Tomorrow marks an especially sorrowful remembrance for those grieving loved ones lost 20 years ago on a warm late-summer morning that began so bright and so peaceful.
It is a somber time for all Americans, and for the entire world, reminded in a singular thought about the angst, fragility, courage and resolve of humanity.
My parents told me when I was a child they would always remember where they were and what they were doing the moment they learned John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was a defining moment for their generation.
Sadly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, mark such a moment for my generation. I will always remember where I was and what I was doing when I learned of the terrorist attacks.
I was riding a Long Island Railroad train that morning, bound to New York City to cover a press conference for HomeWorld Business. Without smartphones to provide instant news updates, passengers were told to disembark in Jamaica, Queens, where we would encounter a mass of people at the station who were told to do the same thing.
Manhattan was closed — yes, Manhattan was closed!— and we didn’t know why.
Word began to spread rapidly across the train station platform that the World Trade Center towers were struck by airplanes in what was now understood to be a terrorist attack. A collective gasp suddenly swept through the crowd as a billow of smoke could be seen in the distance. The North Tower had collapsed. Another billow of smoke rose a few minutes later from the same site. The South Tower had gone down.
Disrupted cell phone service prevented me from calling my wife to tell her I was OK and to get an update on what was happening. In the four hours it took to get on a bus and return to my station of origin, the gravity of the situation was becoming clearer, even if the details weren’t, and dreadful uncertainty accompanied me the entire way home.
An odd confluence of questions ran franticly through my mind on that bus ride. Would my two young daughters have to be raised in a state of constant war and fear? What happened to my next-door neighbor, Bill, who worked in the South Tower of the World Trade Center? How would this tragedy impact the housewares business, and how would we cover it?
After a tearful reunion with my wife and children later that afternoon, I reached my HomeWorld Business team to discuss how we would report on the business ramifications of the attacks.
I then knocked on the front door of my neighbor, Bill. No answer.
By evening, as more details emerged and the magnitude of the destruction and casualties was mounting, I saw Bill on his front steps, head in his hands. In a quivering voice, he told me he had a meeting in uptown Manhattan that morning and never made it to his office in the South Tower. He said he had no idea about the status of hundreds of his colleagues, most of whom he would soon thereafter learn were lost in the attacks.
HomeWorld Business the next day put together an “Extra” edition on how the attacks would affect housewares consumers, suppliers and retailers, including a story on the Century 21 store at the foot of the World Trade Center that had been destroyed. It was emotional and stressful, but we had a responsibility to do our jobs. To move forward. It’s the same responsibility we have to families, friends, colleagues and all others in our lives, even during the darkest of times. Especially during the darkest of times.
We progress while never losing sight of troubling situations that often help refine our perspectives and guide our next steps. Bill, my neighbor, eventually returned to work at a makeshift office in New Jersey across the Hudson River once overlooked by the tower that once occupied hundreds of his lost colleagues. He has since moved, but I’m sure his grieving never fully subsides.
The latest generation faces a different tragedy and its own defining moment. And from the despair of a previously unfathomable pandemic will rise new hope and progress.
Has it really been 20 years since September 11, 2001? It is one thing to always remember where you were and what you were doing on that fateful morning. It is quite another thing to never forget what that day truly means.
