Tag Archives: 9/11

9/11 after 25 years: have we forgotten more than we remember?

Posted on by
Reply
I rode in my friend Barry’s flag balloon on 9/11 in 2012
over Chester County.

Twenty- five years. Let that sink in for a moment. Twenty-five years and a not so long from now, the first plane was hitting the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

Where were you? I was pulling in to my office garage at 2 Tower Bridge in Conshohocken, PA. I heard the news come across the car radio. I sat there in silence with tears running down my face saying to myself (out loud, actually) “They came back.”

I know I’ve told this story since 9/11 but I really did come out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse above the garage when they blew up the garage in February 1993.

It’s 8:45 AM and 8:46 AM the moment of silence at the World Trade Center Memorial in NYC begins.

25 years ago today, everything changed. 2983 people lost their lives.

On February 23, 1993 there was the first attack on the World Trade Center. The attack is one that people don’t talk about.

The years move away from the dates, but we never forget. They are literally dates which live in our minds in infamy. To paraphrase FDR, who was in his time, referring to Pearl Harbor.

One of the photos in this post opens with is one I took one summer and it is the controversial 9/11 Memorial in New Jersey. Known as the “teardrop memorial”, it is located in Bayonne. I think it has a kind of strength and beauty to it.

In 2006 I wrote a piece for the local paper:

Sept. 11, 2006, is the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and United Airlines Flight 93’s crash in the field in Shanksville, Somerset County. This date has special significance to every American, and intense personal significance to far too many individuals who lost friends and loved ones.

But September 11, wasn’t the first time terrorists visited the World Trade Center. In truth, Feb. 26, 1993. was the date of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district.

On that day, I had accompanied an office friend to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse. We were back outside the Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan. Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February. Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.

People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage.

I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.

Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack. Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this “incident.”

So, on the morning of 9/11, as I pulled into my office building’s garage and listened to the breaking news on the radio announcing that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, tears began to run down my face unbidden. I knew in my heart of hearts what happened. I said to myself, “Oh no. They came back.”

I remember picking up my cell phone to call my father, whom I knew to be, at that time, on an Amtrak train bound for New York City. I remember him telling me it was fine and he’d be fine. I wanted him to get off in New Jersey and take a train back to Philadelphia. But the train was already pretty much past all the stations and getting ready to go into the tunnel to New York. That very thought terrified me. To this day, I still do not understand why Amtrak did not stop those last trains from going into New York City as the news of the World Trade Center attacks first broke.

I next remember getting in the elevator and getting off on my office floor to find people clustered around television sets and radios. And the news kept getting worse: first one plane, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth.

The images and news just didn’t stop. Camera cuts from lower Manhattan to Washington to Somerset County. They are images that have to be ingrained in everyone’s mind forever like indelible ink.

It took a couple of days for my father and brother-in-law (who had already been in New York on business) to get out of the city, but eventually they got home safely with many stories to tell of what New York was like in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A lot of people weren’t so lucky. They never saw their loved ones again after that fateful morning. Many people in the Philadelphia and greater Main Line area lost friends, coworkers and loved ones.

On September 11, I knew people who were lost, but fortunately I didn’t lose any loved ones. I remember for a brief time it seemed we were all a little nicer to each other, and politicians actually seemed to come together as one and grieve as a nation grieved.

But here we are five short years later. I have only seen the site one time where the World Trade Center once stood proudly. That was about a year after the attacks. I remember a distinct pit in my stomach and looked away from the car window. This past June I was in Washington, and had the same intense, awful feeling in my stomach as we drove on the highway past the Pentagon.

Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? Five years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?

So back to the morning of 9/11 when the first plane hit. I realized then my now late father was on a freaking train to New York City. I pulled out my cell phone, which looked like a weird small brick from Nokia I believe.

I called him. Miraculously he answered. I asked him where he was, and he said Metro Park I said good is it stopped at Metro Park? He said yes why and I said a plane just went in to the World Trade Center. I think it’s a terrorist attack get off and take a train back before you can’t get out of Manhattan.

I will never forget what he said, and it was that the Amtrak conductor assured all of the passengers there was nothing to worry about, and he was just going to continue into New York City.

We didn’t actually talk to him again for a couple of days because you couldn’t get phone calls in or out of New York right after 9/11 for a good couple of days.

I remembered this particular part of 9/11 over the summer when I was at my nephew’s wedding in the Hamptons. It was there I literally saw a guest I hadn’t seen since my late brother-in-law’s funeral many years ago. It was a friend and someone my late brother-in-law used to work with whose family literally lent my late brother-in-law and late father an apartment for a few days because they couldn’t get off the island of Manhattan after 9/11.

People kind of forget that part of the chaos post-terrorist attack. The being cut off from people we knew in all sorts of places, who had ties to places like NYC or Washington, DC.

Other things I remember? Having a couple of childhood friends who were siblings show up on missing and possibly dead lists. One worked for Marsh & McMcLennan and the other for the Port Authority of NY and NJ. One sibling in particular was on that list for days after 9/11. Turns out one or both were out of town.

But I will never forget that feeling of combing through those lists looking to see whom we knew was on those lists. On one list were two guys that went to college with me. One I knew peripherally the other not at all, but I knew who he was. Both were close friends of another friend of mine’s husband.

I remember having a conversation with someone after 9/11 who had a job in the Pentagon. They were the opposite side from where the plane hit.

So many people had stories. I also remember speaking with someone well after 9/11 who if I remember correctly was from like Michigan or something and they knew people who physically went to NYC after 9/11 because they were trying to find family members that worked in the financial district and in the World Trade Center buildings.

