September 11 Remembrances
One of my indelible memories of 9/11 actually came about three months later, on a Sunday in early December. I was in town from Los Angeles for a meeting and came to worship at First Church that day. The opening hymn was “Lord Christ, When First You Came to Earth” (No. 7 in The Presbyterian Hymnal), and the words seemed to be written particularly for New York City on 9/11/2001, even if they had actually been penned in 1928 by Walter Bowie. I will never forget the palpable sense of electricity that surged throughout the sanctuary when we sang verses 2 — “Till not a stone was left on stone” — and 4 — “Our pride is dust, our vaunt is still” — and, in particular, the final line of verse 4: “O love that triumphs over loss, we bring our hearts before your cross; Come, finish your salvation.”
Robert D. Thomas, Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Not a day goes by that I don’t remember that day. All it takes is a plane in the sky or a view of the gaping hole in our skyline for the emotions of that day to resurface. I used to commute through the World Trade Center, but I happened to work from home on Tuesdays, so I wasn’t there. Guilt has haunted me ever since—why not me? How did I manage to escape unscathed when so many wonderful people didn’t? Ten years might have passed, but it still feels like it happened yesterday.
Sophie Sacca
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This remembrance is to pay tribute to Mary Ramsey, First Church’s Seminary Intern at the time of 9/11. She wrote hand written notes to answer every message received from many Church School classes, Presbyterians, and friends from across the country who sent gifts, donations, and letters of concern.
Kathryn Ketcham
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On September 11, 2001, I had gone to the Buick dealer first thing in the morning to have my car checked. One of the salesmen rushed over to the waiting area and turned on the TV. The second tower had just been hit. Like everyone else, I was shocked, but I quickly convinced myself that the towers couldn’t fall, so I wasn’t at all concerned when reporters said mobs of police and firemen were rushing into the two lobbies. There were risks in the fires, of course, but nothing these pros couldn’t handle.
I’m a Registered Nurse. I had spent part of my career in the ER, and I could be in Lower Manhattan in three hours. Regional calls for assistance are handled through the nurses associations, so I called mine to tell them I was available to rush down to New York to help out as soon as the call came.
Then the South Tower fell. I was deeply shaken and, oddly, guilty and mortified at the thought of the hundreds of police and firemen I had been so sure would be safe. It felt like I had personally sent them up those stairs, promising each of them that everything would be all right. It felt like I had lied to them.
New York’s emergency rooms would be jammed beyond capacity, their triage nurses overwhelmed. My car was ready soon after that. I left immediately for home to pack so I would be ready as soon as the call came.
Just after I got home, my mom called to tell me that the North Tower was gone. There surely weren’t enough nurses on the east coast to treat all the injured that would be flooding out of there. Burn units everywhere in the country would fill up and stay that way. My stomach knotted at the thought. I packed, put my bag in the car, showered, and dressed in scrubs so that I could and be ready to work as soon as I got there. I’d just dash out the door as soon as the call came.
I sat by the phone, turned on the TV, and watched the smoke and dust disperse. As the minutes crawled by and became interminable hours, the totality of the devastation and its meaning became clear to me. There would be no jammed ERs. There would be no overwhelmed triage nurses. There would be no inundated burn units. The phone would not ring.
David Paquette
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Shock and grief permeated New York City in the days and weeks after September 11, 2001, but a heightened kindness, consideration and awareness of others was woven through the trauma. It seemed we were all reminded to “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
Everyone either knew someone who had been lost or knew someone who had lost someone close. So we looked into the faces of strangers with the knowledge that they were probably grieving. We took off our blinders and actually looked into the faces of strangers.
Stories of near-escapes abounded. A friend with a September 10 birthday turned down a breakfast catering job at Windows on the World for the morning of the 11th because he wanted to celebrate without worrying about rising early the next day. A relative who worked at a Boston restaurant waited on a group of customers who routinely took the shuttle flight that hit the Towers and had for various reasons missed that flight and planned to take a later one; they came to the restaurant to stay together, didn’t seem capable of separating and going their separate ways. The lesson was that the victims were at random; any of us could have been on those planes or in those buildings.
So we treated each other gently. We opened doors for each other, stood out of the way in crowded places, gave directions, asked strangers if they needed help. Grocery stockers didn’t just point to the aisle containing the coffee filters, they took us to them. We checked in with old friends with whom we’d lost touch. We asked how our co-workers were doing and for a change listened to their answers. Small things, but they showed we had discovered that there were other feeling beings around us who deserved our acknowledgment and concern. Our normal pattern of ignoring and even resenting our fellow citizens was interrupted for a while.
