By 9 a.m., I started writing month's "Comment" and went to get my third or fourth cup of coffee. As I passed by the telvision, the images I saw of a burning tower transfixed me.
What building is that?! What's going on?!
It took a few seconds, but I quickly realized it was the World Trade Center, and I stood there in disbelief.
Moments later, the video showed a second plane crashing into the buildings. Disbelief turned to horror.
I immediately called a co-worker whose father is a commercial pilot and mother is a flight attendant.
"Turn on the TV,"I said urgently. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center."
We watch and listen together for several minutes. Slowly, it becomes clear this is not an accident but a crime. The television reports these planes appear to have been hijacked and others may have been hijacked and are still in the air.
My friend hangs up to call his dad.
A few minutes later my own phone rings.I answer it and am relieved to get the news that my friend's mom and dad are fine. They have the day off.
We watch the television while talking on the phone. The Pentagon has been hit. Minutes later, the first tower at the World Trade Center collapses. It is now that the true enormity of what has happened really sinks in.
Pausing just a moment, I then remember that my Uncle Dave, a stockbroker, moved his office back to downtown New York a few years ago.
On the phone with my friend, I almost immediately hang up and call my dad at his body shop.
"Did you hear...?" Ifrantically asked him.
"Yes, your mom is trying to get a hold of Dave. She hasn't been able to get through yet." Dave is her younger brother.
I try to work and read some articles from this issue, but I can't truly concentrate. The television is on in the background, I must occasionally stop working to hear the latest reports.
The second tower collapses. Dust and smoke are everywhere.
My mom calls. She called my uncle's office and got no answer. She wasn't able to get through on the phone to my aunt.
Shortly after, an e-mail arrives saying that the Advanstar office in Manhattan is structurally sound and employees have the option to leave. The downtown Chicago Advanstar office, where the ABRN staff is located, has been evacuated.
Time passes. But all too slowly.
Mom calls. She's just talked to my aunt. My uncle is OK and is walking towards Midtown Manhatten to a friend's apartment. His son, who works in Jersey City, was also evacuated from his building and is walking home to Staten Island.
With relief, I drive over to my father's body shop. I pass a man placing a large U.S. flag in the ground next to his mailbox.
The office of the shop resounds with the radio news broadcast.
Just a few minutes earlier, a man stopped into the shop to check on his car. He tells my father that earlier he was riding to work in Manhattan on a bus. The driver stopped the bus on the side of the road in New Jersey with the New York skyline before them. They watched as the World Trade Center burned. They watched as it collapsed, then they turned around and came back to Pennsylvania.
On the shop floor, the news blares loudly on a small radio in place of the normal, quieter music. Work goes on, but quietly.
I talk with a friend with two sisters living in Brooklyn and working on the lower east side of Manhattan. His parents haven't been able to get through on the telephone, but the distance between their work and the World Trade Center gives them hope.
At 5 p.m. everyone leaves work quietly and quickly. But there is none of the normal conversation on the way out the door.
Today, 24 hours later, I write this to you, still fathoming the enormity of the loss, feeling the horror of yesterday's events. But today, work must go on. We must not let the horror of that day defeat us and let the enemy have that satisfaction.
My thoughts and prayers, and those of the entire staff of ABRN, go out to the victims and their families whose lives have been interrupted by this senseless tragedy.
