September 11, 2001 - The New York Daily News

Our Pearl Harbor. It's been an unfathomable 20 long years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the years haven't fully dulled the horror, nor the collective pain in New York City. In the immediate aftermath I posted my mental diary of that day on the old Jack Kirby (Kirby-L) and Steve Ditko (Ditko-L) mailing lists, entities and archives that no longer exist. I never kept a back-up so my real-time impressions of the events are now unfortunately lost. I'm going to try to briefly recreate them below... **[It's been found. See addendum down below at very end]**

It was a glorious Tuesday morning. Cool temperature for September, about 65 degrees, with brilliant sun. I exited my trip down the Hudson river into Grand Central Station and took the #6 train uptown two stops, emerging from the subway at the Bloomingdale's station on the northeast side of 60th street and Lexington, with my office a half block down going towards Park Avenue. I stopped at the coffee stand on the corner, getting my coffee and as I vividly remember, a rolled chocolate danish I called a chocolate cigar. (To this very day, a chocolate cigar will trigger a memory of 9/11). The time stood at approximately 8:50, as I had to be in at 9:00. In retrospect, with the time of the first tower being hit at 8:46, it must have already happened, with midtown completely oblivious to the event. Upstairs I began my day and very shortly my brother Nick called from Minneapolis, telling me he had the TV on in his office and that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I instantly flashed back to the time a bomber had hit the Empire State Building in the summer of 1945 and thought a small private plane had now done the same to the Trade Center. The radio music station interrupted the program and informed listeners that a plane had indeed hit the north tower, with no other real details. While on the phone, at 9:03, live on television as he watched, and with me still on the phone, the second plane hit and my brother screamed that it happened again, and it was a jet airliner. Within 10 minutes the building manager came up, (had been going office to office), and said the building was being shut down by noon. In the ensuing chaos, the radio mentioned other planes, with no details other than "the Pentagon" and "Pennsylvania." I reached my parents upstate, telling them I was ok in Manhattan, and had a lot of trouble with phone service, both land lines and cellular. The system seemed partially down, I'm certain due to incredible overload. I couldn't reach my wife, then working in a local day care center in Westchester, and I knew my children were in school. As we organized ourselves to leave, disjointed reports on the radio screeched that one or both of the towers had actually come down, an incomprensible thought. Down? How? Tipped over? Straight down? I had no idea but the imagery I was considering made me concerned for any and all parts of the city, as a falling over tower would carve a swath of destruction over the course of a half mile or more. I was contemplating worst case scenarios and not even knowing whether more was coming. 

The rest of the day was a blur. My co-worker and I left the office near noon and realized we both had to get to Grand Central, not knowing if any commuter trains were running. In fact, nearly all transportation had been shut down in New York City. Bridges were closed, and subways, I believe, were stopped from entering downtown. Taking Park Avenue south, we were met by a ghostly procession of mostly silent people walking against us, "uptown." It was an eerie sight and it appeared we were going in the wrong direction, against the concentration gradient. At Grand Central, the edifice was ringed by mounted armed policemen on horseback, giving instructions that one train and one train only, was leaving on each of the three commuter lines. All shops were closed and shuttered in the station, including the large newsstand in the main concourse. The police wanted each seat taken, with no standing in the aisles, and when full, each would travel out of the city making every single local stop up the line. After that, I don't know if any other trains were leaving and I later heard from neighbors who were stranded in the city overnight, unable to get out by any means, and no one really able to drive in and pick them up.

I have no real recollection of the trip, other than it was mostly silent, as if most commuters were shell-shocked. It probably took 90 minutes. I overheard very low talking about the towers coming down and the unimaginable death toll.  Likewise, I have no real recollection of the drive from the Croton-Harmon station to my home.When I arrived, the full magnitude of what had happened became evident on television. This was still the early days of the internet and television was still the primary source of media. I was probably glued to the TV for 3 straight days, trying to make some sort of sense of what happened, with an unknown death count still thought to be possibly over 10,000. 