A related aside is many years ago before 1993 or 9/11, I had a couple of interviews with brokerage firms or financial places in the World Trade Center buildings. I remember I did not like going up in those elevators. And I also remember there were like big escalators in that building as well. People thought it was such a cachet to work in those buildings and I remember thinking back then they’re just too tall, even in a city of skyscrapers.

I think a lot of us also knew first responders who were from other areas who went to New York City to help. I also know a couple of people whose family members were first responders in the New York Metropolitan area.

In that vein over the years, you’ve had the people who claimed they went to New York to help after 9/11. But didn’t. You even had a guy who said he was assigned from NYPD down to the financial district after 9/11 to help look for people or whatever they were all doing, but really wasn’t he was in the Bronx or something. You also have the tall tales with the current president when it comes to 9/11.

I really despise the people who fake things about being part of efforts post 9/11. I don’t understand people that need to build their own images on a national tragedy.

Someone I know who was the first responder said today that the best way to honor people on 9/11 is to be the people we all were 9/12.

I saw this drone show thing from New York and it’s very moving. I’m sharing a snippet from the ABC affiliate up there:

As a country from the most local things to national, we are a cesspool of messiness. People wanna tell you what it’s like to be a patriot or an American. They don’t have the first clue. We have become an international embarrassment, not strength. And because of the current administration, we are once again I believe wide open to incidents like what happened 9/11 25 years ago.

We have a president who wants to tell tall tales about 9/11 and even issue AI generated ridiculousness to make himself look like a hero on whatever his truth social account is.

We have a president with an administration which kowtows to him when they know they shouldn’t. I can’t decide if it’s because they are actually afraid of him or they can’t admit they made a mistake in getting behind him. of course the other point to ponder is some of them simply put are just stupid especially the women I have never seen so many ridiculous women in positions of power. It’s embarrassing to be a woman and look at them. Bad plastic surgery and Botox-laden twits. And the men? Half of them who are in positions where they have anything to do with the military have no military background. They’re just there because they’ll do what what’s his name wants.

We are an international joke. We are also because of the actions of this administration creates increasingly vulnerable situations. Spoiled boys shouldn’t be playing war.

And I keep waiting for elected officials to find their spines to stand up to this stuff and write the ship that is capsized that is our country and democracy. And all they do is talk.

The 25th anniversary of 9/11 falls on the 250th anniversary of this country.

Liberty weeps and so do I.

Remember, 9/11 accurately.

Remember those who lost their lives. Remember the first responders and others from all over not just New York City, who are still alive and struggling with health issues and what not because of what they were exposed to on that fateful day and the days thereafter. Honor all those people and this event by getting your asses to the polls on election day.

It’s time to right the ship of democracy.

To be an American is who we are. We come from all walks of life. We come from all races, creeds, colors, nationalities. We are a nation, literally born of immigrants, and it’s time to start treating those people with respect which means getting rid of the frozen feds.

Be a real patriot, not one that just expects a check from a crazy old man who seems to think that’s what it takes to get people to vote. we all know the phrase. The check is in the mail and if you think he’s gonna pay you anything I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

Well, that’s my rant for the 25th anniversary. As Americans, we have an obligation to be better than what we currently are allowing in this country.

Here are some things to read:

https://www.inquirer.com/sports/west-chester-qb-michael-horrocks-september-11-pilot-20260909.html

https://www.inquirer.com/news/september-11-aniversary-hug-hub-philadelphia-20260909.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-w-bush-911-attacks-condoleezza-rice/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/10/us/seventh-moment-of-silence-9-11?cid=ios_app

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/09/colin-powell-911-democracy/688566/

https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/flag-man-jim-minacci-september-11-25-years-later-20260910.html

https://abc7ny.com/amp/post/drone-show-recreates-twin-towers-honors-2977-victims-ahead-25th-anniversary-911-attacks-new-york/19814308/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/9-11-first-responders-care/688554/

https://apnews.com/article/september-11-associated-press-eeacb6c1608413860c2306008b354b89

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/10/nx-s1-5962791/barbara-keating-9-11-victim-burial?unified=true&renderPlatform=nprone_ios

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/magazine/did-9-11-really-change-everything.html

https://penncapital-star.com/history/remembering-flight-93-through-the-lens-of-healing/

9/11 turns 23, so why is it this country is more fragmented than ever?
of freedom and balloon rides
9/11 : 17 years. never forget.

9/11 turns 23, so why is it this country is more fragmented than ever?

Posted on by

Twenty- three years at 8:41 AM. 23 years since 9/11. Let that sink in.

I find a very famous quote haunting me once again.  The quote is from our Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I am glad we are free, but I wish people would stop killing Americans, including other Americans.  And on our own soil, I wish the petty tyranny of small minded government officials in local municipalities, Harrisburg, and Washington DC would cease.

I am proud to be an American but petty tyranny and unnecessary death and destruction makes me sad. Hate spewing and vitriol assails us at every turn. I actually have gone from being a news junkie to a news avoider. In that vein, politics is pretty much just ugly today. And I will indeed lay that at Donald Trump’s fat little feet and big gut. I will also lay that at the feet of the fake hillbilly and generally speaking, twisted opportunist, J.D. Vance.

I was once proud to be a Republican, so proud I was a media relations volunteer at the RNC 2000. Then came 2016 and the news that Trump was the nominee. The day he became a nominee, I stopped being a Republican. First I tried on Independent for size, which truly fits me better, but I ultimately became a Democrat for two reasons: the rights of women to do as we choose with our bodies and lives and the fact I wanted to vote in primaries. If Pennsylvania was not so backwards on this this and other issues, we could easily exist as an open primary or semi-open primary state.

