As long-time readers will know, I’m reluctant to write about 9/11. It affected me greatly, having my office at the time on the 51st Floor of the Woolworth Building with my windows facing the twin towers. I knew people who didn’t survive. From my desk chair, I had a panoramic view of The Site (the rest of the country and the media called it “Ground Zero,” but those of us who were there called it “The Site”). There were body and airplane parts on the roofs of neighboring buildings below for the next year or so. I stopped looking out my office windows after 9/11.
My practice effectively ceased for more than six months following 9/11. The electric and telephones were lost for more than six months. I was allowed to enter the red zone because of my office location, and walked up the 51 floors to reach it. But there wasn’t much reason, as I couldn’t reach my clients, they couldn’t reach me, and without telephones, there would be no new cases.
I knew people who worked on the pile. Firefighters, who spent months sifting through the debris for the bodies of their brethren. They were never the same. This was what real PTSD looked like, good people whose heads were so twisted by what they saw and found that they could never shake it out of their heads.
I did nothing to help, not that I (and likely every other New Yorker) wouldn’t have, but they had it covered and didn’t want civilians mucking things up. Trump did nothing to help either, and retconning 9/11 to pretend he was somehow a hero doesn’t change the two things he actually did, brag that he now owned the tallest building downtown (which was a lie) and that he was in New Jersey and saw Muslims cheering at the towers falling (which was also a lie).
The world changed for us that day. Some changes were good, like the unity a nation felt after realizing that we stood together against terrorism. Others were not so good, like people attacking anyone who appeared swarthy or wore a turban out of ignorant and misguided outrage, failing to grasp that not all Muslims were terrorists. Others were bad. Radley Balko has an exceptional and thorough op-ed in the New York Times about how a nation let one disaster undermine our legacy of constitutional rights out of fear and loathing. David French recounts how these changes protected us as well, the perpetual battle between safety and freedom.
It’s hard to believe that 25 years have passed since 9/11. I still remember it vividly. I suppose I will to my last day on earth. I still feel the outrage toward the terrorists. I still harbor anger toward those who sought to capitalize on the tragedy. I have no tolerance for those who want to lie about it. I still remember those, unlike me, who didn’t survive. May their memory be a blessing.
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I was at 8:45 motion calendar in Miami. I did my thing, then pointed the car for the 60-minute drive to my office in Boca Raton. Before I hit I-95, the news was reported: a plane “crashed” into the WTC. Clearing Fort Lauderdale, the second, and it was clear it was no crash.
The office was an outpost of a large Miami firm. We had six lawyers and staff. When I got there, they were still believing it was an accident. The office had no televisions and the Internet wasn’t what it is. For some reason, my hurricane TV was in the office–5 inches and black-and-white. A few minutes went by, then the first tower crumbled. My secretary walked in; I said the least profound of things: “that building just fell down.”
The aftermath was extreme nationalism and arrogance. Both were justified. Authority never envisioned was given to the executive branch. We wanted blood, and that was the easiest path. Easy paths usually lead in the wrong direction. Authority exercised, we got blood. We were warned–government never surrenders authority. Like a bonfire becomes a forest fire, that authority has been exercised to the point of no limits.
We did this to ourselves. If there is a God, I hope he, she or it forgives us.
Thank you Scott – like you, 9/11 affected me and so many others in my personal and professional orbits for months and years to come in ways that many in the rest of the country will never know –
A coworker called, said turn on the TV… what channel, I said… any f*cking channel, he said and hung up. Everyone I saw in the days that followed had that blank look that was the purest form of WTF.
We in the world were all New Yorkers on September 11th.