A few thoughts on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11.
I heard the report on my car radio at 5:48 MST of a plane crashing into the North Tower. It wasn’t clear what was happening and I thought of the B-25 that became disoriented by the fog and crashed into the Empire State Building.
Just as I was entering the gym that morning, I saw on the TV in the lobby the plane hit the South Tower and I had a strange reaction which remains crystalline to this day. It wasn’t shock or horror, it was merely the thought, eerie in its calmness, of “They have come.”
A year-and-a-half before then I was in the DC area on business. I had hauled out a friend of mine as an advisor, he had a very creative and detailed mind when it came to operations.
We were standing on the platform of a Metro stop, waiting for the next train to arrive, when my friend turned to me and out-of-the-blue said “How long until someone drops a biological down here?” I thought of the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the Oklahoma City Bombing, both in 1995. Then there was the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center where a bunch of Islamists tried to topple one tower into another. Mass casualty attacks done by amateurs. We hadn’t even heard from the professionals yet.
When I caught up with my friend a few months after 9/11, he said that when he saw the plane hit the South Tower the first thing he thought of was our conversation in DC.
The thing is that you really have to believe that you are on the side of good in order to perform that much evil.
I spent some time in New Jersey growing up, way out in the sticks. We were fascinated by New York City and as you drove toward it, from many miles away, the first you saw of it was the World Trade Center. A distant yet towering fixture, a welcoming beacon on the horizon that spoke of a larger, wondrous world underneath it.
Then a bunch of barbarians blew a hole in the sky.
Scott Johnson at Powerline has made it a tradition every September 11 to link to James Stewart’s 2002 New Yorker article, “The Real Heroes are Dead”, which depicts the life of Rick Rescorla from his battlefield exploits in Vietnam, to his later marriage, to his efforts on 9/11 where his foresight led to the saving of thousands of lives and ended with his death in the South Tower when he went back looking for stragglers.
Rescorla is not just a heroic figure, but a man who through his character gave hope to his comrades, his fellow man, and most importantly to his wife. An exemplar of what the Greeks would call “Andreia.”
The article formed the basis of Stewart’s book, Heart of a Solider. I have given copies of it to the young men in my family because he was the type of man that the young should aspire to emulate. The most fitting tribute in the article comes from Rescorla’s life-long friend and comrade Dan Hill, who when interviewed by Stewart and said:
There are certain men born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re surrounded with.
However the most haunting quote comes from the book when Hill laments:
Somebody cautioned that if a person or thing means the world to you, and you lose that person or thing, then you have lost the world. I lost the world when Rick died.
I follow a certain custom on 9/11. I read Stewart’s article, meditate, and go to 6:30 Mass. I pray for the people who died on that day and especially those who felt the terror as the towers collapsed on top of them. I give thanks for those like the first responders, Rescorla, and the people on Flight 93 who possessed the courage to do what needed to be done.
I say an extra prayer for the “Jumpers”, those who were trapped in the World Trade Center by the flames and smoke and at the end could only choose how they were to die.
It’s a sin of course to think this way, especially in a church, but even now after so many years I cannot help but be possessed of rage.
Thanks Mike
I was driving to work about 9 AM when I heard this on the radio. And it was about a minute when I thought this was just an anniversary of the 1993 bombing until I realized they were talking in real time.
