To say that I now know that superheroes are genuine is a doctrine which I will carry to my grave.
Very early on the morning of September 11th, I was finishing work on a video for my young daughter Kayleigh. As I watched the final rendering of the titling info which ran during my narrative, staring sleepily at the SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 date, I had no idea that some eight hours later the opening fusillade in what may well evolve into a new world order would be fired. And I’m certain few others in the country did either, save for those involved in the masterminding and implementation of the act. Certainly not those faultless ones who rode four planes to their deaths. Certainly not those who went to their jobs in the Twin Towers or at the Pentagon. Certainly not the children trapped in the air or in daycares.
“No”, she replied. “A commercial plane hit it.” Commercial plane. Hmm...to my mind, I started thinking Cessna...something small. Twin seat Beech. Prop driven. She didn’t say AIRLINER. She said “commercial plane”. Being a student of history, I thought about the B-25 which had hit the Empire State building back in the Forties. Nothing prepared me for what I would see.
I raced out to my sales floor and fired up the satellite dish. One advantage of working in retail, you have about 100 televisions at your disposal which can be clicked to any channel at a moment’s notice. And at this moment, I didn’t need THE TODAY SHOW...I wanted CNN. I got the televisions up and running just in time to see the enormous fireball burst forth out of the face of the South tower. My assistant was standing by my side as I let out a stream of unprintable expletives while stunned newscasters wheezed in horror. It had happened again. Surely no accident now.
A crowd of my co-workers began to gather as the networks continued to play it over and over again, from multiple angles until at last there was one which revealed the aircraft swooping in and making contact. Now I understood: the blast wasn’t the plane hitting the face of the building...it was the gaping bullet wound from a high speed winged incision. Numbness set it as details began to flood in. The plane had originated from Logan Airport In Boston: an 8 AM flight to Los Angeles. Good God-a cross country flight at this hour of the morning? How many people are on board? From Logan-how many people do I know on those flights? How many are in those buildings? The newsman in me frantically tried to think of the significance of the date. After all, traffickers of fear always find significance in events of the past when designing events in the future.
While many of my co-workers continued to stare, my assistant and I made our way back to “the Hub”. We stopped at the small TV in the office to catch more details and share in the anguish. And as we watched in horrific wonder, I saw what looked like a cascading debris field come forth from the left side of the South tower. Immediately I breathed a sigh of relief. Having seen numerous disaster movies, and since this seemed eerily like a disaster movie, I thought that the sprinkler systems must have kicked in and what I was seeing was the overflow of water, forcing the windows on the floor below the gaping wound to burst and the water to escape.
And then the whole damn thing sank out of the picture.
Someone ran into the office and muttered something about the Pentagon being hit and soon after, the network news switched it’s coverage to Washington. Then a report came in saying a fourth plane was missing and was rumored to be heading for Camp David. “That’s it!” I shouted. “Today’s September 11th. The Camp David Accord! That’s the connection!” I spent the next 10 minutes trying to explain to my co-workers just what the Camp David accord was and it’s significance in this apparent act of terror. Did this ACTUALLY have anything to do with what happened and when? Only the experts can hypothesize.
The rest of the work day was a difficult one. We all had jobs to do, but none of us felt like doing them. Many lumbered through like zombies in a B movie; others went home. Still others just stood in the midst of the 100 television sets and shared the grief with the passerby’s who also were just lumbering through. When my day ended, I went and visited my dad, just to be able to put my arms around him and cry like I hadn’t since my mom died three years prior. All I could think of doing for the entire day was to be with my family and hold them tight. I knew there were thousands now who would never get that chance ever again.
Once inside my house, I grabbed my wife and kissed my young daughter. Was this the beginning of the end of the world...the beginning of the final world war we had hoped would never arrive? With Joan on the couch and Kayleigh in my lap, I spent the next 6 hours glued to the images on countless news feeds. And in my mind, I could recall my dad telling me the dread he felt the night of the Cuban Missile Crisis, wondering as he held me if we would be alive in the morning.
And after Joan and Kayleigh went to bed for the night, I continued to stare and channel surf until about 2 in the morning. And by 8 am on the 12th, I was up and watching the slaughter all over again. But now I had a clearer vision of this tragedy. There were stories emerging about rescue workers who forfeited their lives to save others at what was now know as Ground Zero. And those on United Flight 93 who apparently skirmished with their abductors in an effort to keep the flying bomb from making it’s way to the White House. And there were tales of speculation about what the passengers and crews of American Flight 11 and United Flight 175 , while some were being slaughtered around them, were going through on those final moments before their lives ended in a hellfire.
Time has passed for all of us since September 11. The constant threat of terrorist acts looms in our daily lives and we all wonder when the next wave of horror will approach. I’ve worked through much of my grief by creating a musical collage with Hendrix’s version of THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER intercut with the sounds of 9-11; a piece for which I’ve gotten countless requests for copies. I don’t find myself waking at odd hours anymore but, when I do, I still make my way to my daughter’s room, just to watch her sleep and ponder what this new age will mean for her generation and those to come. I have copllected all the news magazines and newspapers dealing with the event and kept them in a safe place for her. Just as a November day in Dallas changed my life, I want her to know what happened on a crisp September morning on how it will influence her.
My cousin, a man who is as close to me as the brother I never had, plpans on making a pilrimage to Ground Zero and I will hopefully accompany him. We need to go and look and experience the power, both positive and negative, of that site. We need to share with the living and be manipulated by the spirit of the decased. I need to see the Wall of Prayers and cry like never before. I need to flounder in the woe of what happened on September 11, 2001 and wrap it around me like a shroud.
But most of all I need to make it a point, every single day for the rest of my days, to remember that innocent people...a lot of them...perished so that you and I could continue to live and do so in a way we are accustomed to.
And now we all need to be superheroes to endure the catastrophe of what has been and the potential chaos that is to come. May we all have the courage to follow their example if and when the time comes.
God Bless America. God Bless us all.