I was home 3 days, learning to my sorrow that my cousin John Florio, a New York City Fireman (Engine 214) stationed in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, had died when one of the buildings (I don't know which) came down on his company's fire truck. John left a wife and two small children. He was 33 years old and one of 344 NYC Firefighters that died that day. His body was recovered on October 26. His son Michael, has followed in his footsteps and is now also a NYC Firefighter. 

The courage of those first responders is just immeasurably incalculable. New York City is eternally grateful for the lives they saved that day and mourn the loss of so many.  I salute them from the bottom of my heart.

I  returned to work on Monday the 17th. There really was no work, but I had to be there. I was worried about a patient, an older man with several adult daughters (all patients) who I knew worked in the towers. I spent several hours trying to reach someone, finally reaching one daughter who informed me her dad had retired the previous year, and all was well. I also fielded calls from the medical examiner's office over the next few weeks as it turned out our office did lose a patient in the attacks. October and November brought an unending procession of firetruck and police car sirens blaring downtown as recovery workers and first responders toiled in the toxic ruins of the "pile" at ground zero, toxic ruins that would sicken and eventually kill additionally nearly as many individuals as had died that horrible day. Many of the ghost-like individuals covered in white dust seen in photos taken immediately after the towers collapsed would suffer long term chronic respiratory illnesses. Those sirens actually became the backdrop soundtrack to the city for the rest of 2001 and into 2002. I was then also teaching at New York Hospital and learned that hospital ERs across the city never really had the huge influx of injuries expected, primarily because so many victims died, rather than being injured. The final toll as of today is 2966 deaths, with about 1000 still unidentified, although the number of IDs keeps slowly upping as advanced technology allows more data to be gleaned from tiny bits of remains. 

For the first 10 years following 2001, I took September 11 off every year, treating it as a personal day of reflection. I sat and watched the reading of the names for the full 3 hours every year, waiting to hear John's name in the long read-out. Slowly, as expected, by about year 11, I went back to work on that day. The visual images are horrible to this day, but three stand out with me. The close-up image of the South Tower as United Airlines Flight 175 sliced through the glass as cleanly as a hot knife through butter, with the orange fireball exploding out the other side. The image from above, perhaps by a helicopter, of the burning top of the North Tower, the one with the huge antenna on top, beginning to seemingly vibrate and then slowly, as if in slow motion, implode downward upon itself. Lastly, images of falling people, many who leapt to their deaths rather than being burned alive. The absolute horror. Those images kept me up weeks and still give me pause to this day. 

New York eventually rebuilt. We always continue moving forward. It took a decade or more, but there's a new, gleaming tower in place of the World Trade Center and the entire area is a showcase of renewal. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum provides a home for the sacredness of the grounds. The city will never forget.

I'm not going to document the coverage of the attack and the days that followed as it is so all consuming and voluminous.What I will do is showcase the front pages of the New York Daily News over 3 weeks or so, and then at the end, a poignant piece by the great Pete Hamill that was published as an insert on September 16. The coverage starts September 12. I don't know whether the News had a special late edition on September 11. I know the New York Post did.

Pete Hamill in the September 16, 2001 New York Daily News.....

SOURCES:

• All newspaper images scanned from the author's collection

September 13, 2021 ADDENDUM  :

Following the uploading of this blog post, my friend Rob Imes recalled that he had the Ditko-L archives saved from 2001 and was able to locate my original 9/11 diary sent to that list. Juxtaposing  that original message with my above 20 year after-the-fact recollection of that day is quite revealing about the accuracy/fallacy of memory.

There are things above I mentioned that I did not mention 20 years ago. There are also things I remembered incorrectly. The sequence and details of my brother's phone call is different. It appears I was not on the phone with him when the second tower was hit. Both were hit by the time of his call. Yet, for some reason, I remember it the way I wrote above. I didn't recall he called me a second time to tell me the towers had fallen. Also, I returned to work that very Friday, not the following Monday as I wrote. The sequence of leaving the office is also slightly different. Above I remembered what I bought for breakfast that morning and also the events at  Grand Central Station as well as the train ride home, details left out in my original telling,  And lastly, you can feel the fear and  horror much more palpably in the below message, as no one at that time knew exactly how many were dead and what the extent of the entire attack entailed.