Amongst all the tragedy, some grace. Politicians and newscasters called for and predicted a return to normalcy. I found myself wishing that at least one element of the “new normal” would endure: kindness replacing dismissal, compassion replacing hardened hearts, community replacing solitary determination. Alas, in a few months were all back to barking at each other, running into each other, ignoring each other, thinking our personal pain was the world’s only sorrow.
Richard Storm
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I had clocked into my workplace at 8 AM on the morning of September 11, 2001, located in midtown on West 55 St. I had begun working when a short time later I heard a TV on in the next room. I went in where some of my co-workers were watching news reports on a small TV. They told me that planes had flown into the World Trade Center towers, and were burning. I watched for a while, then went back to work. A short time later I was told the towers had collapsed and were completely destroyed. People at work started leaving. Many lived outside Manhattan and they were worried about the transportation situation.
It was late morning when I stepped out onto 55 St. and walked east toward 7th Avenue and the subway entrance two blocks away. I remember lots of people out on the street and sidewalks walking in a hurried fashion. I noticed one man stopped at a corner holding a cell phone. I asked him if it worked. He shook his head to say no. I then descended into the subway and onto the platform to wait for the R train downtown. Several minutes passed; no trains came. I started walking slowly east toward 5th Avenue. I decided to walk home by going down the Avenue, passing First Presbyterian on the way.
The going was slow and painful for me. I had a pulled muscle in my lower back from lifting a heavy chair the previous Saturday. I was now forced to walk slow and erect – in what seemed like baby steps – in order to avoid as much pain as possible. It constantly threatened my balance. Block by block I descended 5th Avenue. On approaching the Empire State Building at 34th St. I noticed police barriers. The area had been cordoned off. I had to walk around onto Madison Avenue for a couple of blocks and then back onto 5th Avenue at about 32nd St. The day was radiantly sunny. The temperature was comfortable. I continued slowly.
Upon arriving I saw that the doors of First Presbyterian were open. A few people stood out front talking. The mood was sober and I noticed some familiar faces. Inside was a scattering of people sitting quietly in the pews. I soon walked back outside. There was virtually no traffic on 5th Avenue, save for the occasional fire truck or emergency vehicle rushing downtown. Looking down 5th Avenue from the church one could see the arch at Washington Square, and previously the twin towers in alignment in the distance. Now it was a thick black cloud rising from the spot.
I was a bit tired and still in some pain, so decided to make my way home. My wife Elizabeth White-Pultz and I had lived together at 47 East Third St. since 1991. When I arrived she was already there. We were both relieved and happy to be together again that day.
David S. Pultz
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When I think of September 11, 2001, the first image that comes to mind is stepping out of my apartment building on Macdougal Street and looking directly south at the smoke filled sky around the towers. In that instant, I thought immediately of the two people who I knew worked in the towers, Peter Wallace and Janet Gustafson, who both lost their lives in the tragic events of that day. Peter was the beloved husband of Charlotte Wallace, who I worked very closely with as the Sunday School Coordinator. Janet Gustafson was a long-time Sunday School teacher of our three and four year olds and the mother of one of the teenagers in our blossoming youth group.
The images and remembrances that surround those losses are too numerous to recount here, but I recently read an article by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster about the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, where she highlights the importance of sharing our stories and listening to each other as a way to foster stronger bonds of unity.
She poses an idea to “Remember September 12” and the unity that was so apparent in the many stories of strength about people reaching across the boundaries of religion, class, and race to connect with one another. In remembering the unity of September 12, 2001, Rabbi Kahn-Troster sees of example of human beings showing lovingkindness out of unimaginable tragedy. So, I share a story of September 12, 2001, as a way of remembering the importance of relationships and listening to each other as we approach the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.
On September 12, 2001, I met a man named Doug in front of the church. One of our youth leaders at the time, Kristin, had stopped by the church and brought me a bagel because she was worried I hadn’t eaten anything. I was carrying that bagel while I was walking to the Church of the Ascension next door to see if they had the homeless shelter cots in storage. We had received a request from St. Vincent’s Hospital to provide sleeping quarters for their staff who were already staying to work extra shifts in anticipation of the wounded that would arrive from the World Trade Center site. The streets south of 14th street were silent and barricaded from traffic, and Fifth Avenue was eerily silent.
