one other person in this world who was looking for them, hoping against hope that they would be found, grieving already for the loved one they knew in their heart they had already lost.
I stood there in my green suit, dressed to the nines, briefcase in hand, staring at that wall of faces, and cried like a baby. And I wasn't the only one, either.
My first instinct was to go home and be with my wife, just be with her and revel in the fact that I was here, I was alive, and I was with her. Nearly three thousand people had gone to bed Monday night on September 10th thinking that the following day would be just another Tuesday, just another day at work, when it turned out to be anything but. I wanted to go home and be with my wife and tell her that I loved her, just because I could.
But she was at work, I had a job to do, and that's not the way I was. My military background kicked in about this time, so I wiped my face and eyes, picked up my briefcase from where I had dropped it on the floor, got on the ferry and went to do what I had to do.
But you better believe the first thing I did when I got home that night was hold Gina and tell her I love her.
Not a year goes by that I don't think of that wall and all those faces staring back at me from eternity. Every year on this day I think of where I was and what I was doing the day the world changed forever, and every year on this day I thank God that I'm still here.
And every year I find myself tearing up at the thought of all those lives so tragically snuffed out, and for the innocence our nation lost that day.
This year is no different.
Do me a favor, please; if not for me, for yourself. After you're done reading this, go find the one person in the world who you love the most and who makes your life worth living, and tell them you love them.
And if you won't do it for me or for yourself, then do it for the 2,996 people who can't.
Deo Vindice.
IHC
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