9/11/01
Thanks to readers who responded to Zest of Orange’s invitation to submit recollections of Sept. 11, 2001.
Lee Gittler Steup and her future husband had checked into a rented beach house on the Jersey Shore. They suffered no personal casualties in the attack the next day, but almost lost the friend who was to be best man at their wedding. Here’s her story.
In a particularly surreal moment, we watched as a reporter stood in front of a tower, recounting the event. Suddenly another jet liner appeared over his shoulder, low in the background. I expected to see it pass behind the tower, but it never came out the other side.
“Another plane hit the other tower!” I screamed at the television receiver. And the reporter, unaware of what had just happened, went on with his newscast. Later came a report that a plane had hit the Pentagon.
I’m sure all the blood drained from my face. I lunged for the telephone and called both my grown children to tell them. Tell them what? That we weren’t in the Trade Center or the Pentagon? They already knew that. That they should head for shelter? They were already in an area unlikely to be targeted for attack. My mind groped for some words. I hadn’t expected to get through to them, but I called so quickly that the phone lines hadn’t yet jammed. I blurted out something comforting, listened to their voices and then, somewhat comforted, went back to the TV.
In lower Manhattan, Michael’s lifelong friend Jeffrey had gone into a cafe on the ground floor of one of the towers for some coffee. He pondered using the Trade Center restroom, but decided to wait and instead boarded the ferry to his job on Ellis Island. From the boat, he watched the second plane hit the second tower.
The ferry was ordered back to the dock and the passengers started looking for other transportation. Then the towers began to fall and the dust clouds rolled down the streets and avenues like giant bowling balls. Jeffrey ducked into an office a few blocks away and avoided the worst of the contamination. He was one of the people who walked miles to finally find a way home late that night.
Much later, after the towers had tumbled into ruin and thousands of people had vanished in the deadly dust, we went out. Long Beach Island was silent. People with ashen faces walked the streets like the living dead. Up in the sky, a fighter jet circled like a hawk.
We were in a war zone.
We have never returned to Long Beach Island. It had been Michael’s family’s tradition every summer, but in 2001 that tradition ended. We tell people that we can no longer afford to vacation there, but it’s not the real reason. We don’t go back because we have seen how easy it is for tragedy to penetrate even the most enjoyable of places. We have watched the world change, not for the better. And we have learned how powerless we really are to control events in the world and in our lives.
Jean Webster spent many years living in Grahamsville before she and her husband, a native Mainer, moved to Portland, where she continues to write. She received first word of the 9/11 attacks in a phone call from California.
Where was I on 9/11?
I will relive that day, and the days that followed, forever. A New Yorker from birth, I was living in a lovely seaside community on the coast of Maine. Shortly after the first pictures came on television, my cousin from California called and was surprised I hadn’t heard.
I turned on the TV and sat for the rest of the day crying, watching, talking to New York friends and relatives, and of course to my children, who both live far away. That’s the first thing we all think of when tragedy strikes – I have to talk with my children.
My son in Dallas called and we talked, but finally he told me he had to turn off the television and pay attention to his 2-year old daughter who was getting freaked out by what she was seeing. I got through to my sister on Manhattan’s east side later in the day, and she was all right but understandably stricken.
I missed my husband’s presence all day long. He was running errands for our store, and we didn’t get to talk until he got home later in the day.
One of the most shocking revelations was that two of the terrorists, including the ringleader, Mohamed Atta, had gone through the Portland Jetport that morning. We live in Portland in the winter, and when we returned to that house, all I could think was that those two men had gone through our little city to try to destroy America.
The American flag appeared everywhere in Portland; on houses, stores, restaurants, cars, trucks.
I remember having to get away from the television days later, when I could no longer stand seeing those planes hitting the Twin Towers, or watching the smoke, the destruction.
I remember sitting on the front stoop of our house in a city whose skies were eerily quiet, trying to absorb what had happened, and what it would mean to us as Americans.
We knew about people who were lost in the destruction – relatives of friends. The closest was our brother-in-law’s brother from New Jersey, who was helping a co-worker down as the stairs beneath them crumbled.
I will never forget.
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Tags: 9/11, Jeffrey Page
