A memory of 9/11: In the words of Bono, ‘We’re all Americans’
Editor’s Note: This Guest Opinion column was published nearly 10 years ago in memory of 9/11. We are re-publishing it today as a way to mark the 20th anniversary of that terrible day.
It’s been a few weeks since the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America, but the events of Sept. 11, 2001, are never far from mind.
I particularly relate to a recent comment from Bono, lead singer for the Irish rockers U2, that on 9/11 “everyone became an American.” My two children were born outside of the United States and, as “military brats,” have changed home states or countries six times in their 11 and 13 years.
When asked where they’re from, they say, “New York.” That’s where we were on 9/11. The kids were in pre-school, my wife was at home on Long Island and I and two colleagues – Jim and Lars – were approaching the mid-point of the Verrazano Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island. Smoke was just beginning to billow from a high point on the North Tower when we noticed it. Normal programming was on the radio. We called the office – nothing on television. I phoned home – again, nothing on TV. We kept watching.
We guessed that a small plane had struck the building. Pilot heart attack? Maybe. Terrorist attack? Surely not – the source of smoke looked too small to be the result of terrorism. More than a minute passed in the nation’s largest media market, then suddenly everything normal ended – on the radio, on the downtown streets, across America and the globe, and in every one of our lives. Though it was the second of the two towers to be attacked, the South Tower fell first as we headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike. Jim tried to phone his wife, but the overloaded cell phone network had crashed. She was doing her residency at Bellevue Hospital. When they last spoke, about 40 minutes before to the collapse, she was rushing off to lend assistance at the World Trade Center with other hospital staff.
Lars tried to call his close friend, an agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation. When they last spoke, the friend was at the base of the South Tower looking up, reporting to us the impact of a second airplane.
We continued our drive toward McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey with a heavy stillness in the car. The North Tower collapsed as we reached our destination. The cell phone network was still down. The network remained down for approximately five very long hours. Eventually we learned that Jim’s wife and Lars’ friend were both OK. We made our way back to the city through multiple police roadblocks, and in the late afternoon emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel in front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
We met a sea of white-faced pedestrians — literally hundreds of faces covered in a white dust — still continuing their steady walk north from ground zero. Many others sat along the curbs, covered in the same white dust, staring into nothingness. That evening I learned that the parking lots along the Long Island Railroad’s Hempstead Line (and certainly others) had an unusual number of cars sitting abandoned long after the last rush-hour trains had come and gone. A young teenage girl knocked on a neighbor’s door, in tears, “My dad hasn’t come home yet.” In the minutes, hours and days following the collapse of those towers, New Yorkers represented the very best in the human spirit — men and women leading strangers to safety, leaning on each other, holding each other as they cried, providing all manner of support to their neighbors and, in turn, finding support.
They stood in lines throughout the city for hours to give blood, but there were no injured, and early Wednesday evening the Red Cross began turning away donors. For weeks the chain-haul gangs, composed of people from all walks of life, worked 24/7 atop the still-smoldering piles of rubble, or nearby helping to bring in supplies along the choked off streets. Some days after the attack I met a Marine reserve chaplain at ground zero who told me, “If they want to talk, we talk. If they want to pray, we pray, right in the middle of the street. A firefighter just cried, and I held him.” Ten years after that terrible day, I hope that Bono’s sentiment resonates deep within all of us. The citizens of this great country are not the only “Americans” out there. Millions around the globe, through heart and soul, unhesitatingly associate themselves with the values of freedom — the values our country projects to the world.
(Remember, 372 citizens of more than 90 other countries were among the nearly 3,000 victims killed that day.) So I hear what Bono’s saying about being “a very proud American” because, similarly, everyone in New York that day and the days that immediately followed will always be, with pride, a New Yorker.
This story was originally published September 12, 2021 at 2:00 PM.