In 2006 I had never been to Manhattan and I decided to go there and of course see where the World Trade Center buildings were
The pictures and videos do not do the immensity of this destruction justice
By the time I was there of course all the rubble had been cleared but it was just one giant hole
When I say a giant hole picture a hole about five or seven stories deep a couple of blocks big
I remember seeing a tube where the subway tunnel went into the bottom of the buildings just an open tube now
And at tractor trailer truck looked minuscule
I went to Saint Paul’s church where they had opened it up as a place of rest and rejuvenation for the rescue people and they had all kinds of displays there
I’ve read several books on it all fascinating from different angles
102 minutes details people trapped in that building at the time – some who were able to escape and some who perished
And they profiled the chief of security who had been in the FBI and was somewhat blackballed because he was fixated on the danger of bin Laden and the bureaucracy didn’t want to hear about it anymore
He ended up dying
They profiled a lot of people both above the crash site and below and many of those above were listening to all the panicked ideas and it was the general belief that the stairwells were too destroyed to go down
The World Trade Center was built differently from the Empire State building in that they put all four elevator shafts not in each corner of the building as the Empire State building but all together down the middle of the building to conserve space
And of course when the planes hit it destroyed all those elevators
But the handful that did escape from above threaded their way down these damaged stairwells. There was a big group of people who remembered the 1993 bombing and how helicopters came to the roof to rescue people
And a bunch of them decided to go up instead of down only to learn the door to the roof was locked and they were trapped
Another book dealt with the aspect from a air traffic controls perspective
Touching history by Lynn Spencer to me was also fascinating
The guy in the FAA who oversaw all of the routes was actually there on his first day of the job when all this started happening
And of course for a long time they didn’t realize it was a hijacking
It’s just that the transponders on some of these planes just went off making radar tracking far more difficult. Until the second plane hit the towers they didn’t know what to think
I forget which was the first plane to hit the towers the United or the American – I think it was the American-but ATC asked the pilot of the United to see if he could spot this American Airlines
And a moment later the transponder on the United jet went silent
The eeriest thing out of this book was the story of another United jet just leaving Newark New Jersey
The pilot is taxiing on the tarmac and he sees the smoke from the World Trade Center and asks ground control what it’s about and they didn’t know
But he had a foreboding feeling and decided to taxi back to the terminal and tell the passengers there was a minor mechanical issue
All the passengers deplaned and all of the luggage was taken except for one suitcase that was full of al-Queda stuff.
I think from memory that there was at least two other planes they had planned on using but the FAA order to ground all airline travel prevented that
And I am almost certain that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was destined for the capital building or the White House
I wrote of my Manhattan experience on the lexicans website years ago, but another member of that group was an airline pilot of many years and he wrote of his experiences that day as a young captain on an MD 80 leaving Houston for Tampa
https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2021/09/11/9-11-an-airline-pilots-memory-of-that-day/
On the jumpers something haunting to me is watching that video those two French brothers made. They had just come to New York with the intention of filming a Manhattan fire department and got caught up in the call to 9-11. And as their responding to the call you’re seeing the second jet hit the tower
They take you to the lobby and you’re hearing all these thuds and you realize those are bodies hitting
That Catholic priest that the fire department loved I read was killed by a falling body
And you have to wonder how bad it was up there to decide you’re going to jump to your death rather than slowly barbecue.
I would have to think that a loving God would take that into consideration
I guess I will make one more post since I can’t edit the comments. I walked around that area and stopped at the fire department that was closest and first to respond.
And there is a plaque in front simply commemorating all those who died from that fire department
I was taking a picture of the plaque and a fireman was staring at me
I really was intruding on hollowed ground
I stayed at this hotel in mid Manhattan that these Catholic nuns run. And I asked one of them what she was doing on that day and she said you could see all the smoke from the window.
I was walking down by the Wall Street – the New York Stock Exchange – and they had it barricade it off even in 2006
The police were there with submachine guns and I took a picture and they asked me to erase the picture
This is five years later
Bill Brandt,
Thanks for that link to the airline pilot’s story.
I also recall seeing racetracks in the sky early one morning at work when there was no civilian air traffic in the sky. I still remember exactly where they were and where I was standing when I saw them and I occasionally thought of that as the years past.
Shrug. I think my memories are rather banal but it will do no harm for me to write down some of them here. Everyone can freely ignore them.
9/11 was an election day where I lived. I remember seeing signs that said something like “Vote 9/11” for weeks beforehand.
That day I got up, took a shower, dressed, turned on my computer, clicked to start whatever browser I was using back then, and turned away to put on my socks. I looked back and the Yahoo headline was something like “world trade center destroyed by terrorist attack.”
Weirdly, I distinctly recall that everything on Yahoo was typical banal everyday stuff, except for the little headline box in the right hand side. Stunned, I hit refresh- and then every item was about the attack.
Then when I went to vote, I overheard a couple people in uniform- firemen, I think- mention that they thought there were more terrorist controlled flights in the air.
Months later, at work, we had an unmarked white delivery van stop near a critical point at our facility and sit. We called the police, as our counter-terrorism training instructed us to do.
They showed up 45 minutes later.
Bill,
Thank you for the memories. Sometimes it’s through our own personal recollections that we are able to comprehend what we live through.
A number of years before 9/11 I fell in with a group of academic historians (she was cute) that specialized in local history and therefore were intensely interested in personal recollections. While of weekend camping and hiking trips in parts of Arizona, they (and she) struck up a lot of conversations with locals about their town, their own experiences and those of past family members. I never appreciated what they were trying to do until 9/11.