Doug was sitting on the ledge just past the south gate of the church asking for money for food. I offered him half of my bagel that I hadn’t started eating and sat down beside him. We ate together and talked about the World Trade Center. My mind is not very clear anymore what we discussed, but sitting with him and talking and eating was immensely grounding for me in a completely chaotic time. He and I formed a relationship that day that lasted for several years. I would see him outside the church and we would talk, sometimes briefly and sometimes for a longer time like we had on September 12.
He would tell me about his job prospects, sometimes I would give him money and if I didn’t see him for a while I would send out word through the homeless persons I knew form the neighborhood and in a few weeks he would either appear or word would come back to me that he was doing okay. I hardly ever think of that time without remembering Doug and the relationship we forged.
Whenever I think of September 11, 2001, it is the people who come to mind. I think of the people here at the church who lost loved ones. I remember the people who found there way here that morning to pray and to wait for loved ones and were re-united. I think of the people who volunteered to stand at our front doors to keep the church open for people to pray. I remember the people who came to worship here that night and every night that week, including the congregation and Rabbi from The Village Temple, just down 12th street. I remember the people with whom I led worship and how we held each other up through tears and chaos. I remember the people whose stories I heard and with whom I shared my story.
(the Rev.) Barbara Davis
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Certain memories of that day are in indelible:
The clear, blue sky, one of the first cool days after the summer heat; flames and smoke pouring out after the planes hit the towers; the plumes of ash and smoke from the second tower’s collapse like some sort of ghostly palm tree.
I saw all of this from the windows and the roof of the building I worked in on W. 22nd Street
The aftermath: the smoke plume drifting East, the cries of other people watching the same scene, the panicked commentary on the radio, my own, barely controlled panic, the eerie silence afterward, and, later in the day, the contrast with the warm, Indian Summer afternoon.
I remember looking uptown towards the Empire State Building; there was a spectacular view out the window by my desk. I kept thinking, ‘is that next?’. But from the roof, just West of the devastation, the Statue of Liberty was plainly visible, still there, like some guardian.
The rest of that day was a blur: listening to radio updates, trying to contact friends and relatives. My husband worked in Midtown. I had been able to make contact with him earlier. He has shared his memories of that day as well in this forum.
We lived in the East Village, about 2 miles uptown from Ground Zero. Depending on the way the wind was blowing we could smell the residue of burning plastic, etc. At night the glow from the lights of the emergency crews illuminated the smoke and ash still swirling around the sight. At the end of our block, at Second Ave. and Third St., we had had a view of the towers. Now their absence was the striking feature of the landscape.
It was a changed City that we awoke to on Sept.12; the mood was beyond somber.
The following days were ones of communal, stupefied grief as the City took in the enormity of what had happened. I remember the catharsis from listening to music, like Debussy’s “Cathedrale Engloutei,” on WQXR . Later, the following Sunday, singing hymns at church gave me strength and comfort.
Elizabeth White-Pultz
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Here Am I; Send Me — My daughter Marjorie arrived in New York around 6 am on the morning of 9-11. She went to sleep on a sofa in our Gateway Plaza apartment, and I went off to the office. The sound of the first plane crashing into the nearby tower woke her. When my wife Ellie discovered what was happening, they left the apartment and started walking north on the Esplanade to reach the church. Then they saw people jumping from the WTC.
Marjorie is a doctor and has seen death up close. But the shock of these desperate suicides was too much for her. She fell into a weepy depression. What to do? After trying everything, I suggested joining the responders. Off we went to a center. “Use me; I’m a doctor” was the offer. She was told to expect a telephone call.
Instantly Marjorie changed. The idea that she might soon stand on the front line of the city’s defenders woke her from her funk. A few days later she returned to Brazil with her head held high.
Often we New Yorkers laugh about the anxieties of people in Hawaii or Alaska who only watched our city’s disaster on TV or read about it in the papers. Their tears remind me of those my daughter shed before she took a step forward. For them I wish the blessings that flow from saying “here am I; send me”.
David Garlow
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They believed God gave them their rights.
So they forgot who earned them.
They forgot to remember history and plan the future.
At first their children wondered why.
Then they too forgot about these things.
Peace time set in.
Children remained children.
Prosperity set in even more deeply.
Children became angry. Some hopeless.
Sibling parents had forgotten everything.
So they didn’t notice.
Parents saw so little their children forgot how to see.
What now? I say rebuild.