My memory of when I found out my cousin John Florio had died was also different. It must have occurred a week or so later.  I conflated the memory of two other cousins of my late friend Dr. Kevin Penna, both firefighters also, who perished, and that I mention in my real-time telling below, completely forgotten about 20 years later. 

So, on Friday, September 14, 2001, after being off-line for 3 full days due to spotty internet service, and after receiving phone messages from friends Nick Caputo and Stan Taylor inquiring on my safety, I was able to get an e-mail message to my friend, the late Stan Taylor, who posted this message below to both the Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko Mailing lists. 

Friday, September 14, 2001

To all, I'm fine. Stan and Nick, I came home to your messages on my answering machine. Very sorry about being off-line for a few days but as everyone in the world knows, New York is hell this week. Yes, I've been very preoccupied and haven't read my mail in days. I'm still in a state of shock. I realize we have some listers who live and work closer to ground zero than I do, (I'm on 60th street in mid-town) but I'm still only a few miles away and I may as well have been next door. What happened on Tuesday in New York is still incomprehensible to me. The Twin Towers were an immutable part of our skyline. Huge, rising monoliths of well over 100 floors each. One was bombed 5 years ago leaving a gaping hole in the basement. I remember thinking what would happen if the bomb had been strong enough to cause it to collapse? It would have been a disaster of herculean proportions. What horrendous death and destruction. But then I rationalized that it would take a nuke to topple these things. Little did I know that 5 years later they would both lie in ruin. The first plane hit the tower at the exact moment I reached my office Tuesday. By the time I got upstairs the radio was already blaring the report that a plane had hit the Trade Center. Within minutes the report was that a second plane had hit the tower and terrorism was suspected. At this time I still didn't know we were talking about jumbo jet airliners. I envisioned smaller private planes. At about 9:30 AM my brother called me from Minneapolis asking me if I had seen the footage of the plane hitting and that it was absolutely horrific! I had no access to television so I logged online to see some still images and was absolutely shocked to see the entire towers engulfed in flames. Then word came in that the Pentagon had been hit and I immediately began to think about where I was. The Empire State Building is 25 blocks away, The Citicorp building, a major financial institution is 2 blocks away, the United Nations is about 15 blocks away, Grand Central Terminal, a major commuter hub is 18 blocks away, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center are 5 blocks away. Hell, Bloomingdales is across the street! What was going to be next? By 10:00 most of my day had cancelled. I went outside and walked onto Lexington Avenue and could see the huge plume of smoke coming from downtown. People were walking the streets aimlessly. Businesses in Midtown were letting out as the police were securing major Manhattan target areas. Grand Central was shut down and the entire feeling was of a scene from The War Of The Worlds when the city of Los Angeles was evacuating. I went back upstairs and was greeted again by my brother's phone call frantically telling me the he had just seen "live" one of the towers collapsing. Collapsing?? I immediately thought back to what I had envisioned 5 years ago. An incomprehensible disaster. Still without access to a television, he then told me that the second tower had come crashing down and buried hundred of firefighters and police. I was simply numb. BOTH TOWERS WERE DOWN??? Two of those firefighters ( I would later learn) were cousins of a close friend of mine. I closed up my office and left. The entire subway system was shut down so I walked to Grand Central not knowing how I was getting home. As it turns out one train was leaving on each line and I hopped on and left a devastated city behind. I was lucky as I later learned it was the only train out of the city until 5:00 PM. But it got worse when I finally saw the video images. An entire jumbo jet plowing into the side of a building. Over and over from every angle imaginable. Just horrible. The two towers imploding on themselves. No one at the networks was talking about casualties but I knew we were talking about upwards of 10,000. The towers themselves are home to 3 times that at any given time. I knew everyone was not out. They never had a chance. And the fire and rescue workers? Hundreds buried under 100 floors of rubble. It was beyond belief. What about all the handicapped workers? Who got them out? No one did. They came down with the building. It then hit me. I have many, many patients that work in the World Trade Center, most of them in the top floor financial company offices. Had they gotten out? How could they have?? I saw it myself. The plane had incinerated the top floors! People were jumping off the 90th floor trying to escape the flames and smoke ! Then the building collapsed!!! In my mind I kept seeing workers sitting back, drinking their morning coffee when out of nowhere a 500 mile per hour jet loaded with fuel comes crashing through the wall and practically goes right through the building, setting off an explosive inferno! And I could put a face to these people. It was numbing beyond belief. I was "very" worried about a particular patient, an executive in one of the investment firms. I knew "about" what floor he was on and was in my mind placing him in the path of the airliner. What do you do? His 4 grown daughters are also all patients of mine. His wife is my associate's patient. Do I call someone? I was resigning myself to the fact that I must. I watched the coverage all night in a state of anger, rage, pity and helplessness. I knew there would be thousands dead. I also knew what the rescue workers would find, or not find. 14 years ago I did a an externship in forensic dentistry at the NY Medical Examiners Office. The whole forensic department is run by an oral surgeon who I got to know quite well at the time. I found the work fascinating. It was a team that worked to identify bodies by their dental records. Horrific murders, "floaters" found in the river, "burned beyond recognition", I saw them all and enjoyed the work a great deal. In small quantities, that is. As the years went on I regretfully never maintained contact with the department.

