Writer Steve

NINE - ELEVEN 20th Memorial Essay

First published September 9, 2021 and reproduced here by permission of the Morning News and SCNow.

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A Day of Horror - September 9, 2011

It was a beautiful late summer Tuesday morning. I typically get to work early in the morning for paperwork and to collect my thoughts for the day ahead.

About 8:30 that morning I stood up to look at the train yard across the street, a favorite view. The small TV set on my desk, long before our ubiquitous down streaming internet, suddenly took a high pitch. I moved to look and in horror saw a large commercial jet liner heading straight for the North Twin Tower in New York City.

My first thought was oh, no, this can’t be happening again, as I remembered the 1945 B25 crash into the Empire State Building in fog and Corey Lidle’s 2006 crash into a condo building, misjudging the width of the river. NO, this was into the city, in perfect weather, where no plane should ever go.

AND THEN I WATCHED DUMB FOUNDED, IN SHOCK, as it plowed right into the Tower, 8:46 AM, covering what looked like about 10 floors. The Smoke and the Fire. I couldn’t believe it. I screamed and yelled, and the rest of the office came running. And then only a few minutes later another one; now obvious, of course, that “this” was terrorism, this was a bombing. At 9:03 AM the second plane crashed into the South Tower.

The TV crews went crazy, reaching out to the mayor’s office, the police and the fire department. And they all came, along with nearby priests, to bravely face the burning buildings and save people. Their courage and their skill was breathtaking, long lines of firefighters, with gear and hoses, rushing to enter the buildings, but some to never return. Because, in only an hour and 42 minutes, the buildings began to quiver and smoke and then collapse, like a tired slinky, all the way down to the ground.

“The Horror, the Horror.” We couldn’t be sure until later, but it looked like people jumping and trying to scale down the buildings.

The first weekend of November, Shirley and I visited the site. We watched one of the main steel beams, twisted, being removed on a huge truck. We held hands with some tourists and Irish, Hispanic and Black Cops and Firefighters and cried.

Stephen A Imbeau

The quote is from “Apocalypse Now” by Francis Ford Coppola and United Artists, 1979.

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