What I noticed

 

Tribute in Light by King of Hearts 2020

These thoughts were originally delivered to the congregation of New Life Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, N.M., on January 13, 2002, at the request of pastor Ed Katzenberger. They reflect my experiences traveling back to New York City in December 2001, in the aftermath of the 911 attacks. Today being the anniversary of that cataclysmic event - in a country and a world that have experienced so many challenges and are suspended between division and unity -- they seemed appropriate to share. And to remind us that we have a choice to go through the most trying of times in a unified way, with respect and compassion for our fellow countrymen and women.  

When I made my pilgrimage from Albuquerque to the World Trade Center site in December, I didn’t expect to have to present intelligible thoughts to a group about my experience. But Reverend Ed offered me the opportunity to do so, so here I am.

When I am faced with something difficult, after a time, it’s my way to try to extract some themes or lessons from the experience. But I’ve really wrestled with this one. Nothing really clear comes to mind. So instead I want to share with you what I noticed.

The first thing I noticed was in me before I even got to New York. It was a deliberate and almost defiant decision to put my tension – ok fear –  about traveling to New York aside in favor of taking the trip to see my family and stand in solidarity with New Yorkers at what was left of the World Trade Center. And I considered each person on my plane as exercising courage in flying into the New York area. The plane was pretty empty and the flight comfortable, but flying into New York after September 11 holds a whole new poignancy.

The next thing I noticed after landing at night in Newark airport, was how hard it was to distinguish the New York skyline from New Jersey. Without the anchor of those two Towers at the southern tip of Manhattan, it was difficult to get my bearings.

I noticed this again riding the bus into Manhattan during the day. The Empire State Building – long my favorite building -- looked pretty forlorn as the lone grey spire that now identified the city from a distance.

I rode a city bus down Seventh Avenue to the site. Somewhere south of Greenwich Village, where people were dragging bound Christmas trees down the streets to their apartments, I noticed it seemed awfully bright. Brighter than usual. And then it dawned on me that it seemed so bright because the two gigantic buildings that towered over the southern end of the island were gone. Those Towers that served as an orientation point between 34th street and the end of the island – just empty sky now. It seemed ironic that so dark an act could result in increased light.

As the bus continued, I noticed a sign posted at a firehouse: “Thank you for your love and support. Ladder Company 8.” The reality I had encountered from a distance – on television and in the newspapers – grew more tangible.

When I got off the bus near Reade Street and West Broadway, I noticed a frame shop with pictures in the windows of the World Trade Centers taken from many angles – sparkling at night, against the flat, bright midday sky, or gleaming with setting sunlight. It was the first time that day I noticed tears well up in my eyes. Those Towers were so much a fixture in the New York skyline they were taken for granted; yet the photos reminded me that they were so grand in so many settings. 

In the next window were the “after” pictures – Towers turned to gray ash and smoke, people running, firefighters and police among the rubble. The kind of pictures we’ve all seen for four months now. Except when I turned away from the window, I could see the street stretching behind me where many of these people had fled that day. 

That was when I realized something that should have been obvious to me in my job as a reporter. It makes a difference to be there. It’s vastly different to watch a television report or to be there in person hearing backhoes and construction machinery sifting through the rubble, smelling the ashy air, tasting the grit of who-knows-what in my mouth, and seeing with breathtaking immediacy, the remains of the buildings that once were workspaces to so many people, now crumbled into ashen tombs.

Flash back to the early 90s. A friend was the publicist for the World Trade Center, and she arranged a series of lunchtime concerts on the plaza to encourage people to visit. I remember seeing Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello during their “Back to the Beach” tour there.  This same friend had a great view of the Towers from her apartment in Hoboken,N.J., and they were the scenic backdrops for many a party in my 30s. And then in 1998, I attended the wedding of a friend that was held in one of the upper level ballrooms of one of the Towers. It was the 4th of July, and we guests pressed our noses against the glass windows and from that great height looked DOWN on the fireworks as they burst ABOVE the Statue of Liberty. It was pretty cool.

I can only imagine the terror of people in the Towers on September 11 who similarly looked down, only to see an airplane crash into their building, cutting off their exit to the street. Or the man whose story I overheard at one of the memorials, as a guide related it to a number of visiting chaplains: He was at his desk, and watched the second plane approach. He called the main office and phoned in details about the plane as it came closer – angle of approach, number of engines, airline – until his phone went dead. I think tears welled up in my eyes then, too.

There were a lot of people at the site, but it seemed strangely quiet. One man, Gary, standing behind me, was in Seven World Trade Center that day, but escaped with his life, and was here with wife and daughter to gaze at his office’s unrecognizable remains. 