Today I wrote this post as one thing only: an American woman. In 2001, I remember when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It was at this moment I was pulling into my garage back then where I worked for then Wachovia Securities in Conshohocken. I was listening to the radio in my car. I remember the tears just starting to roll down my face because I knew, I knew they (terrorists) came back because I had walked out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse in 1993 when they blew up the garage.

And when I say I remember exactly when it was as the bomb detonated in that garage in 1993. I was standing on the sidewalk outside looking at Century 21 with my friend Deirdre. If life has been different I might still have been working in New York City on September 11, 2001.

I also remember as I walked into my office that fateful day in 2001, and all the brokers were riveted to television screens in their offices and their computers, at that point in time most people didn’t believe those were terrorist attacks. They just thought like a small plane had gone into the World Trade Center. It was a crazy surreal morning as the news started to unfold. It’s crazy how clearly I can still remember it. I think this is like it was for our parents the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. You remember where you were and what you were doing.

I also still remember calling my late father, who was on his cell phone on an Amtrak train to New York for some kind of an appointment, and when he answered the phone I remember saying “Where are you? Where are you?” And he told me they had just stopped at Metro Park, New Jersey, and I told him get off the train. Take another train back. And he told me oh no the AMTRAK conductors said it’s fine, it’s nothing and he would be back that evening. With the aftermath of 9/11 in NYC, he couldn’t get out of that city for days.

Another of the other things I remember on this day now twenty years ago, two sisters I grew up with who were close childhood family friends and still are. One, at the time, worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The other I think worked for Marsh and McLennan at the time (can’t remember for sure), but she did work somewhere in the World Trade Center. I remember being in a panic for days until I found out they were OK. One or both were out of state visiting their parents. And one sister had actually just left her job to go back to school or she definitely would have been there.

One of the sisters, if not both, were posted on missing persons lists that kept coming out back then at a rapid-fire pace. You have no idea how surreal it was to see familiar names on these lists. Especially because at this point the missing persons lists were also presumed dead lists.

I remember the days and weeks that followed when people were checking lists for the dead, found, and alive every damn day. Once upon a time I remember a conversation with an ATF agent a couple of years after 9/11 who had been in the Pentagon on 9/11, fortunately for them, the other side of the Pentagon.

Of course I also remember when my sister who had been studying in Strasbourg in 1988 changed her flight at the last minute to get a couple of more days in Europe before coming home. Originally, she was supposed to have been on Pan Am 103, which was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The 36th anniversary of that is September 21, 2024. These were the pre-cell phone days and I remember making transatlantic phone calls and then waiting until she called.

 I am also going to once again pause for a moment to remember the OTHER terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center. February 26, 1993.

In 1993, I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district. 44 Wall Street. Gabriele, Hueglin & Cashman.

On that day, I had accompanied my office friend Deirdre to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse above the garage. We were back outside of the World Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan.

Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February.

Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.

People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. 

We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage. That much had come over the Bloomberg machine.

I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.

Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two after that fateful 1993 day. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this 1993 “incident.”

Like it never happened. Only it did and on February 26, 2025 it will 32 years.

If you were there in NYC , like I was, you always remember that day as well. And I am sure I am not the only one who was in New York City downtown in February 1993 who felt as I did on September 11, 2001: that immediate “they came back” feeling.

Tomorrow morning is 23 years. And here we are. But where are we? We are a constantly devolving country full of politically driven mis-information and ugliness. A mad man, a truly dangerously sociopathic malignant narcissist who quite literally should be in jail somewhere wants to pollute the White House again. Right now he just pollutes all the airwaves with his bullshit. And people think he’s the messiah. The irony is the majority of people who think he’s wonderful have not and will never benefit from any of his drivel. They don’t get that this old man doesn’t see anyone except himself. He uses everyone and everything in his path to suit his own desires. He’s not about making America anything except broken, like so many of his companies and business ventures. If he is re-elected we will lose social security, more healthcare stuff, and women will be back to chattel with no control over their bodies. If you want to be a Stepford wife, I suppose that’s ok, but is that your America? It’s not mine.

The ugliness in this country takes your breath away some days. And when it comes to the Middle East? That is not our war and the atrocities exist on both sides. So pardon me if I do not get why overprivileged spoiled kids think they understand what’s going on. If they had a basic knowledge of the the centuries of this crisis in various forms, I might actually respect their efforts. But I do not. On either side. We need a more humanist approach. I mean does anyone remember the Crusades of medieval times? Hell probably not because there is probably something wrong with teaching that history too.

Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge-an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all Oh and humanists can and do believe in God. Some say humanism and Christianity are opposites. I do not necessarily find that accurate, and they do share common ground.

Back to 9/11. People, we need our country back. We need to be free of MAGATs. They are not Republicans. If you need to further cement that look at how polluted what was the party of Lincoln has further become with plopping Trump’s plastic ridiculousness of a daughter in law who makes screaming goats sound good in as co-chair of the RNC. That is actually offensive and wow can’t the GOP see the goose steppers they have become? And yes I did say that and I can say that, it is accurate. And First Amendment rights are not subjective so I reject any criticism of that comment which will occur. And I remind them that the term “goose step” can also be used figuratively to describe someone who acts in accordance with the commands of another person, or to practice unthinking conformity.

But back to our world full of a lack of reality, “influencers”, and just plain ugliness. If you think ANY of that is OK you don’t even get the symbolism of 9/11 or 1993 or 1988. Or at any time over the course of our world history.

We can’t sugarcoat the past and we don’t sugarcoat the history of 9/11 so stop dumbing it down from coast to coast. If we ignore our history, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes that precede us, only worse. Look no further that World War I and World War II.

So on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 make a difference in your world. Do something GOOD. And this coming November? Vote like your life and country depends upon it.

