Opinion

Remembering 9/11 - Ten Years Later

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As I was walking from my apartment on 57^th Street to my office at 46^th, I noticed groups of people standing out on 6^th Avenue watching what appeared to be a building on fire in the distance. When I passed the Fox News building, their ticker was flashing news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I realized that this was the fire people had been looking at. By the time I arrived at my office, however, the second plane had hit and it became apparent that this wasn’t some freak accident. I watched the towers burn and fall from my office on the 38^th floor.   

It was a surreal experience to walk through midtown Manhattan that afternoon because there were hardly any cars or people on the streets –it was like being in one of those “end of the world” movies that they often like to set in New York.  Every so often, a taxi covered in debris would drive up one of the streets and people would emerge with powdery grey soot in their hair and all over their clothes, their shirtsleeves ripped off and wrapped around their faces – businesspeople that looked like they’d been in a war.    

What has probably stayed with me the most from 9/11 was this:  In the days, weeks and even months that followed it, people in New York braced for another attack of some kind. It is almost amazing – and a real credit to the Department of Homeland Security, the NYPD and all of the other security agencies – that this has never occurred. Earlier this year, when the Navy seals shot Bin Laden, you could sense that uneasy feeling again on the streets of New York; New York is a target and we know it. However, I think most New Yorkers now feel that our city survived the tragedy of 9/11 and we can survive whatever else we might be forced to endure. We’re not going to let the fear of another attack change the way we live - or that we live - in the greatest city in the world. 

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