I noticed a feeling of palpable reverence as we peered beyond the barricades, trying to take in the scene. Police cars and fire trucks commanded a new respect – the respect that comes from having endured loss. Reverence and respect encircled the memorials – chicken wire fences filled with heartbreaking letters and prayers from around the country and the world. Sacred ground. I pinned a beaded flag I was wearing on one fence, just wanting to leave a little of myself in solidarity with the loss and the survivors. 

Another memorial was a tarp covering a profusion of teddy bears. Pictures of people were posted at the memorials, on telephone poles, with phone numbers or the word, “missing.”  These weren’t faces from a news broadcast. These people lived and worked in these neighborhoods and ultimately died there. It was chilling.

I walked around all four sides of this big hole in the ground. At Battery Park City, I could see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and a halo of sunlight on the heads of Circle Line passengers. There was a festival going on the last time I was there. Now it was bleak and cold and desolate. A poem welded to an iron fence read, “Tall facades of marble and iron. Proud and passionate city; mettlesome, mad, extravagant city.” Yes, yes and yes.

On West Street, I got another view – of a tall red crane, with flags of many nations flying from it. As I gazed, numb from the cold reality in front of me, a flatbed truck carted a huge twisted girder from the site past me. I know the wheels of that truck must have been squeaking as it rumbled over the potholed roadway, but at the sight of that girder, all seemed silent.

I walked past Trinity Episcopal Church. Here, I noticed something else – dirty gray ash on the ancient gravestones and dry grass in the old graveyard there. Ash that had fallen from the Towers that day. I remember swallowing hard at that sight. Ashes to ashes, right in front of me.

And then I had enough of that reality. After a call home to share the scene, I found a bus to take me uptown. Engine Company 24 at 6th and West Houston had black and purple bunting outside in memory of fallen fellow firefighters, and a tiny candlelit memorial outside with pictures of missing comrades. But inside I could see Christmas coming – a huge illuminated snowman and strings of white lights shining from inside the dark station.

And that was the thing – as I got closer to Rockefeller Center, the city seemed to come to life again, with the hustle and bustle characteristic of Christmas in New York. But even Rockefeller Center was transformed. The lights of the tree were red white and blue and the approach to the skating rink was lined with American flags.

New York seemed nicer, too.  Strangers engaged me in conversation, held doors for me, and smiled. Granted, it was Christmastime, and a lot of people were tourists in town to shop. But something fundamental had changed, maybe in the way New Yorkers regarded each other and the way the rest of the world regarded New York. It’s not bigger than life anymore. The people there are human, vulnerable. As we all are.

The next day I attended Mass at St. John the Baptist in Hillsdale, N.J., the Roman Catholic Church in which I grew up. Something in the Mass -- that I have heard for zillions of years, in both Catholic and Protestant churches -- caught my ear in a new way. It was during the celebration of the Eucharist, where the priest said, “On the night before Jesus was given up to death, a death he freely accepted, he broke bread, gave it to his disciples and said, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Instantly I thought of the firefighters who went into those Towers on September 11. Weren’t their deaths also freely accepted in the very act of BEING firefighters? And most certainly their bodies were given for those they walked into those buildings to save. They were – as a friend likes to say – God with skin on. They are the contemporary communion elements for our age. And I feel it is my duty to remember them.

The morning I visited the World Trade Center, the Bible chapter I was scheduled to read was Luke 13. I could hardly believe my eyes as I read verses in which Jesus was questioned about Galileans who had perished in some disasters. The people at that time were trying to ascertain guilt of those who suffered in these disasters, to blame their suffering on their “sin” back then. It didn’t sound a whole lot different than many initial responses to the September 11 disaster in which we blamed ourselves for this outrage. Verses four and five read:

“Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you ‘no!’ But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

What did THAT mean? Repent. There’s that antiquated word that makes us all uncomfortable -- repent. The weird thing is I think in different ways, people of conscience are repenting. Towers fell on us, and we have been forced to look at our lives and the way we treat each other, and literally “go another way.” And many of us are repenting of a myriad of things -- being too busy to enjoy each other, re-ordering our priorities, of policies that hurt people at home and in other countries, of hard-heartedness, of hatred.  

I know those events hit me with such force that I found myself letting go of some long-held resentments and embracing new paths that had been calling me for a long time.

So, maybe I did extract a lesson out of all this after all. There was a great darkness that occurred and maybe amidst the loss and emptiness, it made room for some light. For some change and some growth. It’s a strange sort of balance – an anguished sort of yin and yang. Yet in the somberness and grief, there is some hope for us to connect with those “better angels of our nature” and find that bright shaft of light in an unexpected place.

And that’s what I noticed.