Wake up America and remember the dangers of false idols.

Here is a link to the 9/11 Report:

https://dpcld.defense.gov/Portals/49/Documents/Civil/911Report.pdf

Here are other posts I have written over the years:

9/11
9/11 2012: from the air
of freedom and balloon rides
9/11: 13 years. what have we learned?
remembering 9/11
9/11 : 17 years. never forget.
on the eve of 9/11
9/11 the somber hey 19
9/11 turns 20 september 11, 2021…
9/11 turns 22

9/11 turns 22

Posted on by

Please use this day to remember all of those Americans who died on 9/11. Multiple races, ethnicities, walks of life, and more. Remember all of those people who died on this day to help protect our freedoms.

Honor America by actually remembering who we are, not what some try to dictate whom they say we should be.

On September 11, 2020 it was the 19th unbelievable anniversary of 9/11. One of the things that 9/11 taught us, as journalist Harry Smith on NBC’s Today Show had pointed out then on the morning news is in this great country if we look, there is more that unites us versus divides us, and we learned that from 9/11. He also remarked that it’s hard for us to see it now and it is. We are a country divided.

We can’t remain a country divided, and this somber anniversary is the best example why.

Yet we are a country still divided, even more divided I feel. Full of zealots wound up in their own hatred determined to pummel us with what they feel are their superior views. I was reminded of that this weekend when a woman I wrote about decided to get quite literally in my face so I knew who she was or saw her.

We were at a ceremony marking the history of a cemetery and a church ruin. Was that her appropriate moment? No of course not, but what she didn’t get is that I already saw her before seeing her inches from my face and it cemented my sense of what she did being wrong all over again. I told her that I don’t speak to people like her and walked away.

But these people like this woman? They don’t understand that they get their very rights to try to remove the rights of others in this country because of our forefathers, and again because of the people who lose their lives for being Americans. Like 9/11.

On 9/11 Americans were targeted for violence and death for being American. And any other person who was from any other part of the world who died that day in NYC, Washington DC, or Shanksville, PA died for being in the US then for whatever reason.

Yes, there is always more that unites us versus divides us, and we learned that from 9/11 and that is often nearly impossible for us to see in today’s world . We are still a country divided. We can’t remain a country divided and the anniversary of 9/11 is the best example why.

Today also marks day 12 that an escaped murderer is on the loose in Chester County County. Here’s hoping Danelo Cavalcante is apprehended today. Here’s a video from a guy from this morning about this:

I think they totally don’t know where this guy is at this point and that bothers me because today is 9/11 and there are ceremonies everywhere even in Chester County.

Back to 9/11.

The news is once again full of stories of families who lost people on 9/11. Children who grew up without parents because they died on 9/11. This is unimaginable loss, and all of these people have gone forward with their lives which has to be so hard at some moments. Graduations, weddings, first days of school, first steps of children and grandchildren and more.

Again on 9/11, I am also going to pause and remember two men I went to college with. I’m not going to be some kind of weird death hypocrite and say I really knew them or they were my close personal friends because they weren’t. They were both people I met a couple of times, but people I never really knew who were close to people important to me to this very day. They lost their lives on 9/11.

9/11 Memorial in New Jersey – my photo.

Doug Cherry worked for AON. I remember when I found out that he had died in the trade center because I worked for then Wachovia Securities, and AON had a large office literally across the hall. Someone I knew from that office had oddly remembered I went to Ohio Weslyan. So they told me when they learned the names of those who had died in their company. But that wasn’t on 9/11 that was in the days that followed. I remember afterwards the days that followed when you started to see the roll call of names of people lost.

I remember when I heard about Doug I kind of felt old and felt my own mortality for the first time. He was my class, and although he wasn’t a close friend or somebody I even really knew back then, we went to a small school, so you remembered the faces even if you didn’t remember the people.

That was the case with Ted Luckett. He was the class ahead, and again somebody I didn’t know but remembered. But I remembered back then is he liked to sail — there were a lot of guys who went to Ohio Weslyan who were amazing sailors. Even on America’s Cup crews.

I remember when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It was at this moment I was pulling into my garage back then where I worked for then Wachovia Securities in Conshohocken. I was listening to the radio. I remember the tears just starting to roll down my face because I knew, I knew they (terrorists) came back because I had walked out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse in 1993 when they blew up the garage.

And when I say I remember exactly when it was as the bomb detonated in that garage in 1993. I was standing on the sidewalk outside looking at Century 21. If life has been different I might still have been working in New York City on September 11, 2001.

I also remember as I walked into my office that fateful day in 2001, and all the brokers were riveted to television screens in their offices and their computers, at that point in time most people didn’t believe those were terrorist attacks. They just thought like a small plane had gone into the trade center. It was a crazy surreal morning as the news started to unfold. It’s crazy how clearly I can still remember it. I think this is like it was for our parents the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. You remember where you were and what you were doing.

I also remember calling my late father, who was on his cell phone on an Amtrak train to New York for some kind of an appointment, and when he answered the phone I remember saying “Where are you? Where are you?” And he told me they had just stopped at Metro Park, New Jersey, and I told him get off the train. Take another train back. And he told me oh no the AMTRAK conductors said it’s fine, it’s nothing and he would be back that evening. With the aftermath of 9/11 in NYC, he couldn’t get out of that city for days.

So it’s been 22 years, what have we learned? I ask that ever year.

Another of the other things I remember on this day now twenty years ago, two sisters I grew up with who were close childhood family friends and still are. One, at the time, worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The other I think worked for Marsh and McLennan at the time (can’t remember for sure), but she did work somewhere in the World Trade Center. I remember being in a panic for days until I found out they were OK. One or both were out of state visiting their parents. And one sister had actually just left her job to go back to school or she definitely would have been there.

