September 11

If you were among those going to work on that Tuesday morning 7 years ago you might have missed the television coverage or the blow by blow updates on the tumbling down of two skyscrapers.

I was one of those people.

I was on the "A" train or perhaps that morning the "C" train when the first aeroplane hit, and just about to enter my Penn Plaza office building when the second plane came into view and struck the second building.

My own memory of the minute to minute details are not clear but last night MSNBC telecasted two hours of that fateful morning. Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and others were obviously in their studio, each trying to get information from Downtown, Washington and elsewhere. Andrea Mitchell seemed to have some information as did others whose names then and now are less recognizable.

It took quite some time for the facts, or at least those facts I know now, to develop.

I understood better after seeing the broadcast why my Albany staff asked if they could go home. One of the broadcasters said or implied that other sky-risers might be attacked. The staff was in former Governor Rockefeller's Towers miles away but feeling unsafe.

I remember seeing the second Tower collapse when I entered the Institute's NYC Director's office--and it now appears that was after ten.

I don't remember precisely when Mark and I left the comfort of our offices to walk Downtown but I do remember it was around Noon and that I arrived in Greenwich Village hungry.

I also remember, too starkly, the pillowing clouds of smoke in the sky as we turned the corner onto the Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue) and Greenwich Avenue.

And even now 7 years later if I sniff I can smell death.

The facts of that day are surreal and watching the program all these years later didn't make it more real but rather stranger.

I knew people in those buildings, and knew people who often went to one of the two buildings enroute elsewhere. Of those I knew personally, like Maria, for one reason or another, they were either late or had a change in plans. The little difference in time saved their lives but something about people's souls changed.

Brokaw seemed to understand and voice what would develop after that day and remains in the consciousness of all Americans--fear.