My Story

What follows is...A meditation on 9/11 (prompted by a post on Facebook about Robert DeNiro): On September 10th 2001 I was still an aspiring actor. I had grown my beard to appear older so I would be considered for a role in a play. I had no idea that my childhood ambition to be rich and famous was about to be altered forever.

2026 9/11

My story. It is without heroic deeds. If anything, it is a tale of human frailty. I have done my best to avoid confabulation. I was inspired by a YouTube video by Robert DiNiro posted  on Facebook.

The morning of September 11th 2001 began for me on the 14th floor of 60 Hudson Street in the Administrative Offices of the NYC Department of Buildings. I was a rookie building inspector with just about three years on the job. I was in the office because I had to send an email. We could not do that from our phones in those days. I heard the first plane and the explosion. My boss came out of his office to beckon me in to see the impact zone of the north elevation of the north tower. There was a thin trail of black smoke coming out of the impact zone. It was before smoke from the floors engulfed in flame began to billow across the blue sky. The first thing I did was call my soon to be wife and urge her to stay inside. We didn’t own a TV at the time. I told her a plane hit the Trade Center and that I didn’t think it was an accident.

My camera and binoculars that I used to inspect the facades of buildings were in my car parked a few blocks away. I went down to retrieve them so I could do my job. There was not a sense of panic... yet. There was concern among the people out on the street but not yet panic. As a construction worker and a student of architecture and engineering I knew how the towers were built. I knew the exterior walls were load bearing. I retrieved my equipment and went back to a 14th floor setback on my building and started to document how many columns were taken out or damaged by the impact of the plane. Then I saw the faces. People above the impact zone were looking out of shattered windows. All the while the sounds of sirens grew louder and closer. I saw a man in a white chef’s coat. His hair was black as bauxite, and I prayed for him to hang on, help was on the way. I never saw the second plane hit. I was looking at the North Tower when I heard the reaction of people around me. That is when the panic set in. As the morning progressed, I found myself heading down to the Trade Center following my boss and two other inspectors. I looked up to see people falling from the sky. I looked away. The next thing I remember, the top of the south tower wracked to the left and disappeared into a cloud of dust. It was as if I had gone deaf. The sight seemed like a bad dream. What followed was chaos. That dust soon enveloped clothes and boots I had to throw away. I was not covered head-to-toe like some of the most extreme cases documented that day, but I walked home to Brooklyn to change. So many of us would never be the same. So many did not make it home.

I spent the next 17 years of my career working for the city that was rebuilding from 9/11. On the morning of the 12^th of September 2001, I went to work. I was on the pile passing debris by hand in a human chain as the search for survivors continued. I was assigned to an Emergency Response Team whose first priority was Ground Zero and the immediate vicinity. I was part of the team that inspected buildings and collated the results of those inspections. I was stationed at the first command center in a police precinct building on East 22nd street and later at Pier 92 on the West Side where rescue and recovery efforts were being coordinated. I worked there at the pier on the overnight shifts. I answered phone calls from distraught building owners seeking information.

In all the months that followed I was a small part of a massive effort. The spirit of oneness was profound and unassailable. I had never before experienced such a single-mindedness of dedication and purpose. People cheered our cars as we drove up and down the West Side Highway. I was not a hero and did not deserve that adulation. Help did not arrive for the man in the Chef’s coat. And that was not the fault of any one person or entity. But to this day I suffer survivor’s guilt. After September I did my best to serve the people of the city of New York. No matter who they were or where they came from or what God they prayed to because On 9/11, every decent person on earth was a New Yorker. Including and especially Robert DeNiro.

Quiet Dark

It is a time of night

at a time of year

when emotion roils

closer to the surface

like an emerging tear

as the phrase

Never Forget

grows louder in the ear

A sense of loss for

all we once held dear

swells

Like a moving meditation

a crescendo of powerful

music sweeps over me

like a wave.

By October it subsides

ebbing once again to

reside deeply buried

so that I can attempt

to function in this

dysfunctional world

Thank you for your kindness

and understanding this

one day of the year

when we relive

the destruction, the panic

and the fear

We read the names of the fallen

and for a day we remember

that the twelfth we got up

and went on

After September.

My colleague Tommy coined that phrase for me. In the manner of a historian, he recounted all the changes taking place since the attacks. He always prefaced his remarks with the phrase; After September… He was a gentle, quiet, steady presence of our unit. Supremely knowledgeable, never argumentative or combative. But mocked behind his back by those who did not understand his condition. He was the victim of fits and seizures from time to time. He passed in 2019. Brain cancer. I don’t know if it was because of his exposure at Ground Zero. In the past twelve months we have lost three beloved women to aggressive cancers. One was my dear sister. The other two were like sisters to each other. They were all in the unclean air of downtown Manhattan after the fall of the towers.

Once a year we remember what many never knew. Everyday some relive the horror. We keep it hidden but it drives everything we do.

If there was a reason for me to be there that day to witness it eludes me.

I like to think I did something bold with my life. Some might call it cowardly. But I resisted the lure of making more money. Some may call it lazy, but I eschewed the glitz and the glam. I got my hands dirty. I made best friends that no amount of money could ever buy. I got to know people and of their struggle to navigate a world with every obstacle stacked against them. Some went on to triumph and some did not survive.

“I have this idea that I wouldn’t resent the world of adult-ing so much if only I had been afforded a childhood.” Jen-Scott Mobley.

When exactly does childhood end? This is not a question of biology, but of society. We may appear for all to see as adults. But our experience tells a different tale. Childhood for some may be an age of innocence, but not for all. It may well extend into mid-life or end at the first trauma.