One of the sisters, if not both, were posted on missing persons lists that kept coming out back then at a rapid-fire pace. You have no idea how surreal it was to see familiar names on these lists. Especially because at this point the missing persons lists were also presumed dead lists.

On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, I am also going to once again pause for a moment to remember the OTHER terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center. February 26, 1993.

In 1993, I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district. 44 Wall Street. Gabriele, Hueglin & Cashman.

On that day, I had accompanied my office friend Deirdre to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse above the garage. We were back outside of the World Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan.

Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February.

Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.

People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. 

We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage. That much had come over the Bloomberg machine.

I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.

Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack. (I found out later he did not visit New York after this attack.)

Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this 1993 “incident.”

Except if you were there, like I was, you always remember that day as well. And I am sure I am not the only one who was in New York City downtown in February 1993 who felt as I did on September 11, 2001: that immediate “they came back” feeling.

Within the past few years I found my work friend Deirdre again, and we are reconnected. She still in the New York metropolitan area and has a beautiful family.

Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? TWENTY TWO years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?

We never forget this day and never should. But what have we learned? I think we need to pay it forward as a country in memory of all of those first responders and others who lost their lives. We need to be better versions of ourselves. We need to come together as a country. 

We need peace, and less racial divide and polarizing, divisive politics. Is that possible? I don’t know. But we can try.

I don’t really have that much else to say about 9/11 today, other than this isn’t Taylor Swift’s 22.

I will close with it is so almost inconceivable to me that 22 years have gone by in a blink since 9/11 happened. Here’s wishing for a better world… and remembering those who lost their lives and gave their lives on this day as well as those who were in our lives then, but are not now.

#NeverForget

9/11 Memorial in NJ

day 11: danelo cavalcante is out of pocopson area and ON THE RUN

Posted on by

I got a text from a friend before my glasses were on:

He may be in Phoenixville… Activity by Bonnie Brae Rd. Apparently, he has family on Ferry Lane, which is just across 23…from Country Club Road.…

That text was a couple of hours ago. I had slept in for once.

Then I saw this:

Keep eyes 👀 peeled for a WHITE Ford Transit van. I read somewhere he stole it from Baily’s Dairy.

From the PA State Police:

UPDATE: Cavalcante is operating a white 2020 Ford Transit van bearing Pennsylvania registration ZST8818. The van has a refrigeration unit on the top.
Danelo Cavalcante Search Update: During the late evening and overnight hours, Cavalcante was reportedly seen in the northern Chester County area near Phoenixville. He changed his appearance. He is now clean shaven and was wearing a yellow or green hooded sweatshirt, black baseball style hat, green prison pants, and white shoes. If anyone has any information, please contact 911 or the Tip Line at 717-562-2987.

I have friends in East Pikeland who said cop cars zooming around Font Road 45 minutes ago.

https://x.com/nikthehat/status/1700795538138931676?s=46&t=q2Crl-CoQlPQiewpyXUrxw

Well on Day 11 this is some special kind of bullshit. Many thanks to law enforcement because they are trying their best. But thanks again Chester County Prison for the escaped murderer gift that keeps on giving.

God forgive me, but here’s hoping he goes off of a winding road in the rain into a tree.

9/11 turns 21

Posted on by
9/11 New Jersey Memorial

I have written about 9/11 in some form since about the 5th anniversary. I almost didn’t write today and then I thought, perhaps I should.

9/11 turns 20 september 11, 2021…

I am including the posts from the last couple of years as embedded links. The importance of honoring this day never lessens, but the understanding of what it is to be a Patriot or even an American does.

Our forefathers fought and bled and died for our inalienable rights. Our country dissolved into civil war in the mid-19th century so we could learn those lessons all over again, and end slavery. But here we are in the 21st century and how is the hatred and vitriol seemingly omnipresent in this country so I have to ask, has anyone living in the United States of America learned a god damned thing?

We have hate groups everywhere and they love to live and breed on Facebook. They misuse the use of our American flag and apply it everywhere, including their fakakta organizations stuff. They are more for the pursuit of liberty than anyone, and they will tell you so as they work the freedoms of everyone else BUT themselves. They run for school board, for Congress, for State Representative, State Senator, Governor, U.S. Senator. They file frivolous litigation including in front of Federal Court, and I hope that dangerous nutbag filing against Great Valley School District and whomever else gets her head handed to her.

I don’t have to name any of the aforementioned anyones running for whatever, we all know who they are. But we have to get off our asses between now and the November midterm elections to ensure they are sent packing. And we will have to keep sending what comes after them packing for as long as it takes.

9/11 the somber hey 19

Why do I bring this up in a 9/11 post? Simple. They will use today to whitewash and faux paint what they are all about. Instead, I say to you, use this day to remember all of those Americans who died on 9/11. Multiple races, ethnicities, walks of life, and more. Remember all of those people who died on this day to help protect our freedoms. The least we can do is send these freaks of political nature packing.

Honor America by actually remembering who we are, not what these people try to dictate we must be.

#NeverForget

20 years. #neverforget

Posted on by

9/11 turns 20 september 11, 2021…

Posted on by
9/11 Memorial in New Jersey – my photo.

Time waits for no man and no woman. This is the year that is the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

As I have said before, there is more that unites us versus divides us, and we learned that from 9/11 and that it’s hard for us to see it sometimes. We are still a country divided. We can’t remain a country divided and this somber 20th anniversary is the best example why.

The news is full of stories of families who lost people on 9/11. Children who grew up without parents because they died on 9/11. This is unimaginable loss, and all of these people have gone forward with their lives which has to be so hard at some moments. Graduations, weddings, first days of school and more.