Rebuild from the bottom up.
Fellow Child-Citizens,
Let us become our founding fathers.
Dan Merrill
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Our memories of 9/11 will always be tied up with the First Presbyterian Church because it was the center of our activities that September day. At the time, David & I lived in Gateway Plaza so close to the WTC that the sound of the plane hitting the first tower woke me up. Earlier that morning David had gone to JFK to pick up his daughter who had just arrived from Brazil. They came home, he went to work and Marjorie and I went back to bed until 8:48 a.m.
At first there was confusion about what had actually happened with the plane, but shortly we were told to leave our building and then the area—by this time all phones were down—so Marjorie and I headed uptown.
The one place I could think of with telephones and a bathroom was the church. As we walked north the Towers fell. We were far enough away not to be in harm’s way but watched. It was very quiet because all car traffic had stopped.
There was no way of knowing where David was and looking back I can’t estimate the time we waited to hear from him, other than it seemed forever. Marjorie used one of the church phones to call Brazil and say she was OK. David meanwhile was stuck at the tip of Manhattan below the Trade Center. Eventually he called his mother in West Virginia. She told him someone with an accent had called and said we were at the church. Then he slowly walked up Broadway. I can’t actually remember the instant I saw him again; we were all in shock.
David called a fellow church member Margie Van Buren (who at the time lived across the street) and asked if the 3 of us could stay there. She said, “Give me a half an hour.”
At the church service that evening Kathleen Dunlap heard us speaking about living close to the WTC and immediately offered us her apartment .
We were suddenly aware of a hidden community we didn’t know we were a part of but have not taken for granted since.
Ellie Garlow
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Amended Credo
They miss it out at the island church
I worship in for the summer months,
Standing each week to recite the creed
then catching me flat-footed,
right after “…crucified, dead, and buried.”
With no “…descended into hell.”
They just press right on for heaven
without even a backward glance.
While I – incurably Presbyterian -
slip it in anyway, then hurry to catch up.
Never missed it all that much
until last month, the Sunday after
the twin towers fell, and we saw hell
spread fiery across our screens.
“He descended into Hell” I said out loud,
because that’s precisely where he was
five days before, comforting his children,
cradling them in his arms, his deep pierced hands,
and bearing them back home with him
to share his place at God’s right hand.
J. Barrie Shepherd
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A Saving Place
blue sky cell phones
all eyes running
no noise somewhere
ringing, not ringing.
floating, falling
a desk, a photo
to fine dust,
a hard thin crying of air.
blood not needed
on the way to work.
which funeral
any stray of life
shined dull
of ash and tears
wandering up 6th avenue.
to return months
for loss and sleep
or lights on
after the cloud
looking up.
you keep saying
save me a place.
an empty street, a pillow
or sung diversion in time.
someplace safe and routine
and voiced in your voice.
alabaster city gleam.
a hymn through weeping.
Sorrel Ann Alburger
My office was on the 105th floor of Tower 2,
but I was not in the building on September 11th.
This is dedicated to friend and co-worker, Steve Poulos.
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After Sept. 11 my husband and I came to conclusions. We didn’t know American history and in fact weren’t interested.
My husband, Dan Merrill, committed to memory the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I put down the French literature and art books. I started reading about the founders and founding period, everything from survey series to biographies. Dan and I read to each other: The Federalist, and shared the things we each read, reporting to each other.
We watched events unfold. We heard incorrect historical references, misunderstood and construed for political or media effect. We thought that without our new grounding in history, standing just out of the present turmoil, we too would be leaves in the media wind, not able to heave to or to come up into the wind when necessary, and with no compass to navigate the currents of media exposition.
We heard wild wailing all around us, but we felt we could pass through even these waters without either jumping ship to the international waters of Europe (the right way) or to successful jihad of the terrorist goal of a new order. We were faced with new orders. We chose to know our history. We looked at what was forgotten under the pressure of the last thirty years of social reforms. Maybe they were dead white man, but corporately what was I?
I painted abstractions, then practiced figures, but of what? I toyed with the Bible, women’s issues, family, community, society, religion? But 9/11 asked the question: “what did America become”? What is the Protestantism of our beginnings doing now? My study sent me to churches. The times demanded that America become what she is consciously. So the subject of my paintings became self-government, citizenship, the founders’ experiences and decisions.