Now I knew the ME's office would be overwhelmed.

When flight 800 blew up over Long Island 5 years ago there was a dentist on board who was going on his second honeymoon with his wife. I personally didn't know him but my good friend and colleague (the same friend who lost two firefighter cousins in the collapse) did know him well as he was a resident at Long Island Jewish Hospital where my friend teaches Oral Surgery. Well, this dentist on the plane was a forensic dentist in the East Moriches ME's office, the district where the plane blew up. If he hadn't been on the plane he would have been called in to work on the body identifications. As it turns out, it was his colleagues in the ME's office who identified "his" body. I stayed home on Wednesday. The city was a ghost town. I went in today and as expected, the calls came about X-rays. One man called to say his wife was a patient in our office and she's among the missing. My first patient sat down and began crying that her uncle is missing and certainly dead. It went downhill from there. I realized that in one way or another I have 2 degrees of separation from up to 100 casualties. I walked over to New York Hospital on York Avenue at 10:00 (I teach there on Thursdays) and found that our burn unit was filled with Trade Center victims. That was the extent of their service. NYH has the best burn-unit in the country and this is where NYC takes it's firefighters. Trauma was kept downtown and the overall tone is that the city is actually managing the victims quite well. I also realized that the reason for this was that the injured were in the far minority. As the day progressed, a handful of firefighters were pulled out alive but that was it. There is still in excess of 9000 people unaccounted for. I returned by noon and my next patient was an executive for an investment firm whose name I'd forgotten. I engaged in smalltalk about how a terrible week it's been and he replied that his office was gone and he couldn't return to his apartment. I immediately realized he also worked in the Trade Center! He told me that luckily he was off on Tuesday. If he hadn't, he'd be dead. I also immediately realized he worked for the same firm that the other patient (who I thought a victim) worked for. I inquired and was told that he didn't think "he" had been in that day either. So I was ecstatic! I checked the company's website and called the company's family hotline and was indeed confirmed that he was accounted for. So I'm thankful for these favors. In no way has the smoke cleared. There are upwards of 9000 people still buried. The news is filled with unbearable stories of frantic cell phone calls from passengers on doomed planes to loved ones. Children without mothers or fathers, wives without husbands, and husbands without wives. On one plane a whole family went down. This is beyond belief. When I was a kid, I remember watching the Twin Towers rising from 10 miles away in Queens.

The Empire State Building was always my favorite building, King Kong and all. When my father told me they were building 2 "Twin" towers that would be even taller, I was angry. In the mindset of a 6 year old, I told him I hoped they would fall down. 34 years later, it all came true. And the culprits with their reasons? A reason as old as human history. My God is better than your God. Doc V.