Again for this upcoming 9/11 I am also going to pause and remember two men I went to college with. I’m not going to be some kind of weird death hypocrite and say I really knew them or they were my close friends because they weren’t. They were both people I met a couple of times, but people I never really knew who were close to people important to me to this very day. They lost their lives in 9/11.

Doug Cherry worked for AON. I remember when I found out that he had died in the trade center because I worked for then Wachovia Securities, and AON had a large office literally across the hall. Someone I knew from that office had oddly remembered I went to Ohio Weslyan. So they told me when they learned the names of those who had died in their company. But that wasn’t on 9/11 that was in the days that followed. I remember afterwards the days that followed when you started to see the roll call of names of people lost. I remember when I heard about Doug I kind of felt old and felt my own mortality for the first time. He was my class, and although he wasn’t a close friend or somebody I even really knew back then, we went to a small school so you remembered the faces even if you didn’t remember the people. That was the case with Ted Luckett. He was the class ahead, and again somebody I didn’t know but remembered. But I remembered back then is he liked to sail — there were a lot of guys who went to Ohio Weslyan who were amazing sailors. Even on America’s Cup crews.

I remember when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It was at this moment I was pulling into my garage back then where I worked for then Wachovia Securities in Conshohocken. I was listening to the radio. I remember the tears just starting to roll down my face because I knew, I knew they (terrorists) came back because I had walked out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse in 1993 when they blew up the garage. And when I say when, as the bomb detonated I was standing on the sidewalk outside looking at Century 21. If life has been different I might still have been working in New York City on September 11, 2001.

I also remember as I walked into my office that fateful day in 2001, and all the brokers were riveted to television screens in their offices and their computers, at that point in time most people didn’t believe those were terrorist attacks. They just thought like a small plane had gone into the trade center. It was a crazy surreal morning as the news started to unfold. It’s crazy how clearly I can still remember it. I think this is like it was for our parents the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. You remember where you were and what you were doing.

So it’s been 20 years, what have we learned? I found this blog post of someone’s memories of 9/11. Please read it. Someone else I went to school with and don’t remember. They were fraternity brothers with Doug Cherry. It’s heartbreaking to read.

Another of the other things I remember on this day now twenty years ago, two sisters I grew up with who were close childhood family friends and still are. One, at the time, worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The other I think worked for Marsh and McLennan at the time (can’t remember for sure), but she did work somewhere in the World Trade Center. I remember being in a panic for days until I found out they were OK. They were both out of state visiting their parents.

One of the sisters if not both were posted on missing persons lists that kept coming out back then at a rapid-fire pace. You have no idea how surreal it was to see familiar names on the missing persons lists. Especially because at this point the missing persons list were also presumed dead lists.

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I am also going to pause for a moment to remember the OTHER terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center. February 26, 1993.

In 1993, I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district. 44 Wall Street. Gabriele Hueglin & Cashman.

On that day, I had accompanied my office friend Deirdre to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse. We were back outside of the World Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan.

Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February.

Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.

People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown.

We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage.

I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.

Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack.

Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this “incident.”

Except if you were there, like I was, you always remember that day as well. And I am sure I am not the only one who was in New York City downtown in February 1993 who felt as I did on September 11, 2001: that immediate “they came back” feeling.

Within the last couple of years I found my work friend Deirdre again, and we are reconnected. She still in the New York metropolitan area and has a beautiful family. It is so nice to be able to know her again after all of these years.

Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? TWENTY years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?

We never forget this day and never should. But what have we learned? I think we need to pay it forward as a country in memory of all of those first responders and others who lost their lives. We need to be better versions of ourselves. We need to come together as a country.

We need peace, and less racial divide and polarizing, divisive politics. Is that possible? I don’t know. But we can try.

I don’t really have that much else to say about 9/11 today. When I wrote last year we were in the grips of COVID19 which is still too much a part of our world today.

I will close with it is so almost inconceivable to me that 20 years have gone by in a blink, since 9/11 happened. Here’s wishing for a better world…

#NeverForget

9/11 the somber hey 19

Posted on by
9/11/2001 New York City as seen from Brooklyn

It’s September 11, 2020. It is the 19th unbelievable anniversary of 9/11. One of the things that 9/11 taught us, as journalist Harry Smith on NBC’s Today Show just pointed out on the morning news is in this great country if we look, there is more that unites us versus divides us, and we learned that from 9/11. He also remarked that it’s hard for us to see it now and it is. We are a country divided. We can’t remain a country divided and this somber anniversary is the best example why.

United we stand, divided we fall. Last year when I wrote about 9/11, I remarked about the offensive plans that didn’t happen of the current president to meet with the Taliban at Camp David just before 9/11. I was thinking about that this morning and reflecting on 2020 to date. We don’t have a leader, we have a circus ringmaster. That’s not a leader. And on this 19th anniversary of 9/11, I pray for a country united and for real leadership. Every American regardless of race, creed, political persuasion, or color deserves this.

Now this 9/11 I am also going to pause and remember two men I went to college with. I’m not going to be some kind of weird death hypocrite and say I really knew them or they were my close friends because they weren’t. They were both people I met a couple of times, but people I never really knew who were close to people important to me to this very day. They lost their lives in 9/11.