So I’m at First Presb. as a practice of self-government, suggesting books for the Church of the Patriots’ literary group. I figure if society has a chance in hell of surviving capitalism and jihad, it is at the Church of the Patriots where reform is the theological cry; where self-government is a natural extension of caring for the earth and each other and where empathy is felt and studied.
With a member of the church, Geoffrey Riggs, we have performed a reading of the Letters of John and Abigail Adams and a reading of the Letters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson at the Mulberry Street Library branch. Members of First attended. Dan and I feel we have succeeded in doing something for our country just before the tenth anniversary.
Jerilyn Jurinek
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These two paintings (below) are about the World Trade Center. The triptych is called “Nine-Eleven,” and it is a fragmented image of downtown Manhattan with an empty sky at its center. Sometimes I call the painting “Empty Sky.” It may be hard to see in the reproduction, but there is a slight charcoal indication of where the Towers once stood. The second painting is called “New Seven World Trade” and it depicts the final phase of construction of the eponymous building. It was good to see something rise on that site. I ride every day over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn, so I saw those scenes daily for years. It was important to me to be able to paint both feelings.
As the 10th Anniversary of Nine-Eleven approaches, I still feel profound empathy with those who lost lives and loved ones that day. My heart goes out to all who experience the shattering violence of terror and war. The ten year anniversary of Nine-Eleven spurs my resolve to attend to conflict resolution wherever I can, and support political groups, NGOs and other initiatives with a peace agenda, especially in the US, the Middle East and Africa.
Joan Reutershan
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September 11, Day of Tragedy
Day of broken heart and spirit.
Day of fire, flames, and smoke.
Day of death: many human, innocent lives perished.
Day of destruction: two beautiful, majestic skyscrapers collapsed.
Day of panic, chaos, sinister, and disaster.
Day when an evil act of criminals who don’t
respect human lives created the horrifying
scene which is “ground zero” and brought tears
and sadness to us.
Salute! to all heroes, all victims.
May their blood, the ashes of their burned bodies
nourish the earth of “ground zero” and have it
flower again.
May the determination of American to
stay united, facing the catastrophe in loving
and helping each other, keep the American
nation rising, proud and prosperous.
Primerose Desroches
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Mail From New York City
He wrote that he was walking,
late to work, south on Seventh Ave,
and was startled by a huge plane
flying low overhead and obviously lost.
He watched as it flew in,
counted down the floors to where
the flames began on level ninety-eight,
the floor on which his wife,
mother of the children
he had just dropped off at school,
was already hard at work.
Then began running.
She wrote that, as head chef
at the Gay Men’s Health Center in the Village,
she grabbed the van, plus a couple of helpers,
overloaded it with food –
leftover BBQ chicken and lollipops –
and headed downtown, picking up
a police escort, no less,
on the way to ground zero,
passing out sandwiches and water
at every roadblock, and then serving
twenty pieces of blessedly still hot chicken
to stunned and dusty heroes from the NYPD.
She described how,
From her rooftop,
They watched the towers burning.
And as the first one fell,
Her weeping friends stretched out
their hands as if to try
to hold it still in place, as if
to keep their world
from crumpling to dust.
J. Barrie Shepherd
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September 11, 2001 is a day of Remembrance. It will never be forgotten. A shock of grief to New York and other states in the United States of America and other countries in the whole world. The World Trade Center brought happiness to many lives where jobs brought accomplishment and achievement to many families. A tragedy caused disappointment when three thousand lives were lost. “Twin Towers,” i.e., two buildings with one hundred floors each was destroyed by a plane that crashed on their premises that caused a destruction.
I loved the World Trade Center. I had a friend that called me “ ‘World Trade Center.’ I am giving you that name because that you are always there,” he quoted.
On September 11th I was away from home because of showers of rain. I had a vision on September 11, 2001 at 6 in the morning. It was a dream. I saw God, and he spoke to me. I listened to him. He said “I am not pleased with the people because everything, everywhere and every place, some things are going wrong.” Then I was sure frightened, saying “World Trade Center.” I though something was wrong. Perhaps my friends needed me. I said “I am going to the World Trade Center right now because I want to see my friends. The workers there were passionate, understanding and lovely people.
Something was wrong, I could not get any transportation to go to the World Trade Center. All subways were closed for several hours. A terrible accident had occurred that day.
The World Trade Center, called the Twin Towers, is now “Ground Zero” after a plane crash. It took the lives of faithful persons that will always be remembered.
“I will never forget” is the statement given by all persons over the world.
Theda Joy Reid
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