Never Forget 9/11

21 years later

Where were you on 9/11? Do you remember what you were doing? Were you even born yet? When I was growing up I remember two questions of that magnitude related to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK. I wasn’t born at that time, but my parents, and their generation spoke of where they were, or what they were doing. My father was born and brought home from the hospital the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. My parents were both young adults when the heard news of JFK’s assassination. The newspaper announcement from that very day hangs on my wall, saved by my father who understood the gravity of the moment. It always felt as if time stood still when people spoke of the tragedies of Pearl Harbor and JFK.

(Daily News front cover JFK assassination 1963)

After 9/11 this same sense of time suspended gave each of us pause to think about where we were, what we were doing, and how we reacted.

(911 Museum wall of newspaper front pages from around the world)

Just a brief background about me, I am a nurse. I started working as a nurse at the age of 17 (I went through the LPN program in my local high school BOCES). By 19 I was an RN. I moved out of my small town and immediately got a job at NYU after I graduated. I spent 8 years there, went to the French Culinary Institute, and worked as a cook for 1 year. Cooks in NYC earn a pittance, so I went back to nursing and got a job at NYP Weill Cornell Medical Center in the CCU. It was here I fell in love with cardiac critical care, and it was here where I was working at the time of 9/11. I was also dating a NYC firefighter at this time. My father was a high ranking officer in the NYPD at the that time too. So to say I was surrounded by first responders is an understatement.

On 9/11 I was not in NYC. I was at my firefighter boyfriends house in the country. It was my day off, but unfortunately not his. That morning was like any other day at first for me when I woke up…until I turned on the TV. That was the moment I realized what was happening. My boyfriend had a small black and white counter top TV in the kitchen. It was on that small box that I woke to witness the collapse of the World Trade Center’s South Tower. I literally couldn’t believe what I was watching. I stood there statuesque, frozen and cold. I knew the people I was closest too were there working, helping, and risking their lives. What should I do? 29 minutes later the North Tower of the World Trade Center came crumbling down. It was time to act.

I picked up the phone and immediately called my unit to speak to the charge nurse. I said, “What can I do?” “Should I come in to help?” I felt helpless sitting up there on that bucolic farm while my city burned. I was told not to come in, “stay put, and wait for orders.” No orders came. Phone lines were jammed. My mother called me crying, worrying that my father might be dead, and worrying that my boyfriend might be dead too. I don’t know how to explain it, but I just didn’t feel that they were dead. Maybe that was denial, or shock, but in my gut I just didn’t feel it. My phone rang multiple times that day, but only from people asking me if I had heard from my boyfriend; I hadn’t.

It wasn’t until around 2pm that I saw a call come in from an unknown number. The man on the other end identified himself as a reporter from the Daily News. He was calling to tell me my boyfriend was alive. That was all the information I got, and then he hung up. I immediately called his family to give them the good news. My mother also received a phone call later that day letting her know her husband, my dad, was still alive.

2,977 people did not receive those phone calls, including 6 of my boyfriend’s co-workers who all died inside the South Tower collapse.

(My dad’s police issued blue Jimmy Truck destroyed in the collapse)

On September 12th I traveled into NYC to work my scheduled shift. I left extra early worrying about traffic and blockades getting into the city. No one was being allowed in, but after showing my badge to the NYPD blocking the access to the Willis avenue bridge entrance, I was waived through. I traveled over an empty bridge, and drove down an empty FDR drive. I parked my car in my usual garage a few blocks from the hospital, and as I emerged onto the street I was immediately struck with the acrid odor of the burning World Trade Center towers wafting north. The streets were empty and quiet, except for the distant sound of sirens. As I entered my unit, I could see an excess of empty rooms, rooms that had discharged the stable to make room for the critical. I walked in to find out I was in charge that day.

I prepared the staff and the unit for what I thought would be a busy day of casualties. No one came. I never wanted admissions to roll in more in my life, but none did. Our rooms sat empty. Our nurses sat glued to the TV. My heart sat broken. No one was coming. No one had survived. It was a day of sad realities.

(911 museum steel beam from the World Trade Center)

The next few weeks were a devastating time of funerals. So many funerals. I attended all six funerals of the men from my boyfriend’s Ladder company. One of those fireman I had dated first before meeting my boyfriend. It was a short relationship that ended with no hard feelings; it was devastating to learn of his young life cut short. Tragically eight years after that day, I lost my father to a 9/11 related lung cancer.

Though 21 years have passed, I remember that day as if it was yesterday. Time stands still in the wake of tragedy, and like the horrors of Pearl Harbor, and the assassination of JFK, so too does 9/11.

I will NEVER FORGET.

(Freedom Tower NYC)

What’s your story? Where were you on 9/11?