I went to work that day. And, like every day, I turned on the radio to listen to Curtis & Kuby on WABC radio in NY. I’m a talk-radio junkie and have some talk show going on pretty much all the time.
At the time, I worked in the IT Department for Morris County NJ. I lived in Denville and was just shy of 2 years out of office as the mayor of that town, just 30 miles from NYC. We could see the twin towers from Denville, and if you climbed The Tourne on a beautiful day, you got an even better view. If you visited the South Tower’s Observation Deck on a clear day, you could see for miles. We took my cousin, Clyde, there when he was in the Navy and stopped in NYC. I was terrified being that high up, outside. Clyde grew up in Arizona and had never experienced anything like it. He loved it.
Others went to work that day just like I did. But they worked in NYC, in the Towers, as many in Morris County did. As mayor, I rode the first “Midtown Direct” train that went straight into NYC instead of stopping in Hoboken and changing to a Path train. Midtown Direct made Morris County even more attractive to people who commuted into NYC.
That morning, as I logged in and began working, this is what I listened to:
Odd, a plane flew into the World Trade South Tower on a beautiful day. How did that happen? Was it an explosion? a small plane? It seemed so odd. A few of us started chatting. How did that happen? We didn’t have video in our offices then, but there was a TV in the Conference Room. That’s where we all headed as soon as the second plane hit. That’s at approximately 16:00 in this recording.
It was clear this was no accident and the US was under attack.
They went to work. All 2,977 who died that day just went to work. Some worked in the buildings. Some were delivering to offices in the Towers. Some worked nearby. Some were heroes who raced into the buildings to save others. Some did that, survived and spent years trying to recover both physically and mentally.
To put 9-11 in perspective, 2,404 military and civilians were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 during WWII, a “day that will live in infamy”. All but 68 of the dead were military personnel in the middle of a World War.
They just went to work…. all 2,977 of them. They just went to work.
NEVER FORGET. I won’t.