The first responders who survived and those who were with Father Judge when he was killed by a falling body were able to tell us their experiences. We can piece together the final moments of some of those who died, like Rick Rescorla and Todd Beamer, who were able to phone loved ones before their final moments.
I think I saw that video you referenced re: the French brothers. What I remembered was their growing confusion and then realization that the loud sounds they were hearing were people dying, in a very personal way, just above them. That they had just cracked the door open to Hell.
There was a general outcry about the pictures of the Jumpers that were made published, as if we were intruding on a very private moments. One person studied one of the more iconic pictures and through that man’s clothing and complexion deduced his ethnicity and that he probably worked at the restaurant at the top of the tower. When he tracked down a brother of that man, he was flatly told that the man in the picture wasn’t him. Whether it was from his brother’s very public death or the shame of a suicide in the family or both, his brother hadn’t come to terms yet with his loss or what it meant.
Who knows what was going through the Jumpers’ minds in their final moments. Unlike Beamer and Rescorla, their final moments and thoughts are hidden from us. Unlike Rescorla and Beamer, whose final moments leave their mark in history as heroes, their final moments mark them as committing suicide.
We can deduce that they faced an impossible situation. Trapped on or above the floors of the plane strike. The fire and smoke, the heat would have been overwhelming; given the temperature that would have weakened the building supports some estimated it would have been close to 2,000 degrees. They almost certainly knew they were going to die, their only choice left was how. Somebody remarked later that they had the choice of doing so between the flames or a few seconds of launching themselves into the clear blue sky of that late Summer morning; almost literally between Heaven and Hell.
Someone who watched them launch from themselves from the building said that they didn’t come en masse but one after the other, as if each one who jumped gave courage to those who followed. Maybe there was their version of a Rescorla or a Beamer up there who in an impossible situation took charge and organized, to bring comfort to those with only one choice left.
You are right about a loving God taking all of that into consideration. At Mass I look up at the crucifix and I’m reminded that even Christ in his final moment felt forsaken. From the way they jumped, I would imagine there was an organized line of those who had made their decision and perhaps as each waited their turn they prayed for forgiveness for what they were about to do. I would think they would not know the carnage they would create below.
A few hours after it has started, the World Trade Center was gone. There were no ruined buildings still standing, no ruined skyline as if a natural disaster had hit. From afar it was if an angry deity had come down and simply erased those two towers, creating a hole in the sky. That fixture on the skyline that I saw from so many miles away, all those people…. gone. A friend of mine who live in the city said what haunted him most was the weeks and months later, after the impact of the event had worn off, of the leaflets on every available bit of public space – walls, lampposts, windows – posted by people whose family members who were missing that day but of course were now dead. He was especially haunted by the pictures of the missing on those leaflets, of bodies never to be found, erased.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who, for months after, had the habit of checking the news every morning to make sure the world was still there. I had an office a mile or two off the east edge of the Phoenix airport and from there I could see not only the runway but the Phoenix skyline. If the air was just right, as the planes flew overhead, you would feel a pressure on the windows. For years, when I felt that pressure on the windows, I would check the view to make sure the world wasn’t burning.
The first line of a post remembering 9/11 noted this is the twenty-third anniversary which I realized puts that day farther in the past than Pearl Harbor (1941) was from my birth year (1962).
Something about the sky changes in early September. I don’t think I noticed that until this year, either. But I do wonder if that change will be noticed in the same way by those born this year and later.
I was in California and scheduled to teach in Los Angeles that day. I was watching the Good Morning America show and the hosts were talking about the fire in the WTC as it began. They didn’t know it was an attack. Then the second airliner hit as I was watching. Diane Sawyer did a big double take and it was apparent this was no accident. I woke up my wife to tell her about it, then had to decide if I should go into LA that morning. Classes at the medical school would probably be cancelled but I went anyway. It was a waste of time.
I reread “Heart of a Soldier” every few years and just did so again. I read “We Were Soldiers….” when it was published and it was a shame that Rescorla was not portrayed in the movie. He was the hero of that battle. He was very disappointed by that decision but it does not really matter.
“Touching History” is a great book and well worth reading again.
That was surprising omission was it because he was british born if memory serves they made galloway the reporter more significant a player
I was at work, on the 18th floor of a 25 story skyscraper, when I found out about the fallen skyscrapers. Fortunately, I was 2000 miles away from NYC. Our IT guy’s reaction was that it was “message from Allah,” as it turned out to be.