Doug Cherry worked for AON. I remember when I found out that he had died in the trade center because I worked for then Wachovia Securities, and AON had a large office literally across the hall. Someone I knew from that office had oddly remembered I went to Ohio Weslyan for a while. So they told me when they learned the names of those who had died in their company. But that wasn’t on 9/11 that was in the days that followed. I remember afterwards the days that followed when you started to see the roll call of names of people lost. I remember when I heard about Doug I kind of felt old and felt my own mortality for the first time. He was my class, and although he wasn’t a close friend or somebody I even really knew back then, we went to a small school so you remembered the faces even if you didn’t remember the people. That was the case with Ted Luckett. He was the class ahead, and again somebody I didn’t know but remembered. But I remembered back then is he liked to sail — there were a lot of guys who went to Ohio Weslyan who were amazing sailors. Even on America’s Cup crews.

February 26, 1993 The garage bomb terrorist attack
on the World Trade Center.

As I write this it is 8:46 AM. This is when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It was at this moment I was pulling into my garage back then where I worked for then Wachovia Securities in Conshohocken. I was listening to the radio. I remember the tears just starting to roll down my face because I knew, I knew they (terrorists) came back because I had walked out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse in 1993 when they blew up the garage. And when I say when, as the bomb detonated I was standing on the sidewalk outside looking at Century 21. If life has been different I might still have been working in New York City on September 11, 2001.

I also remember as I walked into my office and all the brokers were riveted to television screens in their offices and their computers, at that point in time most people didn’t believe those were terrorist attacks. They just thought like a small plane had gone into the trade center. It was a crazy surreal morning as the news started to unfold. It’s crazy how clearly I can still remember it. I think this is like it was for our parents the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. You remember where you were and what you were doing.

So it’s been 19 years, what have we learned? I found this blog post of someone’s memories of 9/11. Please read it. Someone else I went to school with and don’t remember. They were fraternity brothers with Doug Cherry. It’s heartbreaking to read.

This year we are still in the grips of COVID19, so the ceremonies for 9/11 are very different. They are smaller and they are not reading the rollcall of lives lost. So today we all have to remember those we knew or knew of who were lost.

One of the other things I remember on this day 19 years ago, two sisters I grew up with who were close childhood family friends and still are. One, at the time, worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The other I think worked for Marsh and McLennan at the time but can’t remember for sure, but she did work somewhere in the World Trade Center. I remember being in a panic for days until I found out they were OK. They were both out of state visiting their parents.

So it is true, we never forget this day and never will. But what have we learned? I think we need to pay it forward as a country in memory of all of those first responders and others who lost their lives. We need to be better versions of ourselves. We need to come together as a country. We need peace and less racial divide. Is that possible? I don’t know. But we can try.

I don’t really have that much else to say about 9/11 today. I am going to list all the other columns I have written over the years since I started this blog.

Wishing you peace on a somber day.

9/11 written September 11, 2012

9/11 2012: from the air

9/11: 13 years. what have we learned? September 11, 2014

remembering 9/11 September 11, 2015

9/11 : 17 years. never forget. September 11, 2018

on the eve of 9/11 September 9, 2019

#NeverForget

9/11 Memorial in New Jersey

on the eve of 9/11

Posted on by

In two days it’s another anniversary of 9/11. It has been 18 years.

Above is a screenshot of a New York Times newsletter email I opened this morning.

I. Can’t. Even.

On the eve of 9/11, no less.

February, 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Let me tell you a true story…

I came out of the trade center during the first trade center bombing. February 26, 1993. I was working on Wall Street for a municipal bond trading firm and I had gone with a friend from work into the shopping concourse of the old trade center because this woman – her name was Deirdre – had wanted to visit the Hallmark Gold Crown store – her grandmother or someone collected their Christmas ornaments and they were on a clearance sale.

So we went there and we grabbed lunch, and as we were standing right outside the trade center staring at Century 21 Department Store and wondering if we had enough time to go in there as well, the ground started to shake. Like you would imagine an earthquake. And then we thought it was snowing because all the stuff was floating down in the sky. We of course later realized that was like soot and ashes and stuff and then one by one it was the strange cacophony of car alarms in the garage going off like weird church bells. Then the sirens of first responders started.

But at first, right after it happened, time stood still. The explosion underground which caused the sidewalks to move underneath our feet, followed by a hold your breath moment of complete silence. Then came the chaos.

We got back to our office which was at 44 Wall Street and people were all freaked out. It was at that point we learned what had actually happened and came to the realization of how lucky we were to get out.

Over the course of the next couple of hours we had “refugees” that we knew from the twin towers who had to go down hundreds of flights of steps in some cases and came to our offices to wash the soot off their faces and just chill.

I remember this girl name Katie who was a trading assistant along with me whose fiancé worked for Dean Witter at the time. He was one of those people that had to walk down lots and lots of stairs and showed up in our office looking like he was completely done in black face but it was soot. And he was shaking, just standing perfectly still in our reception area, shaking. I will never forget it.

So when 9/11 rolled around and the first report came over my car radio, tears started streaming down my face as I sat in my office parking garage. They came back was the only thing that went through my head. Then my cell phone rang and it was my late father who at the time was on a train to New York City to head into his office. He was reaching Metro Park and I told him to get off and turn around and come home and he didn’t listen to me because the Amtrak conductors told him it would be fine.

My late brother in law was working in NYC by this point and thankfully he was able to meet up with my father and they holed up in someone’s apartment for a couple of days until they were able to get out of the city. But it was scary when they were all cut off from us with no phone communication whatsoever. Because it was absolute insanity in New York when the towers came down.

I remember when I went up to my office in between the first plane and the second plane and people were crowded around TVs and some broker’s office and I remember again I said “they came back.”

People looked at me and said you don’t know what you’re talking about it’s just a small plane that crashed into the side of the trade center. A horrible accident. Then the second plane hit. Then you had the news out of the other two planes.

I think all of our lives in some small way changed on 9/11. For years I kept running into people that knew people who died. People I knew from college died in the twin towers. They weren’t people I knew very well but a small school on a small campus they were people you recognized.

