Nine Eleven

At the beginning of August I had the opportunity to get away for a girls weekend in NYC. A good friend, Carrie, who had moved to San Francisco, flew back into Philadelphia and she, Kay, and I spent the weekend laughing, eating and wandering through the city. At the time, Charlotte had been transferred to CHOP for the first time, and we weren't sure when she would be coming home. The NICU experience was getting old, and the two days away from it all were re-energizing and healing.

Although I would have had a great weekend with these girls no matter where we went, I'm really glad we went to NYC. While there, we had a chance to take a tour through the Tribute WTC 9/11-- Person to Person History.

I wish words could adequately describe the experience. Our group had two docents, both of which had been personally affected by the terror attacks on 9/11 in NYC. Ron, the tour guide, took us from the fire house, around the site itself, through some adjoining buildings, and finished at the memorial for eleven American Express employees who died that day. About half way through the tour, he sat us down. He looked at us and explained how that day was the start of school. Being a school architect, he was sitting down and taking a deep breath for the first time in months. He had finished his projects, he knew he had a few months before things started getting busy again. And then the first plane hit, just across the road from his workplace. His boss told them to gather extra supplies, scaffolding, equipment, hard hats, etc-- they were going to help stabilize the situation. As they were leaving their building, the second plane hit, and Ron knew the next few months would not entail early evenings and long weekends. He began to realize that the next few months would involve excavation-- not of brick and mortar, but of bodies, pieces of individuals who had been murdered. Murdered.

Ron started that day as a school architect. Over the next few months he lead the teams working on retrieval of bodies. He stood before us that day as the lead architect on the 9/11 NYC Memorial.

Maureen got up next. She had been quietly carrying the amplifier so we could hear Ron's incredible tour. She started out saying that on the morning of 9/11/2001, she was in Germany. She was working as a flight attendant. She turned on CNN, as that was the only English station, and watched as two planes hit the World Trade Centers in NYC. She frantically called her mother, in Canada, as she knew her husband had been in NYC that day, after just receiving a promotion. Her mother told her that her husband had called his own mother. He had asked that his wife be told he loved her. He was happy. He would miss his two children. He would cherish them.

He did not survive that day.

Ron took us a few steps farther and sat us down in the atrium of the American Express building. He told us how he had spent that morning, that awful, infamous morning, digging through rubble, trying to find survivors. He told us of how a building had crashed right through the window, how where we were sitting, hundreds had died. He told us of the two firefighters who would not leave the field, who would not clear the land when he asked. He told us of how he got angry-- didn't they realize how dangerous this was? Didn't they understand that a hand shovel and a pick was not going to do anything? And then he told us of what he didn't realize. How the two firefighters told him, "Man, you just don't get it. Our mother slammed the door in our face and told us not to come home without our father." They were searching. Just like him. Except, they were searching for something to complete the whole. They were searching for the missing piece of their family.

That piece is still missing, even today.

Ron and Maureen did not ask that we pick up arms and fight-- although, by then end of the tour, I was willing.

They asked us to do something so simple, so simple that we often forget to do it-- they asked us to remember. They asked that we remember that almost 3,000 people that day were murdered. Murdered. People woke up that morning, intending to kill, and kill they did. They asked us to keep talking about it-- to keep this day in the front of our minds, to never, ever forget.

They asked us to know that some-- that many-- can never forget. And we shouldn't have that luxury.

Six members of this Ladder Co. died on 9/11. Five were in the fire hall at the time of the attacks, the rest were out on another call, all the way across the city. The other fire fighter was at work, but heard the call. He left work that day to help save lives. He never went back.

All the fire fighters who lost their lives that day. Each one had a family, a mother, a father, a child, a loved one that still mourns. Their families cannot forget. We shouldn't either.

Current construction on the 9/11 memorial.

Ron and Maureen.