Where were you on 9/11?

On September 11th, 2001 I was employed with F.W. Leavitt, a securities/brokerage company on Two Wall Street, in downtown Manhattan. Two Wall Street is just one building east of Broadway, and one of the things I liked about working there was the very prominent view of the World Trade Center. I used to look out of Fred Leavitt's office window in the morning and marvel at how it stood there, it was magnificent! ========== I remember my friend Ward, who was a trader, started yelling like he was at a football game and I went over to see what he was shouting about. There was a smoking hole in one of the towers. Someone turned the television on. I called my friend Ivar, who at that time was working on his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Columbia University. He lived uptown, on Riverside Drive. I left a message on his machine, simply saying, "Turn on your TV, the World Trade Center's on fire." He woke up and did as I asked. He was on the phone talking to his mother and they both watched the second plane enter the picture and collide into the other tower. ========== Like you, I too, thought it was some kind of accident that made the first plane hit. I had returned to my desk. I did not know what to expect next. Patrick came into the office and asked me what kind of plane had crash landed into the tower. "A two engine plane," I said, which I had learned from the television. He didn't say anything to me or anyone else, he just turned around and left the office. When the office manager started screaming, a woman whose name I forget, I ran over to the window in the back and I watched several explosions of orange and black fire come out of the WTC. The building kept exploding and exploding. I remember looking at Jim, the compliance officer, a man in his 60s, and our eyes met in disbelief that this was actually happening. ========== After about 15 minutes Mike Palazzolo and I decided that we should go to the South Street Seaport. I heard my parent's voices in my head telling me to get away from that area. We walked downstairs and grouped together on the street. A car that appeared to be abandoned by its owner had been driven up onto the sidewalk and a news station was blasting. Fred Leavitt suggested that we be careful to avoid the Federal bank. That might be another target, he said. ========== We walked down to the Seaport. I held a woman's hand as we walked across the FDR drive to the Pier. I tried to see what was happening to the buildings, but from several blocks away, everything was obscured by the smoke. Then there was this roar. I didn't know what was happening, it sounded like there was an army attacking off in the distance. I was leaning over trying to see what was happening. I leaned over so far I nearly fell into the water. Then people started moving towards us. It turned out that we had done the smartest thing, moving away from the area. But now the smoke made it necessary for us to walk north. ========== I walked and kept on walking until I got to my friend Ivar's apartment. I walked from Wall Street all the way to 125th Street, probably 5 or 6 miles. I called my mother, who told me how she could see the smoke from her office at Englewood Hospital in Englewood NJ. She thought I might be dead. She told me that my father, who is a retired firefighter, had gone down to help out at the site, which was already being called"Ground Zero". ========== The worst year of my life had just begun....