And our current President was going to meet with the Taliban at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 except it got cancelled?

WTF. Seriously, WTF????

How Trump’s Plan to Secretly Meet With the Taliban Came Together, and Fell Apart

New York Times

By Peter Baker, Mujib Mashal and Michael Crowley. Published Sept. 8, 2019
Updated Sept. 9, 2019, 8:35 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — On the Friday before Labor Day, President Trump gathered top advisers in the Situation Room to consider what could be among the profound decisions of his presidency — a peace plan with the Taliban after 18 years of grinding, bloody war in Afghanistan.

The meeting brought to a head a bristling conflict dividing his foreign policy team for months, pitting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo against John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, in a battle for the competing instincts of a president who relishes tough talk but promised to wind down America’s endless wars…..In the days that followed, Mr. Trump came up with an even more remarkable idea — he would not only bring the Taliban to Washington, but to Camp David, the crown jewel of the American presidency. The leaders of a rugged militant organization deemed terrorists by the United States would be hosted in the mountain getaway used for presidents, prime ministers and kings just three days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that led to the Afghan war.

Thus began an extraordinary few days of ad hoc diplomatic wrangling that upended the talks in a weekend Twitter storm. On display were all of the characteristic traits of the Trump presidency — the yearning ambition for the grand prize, the endless quest to achieve what no other president has achieved, the willingness to defy convention, the volatile mood swings and the tribal infighting….And even after it fell apart, Mr. Trump took it upon himself to disclose the secret machinations in a string of Saturday night Twitter messages that surprised not only many national security officials across the government but even some of the few who were part of the deliberations.

No words. I just don’t get politics except for the overwhelming feeling on the eve of 9/11 that national politics just must be for dangerously selfish and narcissistic people.

Timing is everything and had this meeting happened it would have created more opportunistic divisiveness in this country.

Enough already. Some dates on the US calendar need to be respected. Stop already the national politics of self aggrandizing narcissistic behavior.

The timing of this just disgusts me.

9/11

9/11 : 17 years. never forget.

Posted on by

It’s 8:45 AM and 8:46 AM the moment of silence at the World Trade Center Memorial in NYC begins.

17 years ago today, everything changed. 2983 people lost their lives.

On February 23, 1993 there was the first attack on the World Trade Center. 25 years ago.

The years move away from the dates, but we never forget. They are literally dates which live in our minds in infamy. To paraphrase FDR, who was in his time, referring to Pearl Harbor.

The photo this post opens with is one I took this summer and it is the controversial 9/11 Memorial in New Jersey. Known as the “teardrop memorial”, it is located in Bayonne. I think it has a kind of strength and beauty to it.

On the anniversary of 9/11 in 2012 I was invited to ride in my friend Barry’s American flag hot air balloon over Chester County. As we left on our hot air balloon flight when I looked down this is what I saw:

This is what they were looking at and what I saw looking up:

I am forever grateful to my friend Barry because this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that was deeply meaningful and I shall never forget it.

In the last 17 years our country has gone through crazy times, perhaps none more so than today. But we have to take a moment and pause and remember all those Americans who lost their lives for our freedoms. Because even if they did not die on a battlefield or in combat, they died for all of us.

I will close with a reader’s editorial I wrote for the then editor of Main Line Life, Tom Murray. Folks in Chester County will remember him as the editor of The Daily Local before he passed away.

I wrote this piece in 2006:

Sept. 11, 2006, is the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and United Airlines Flight 93’s crash in the field in Shanksville, Somerset County. This date has special significance to every American, and intense personal significance to far too many individuals who lost friends and loved ones.

But September 11, wasn’t the first time terrorists visited the World Trade Center. In truth, Feb. 26, 1993. was the date of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district.

On that day, I had accompanied an office friend to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse. We were back outside the Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan. Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February. Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.

People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage.

I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.

Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack. Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this “incident.”

So, on the morning of 9/11, as I pulled into my office building’s garage and listened to the breaking news on the radio announcing that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, tears began to run down my face unbidden. I knew in my heart of hearts what happened. I said to myself, “Oh no. They came back.”

I remember picking up my cell phone to call my father, whom I knew to be, at that time, on an Amtrak train bound for New York City. I remember him telling me it was fine and he’d be fine. I wanted him to get off in New Jersey and take a train back to Philadelphia. But the train was already pretty much past all the stations and getting ready to go into the tunnel to New York. That very thought terrified me. To this day, I still do not understand why Amtrak did not stop those last trains from going into New York City as the news of the World Trade Center attacks first broke.

I next remember getting in the elevator and getting off on my office floor to find people clustered around television sets and radios. And the news kept getting worse: first one plane, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth.

The images and news just didn’t stop. Camera cuts from lower Manhattan to Washington to Somerset County. They are images that have to be ingrained in everyone’s mind forever like indelible ink.

It took a couple of days for my father and brother-in-law (who had already been in New York on business) to get out of the city, but eventually they got home safely with many stories to tell of what New York was like in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A lot of people weren’t so lucky. They never saw their loved ones again after that fateful morning. Many people in the Philadelphia and greater Main Line area lost friends, coworkers and loved ones.

On September 11, I knew people who were lost, but fortunately I didn’t lose any loved ones. I remember for a brief time it seemed we were all a little nicer to each other, and politicians actually seemed to come together as one and grieve as a nation grieved.

But here we are five short years later. I have only seen the site one time where the World Trade Center once stood proudly. That was about a year after the attacks. I remember a distinct pit in my stomach and looked away from the car window. This past June I was in Washington, and had the same intense, awful feeling in my stomach as we drove on the highway past the Pentagon.

Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? Five years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?