My memories of 9/11 were once vivid but have eased with time. I thought it would be a good idea to share them before the effects of old age overwhelm me.
It was an absolutely gorgeous morning. Even as I entered the school at 7:45 a.m. it was warm, but not a day where the heat would be oppressive. I noticed it was primary election day and there were a number of people from the South Bronx neighborhood waiting to cast their vote as they dropped their children off for the day.
My first class was an effortless one with no problems from my special ed students. I went to the second period feeling great. It was clearly going to be a great day. I was a “cluster” teacher. What that means is I spent the day relieving special ed teachers during their prep periods. I had two bi-lingual ESL classes and three others consisting of children who had emotional and learning problems. I also filled in twice a week with a hearing-impaired class.
During the second period, I said our ritual “adios” to the ESL teacher I was relieving and began a lesson. It was about how Native Americans adjusted to their environment in the way they obtained food, built shelter and the clothing they wore. The teacher burst back in the room announcing that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. My initial reaction was being really angry with her for interrupting my lesson with this nonsense. I wondered what kind of crap she was up to? I already knew she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but this was really dumb.
Anyway, the period was over and I was off for the next one. I went to the computer lab, which was usually empty but had a television. There, with horrible reception from our “rabbit ear” antenna, it was. By this time, the second jet had smashed into the other tower. I watched the replays in horror and looked at the other teachers who had gathered in the room. How were we going to deal with this? Surely some of our children’s parents and relatives were trapped there?
And then came another report: Another jet had hit the Pentagon! And by the time I left the room for my next class, another plane had crashed in Pennsylvania.
I had just gotten a cell phone and tried to call home. It wasn’t working. I managed to get through on the pay phone in the teachers lounge and let my wife know I was safe.
During the next period, the teacher I was relieving refused to leave her charges. They knew that both towers had been hit and several of them were very worried. Family members were there. In the culture of the South Bronx, there were few marriages. But both fathers and mothers tended to stick around in the neighborhood and multiple partners produced a wide number of stepsiblings and cousins. With such an extended family, it was inevitable that there was serious trouble.
About that time, the first tower collapsed. A half hour later the second one did. I moved on to my next class. As I entered, the children were looking out the window. About five blocks away, it appeared that the entire block was on fire. It wasn’t. It was the smoke from the towers dozens of miles away. We just silently watched the smoke, knowing that a lot of people were dead.
It was about this time that parents began picking up their children. We were under attack and a school is as good a terrorist target as any. But there was a need for children to be with their parents too. I went to the main floor and discovered that the election had been shut down. Workers were standing around wondering what to do next. I learned that traffic, including mass transit, in and out of the city was shutting down. I had only a couple of dollars with me so I went to the nearby bank to get some money out. Despite the fact that the officers and tellers knew me, I couldn’t even withdraw $20 to tide me over. The bank’s computers had been in the area of the WTC and had crashed when power was lost.
I went back to the school and got a free lunch. We usually paid $3.50 for it but we were allowed to charge it. A number of teachers were in the same boat as me. The first paycheck of the year was due that Friday.
After lunch, I went to my final class. These kids—4th and 5th grade ESL students--just didn’t seem to understand what the signifince of the event was. They had lived with a lot of gang violence and even when I explained to them that as many as five of their entire school populations had died, it didn’t have much of an impact. The destruction was far too vast to comprehend. As an aside, I mentioned to them that their television service would probably be out when they went home, that is when they became enraged. They would not have their daily dose of cartoons.
By the time we dismissed the students, few of them were left. A couple of dozen students were not picked up. Manhattan was closed off even from the outer boroughs and parents could not get out to pick their children up. They remained with us as the principal called for a staff meeting in the auditorium.
“It’s been a very bad day for a lot of people, including us” she said and thanked us for our efforts. We talked about the next day and she had us separate into groups depending on where we lived in order to arrange transportation home and for the morning. I hitched a ride from another teacher who lived on Long Island. As we drove over the Whitestone Bridge, we had a view of the towers. A dark, mushroom-shaped cloud was still rising from the fires and ashes of the site. Yes, it looked like a nuclear bomb.
The other teacher dropped me off in Mineola and I connected with a train that made all the local stops. It was a crowded diesel powered train (our branch had become electrified a few years before) and I was standing most of the way. I tried the cell phone and eventually was able to let my wife know I was on my way home. Others borrowed the phone as their service was not restored or they didn’t have a cell phone. Some people tried to pay and I refused. We were in this together.
The next day, schools were cancelled. But the shock remained. A local church was gathering supplies to be distributed to rescue workers and we were able to provide many quarts of sterile water and other medical supplies that was left over from my wife’s home nursing cases. I thought it ironic that the death of patients gave life-supporting supplies to the rescue workers.
I went to my grad school class that night to learn that the professor had lost two children who worked there and class was cancelled. It turned out that his children, who worked together, had been sent to a locale in Connecticut for the day and escaped the carnage.
On Thursday, schools resumed. To get to my school, I had to travel through both Penn Station and Grand Central Station. I was scared. And I took advantage of the counselors who were sent to the school. We had lost seven people, but more than 40 students were related to them. In the coming weeks, one of my grad school projects was to create an E-zine – electronic magazine for the web. I wrote background information and I had my students write articles and draw pictures about the event.
On the home front, my wife had become obsessed about the event.My oldest son, John, was getting married in Oregon in about six weeks and we had an appointment with the florist to pick out flowers for an East-Coast reception. That Saturday, we went to the florist. The florist was next to a funeral home and we observed a wake for one of the firemen who died. We then walked in and were asked to wait a while as a young, very pregnant woman was being served. She was the wife of another fireman. We knew, in the back of our minds, that Lake Ronkonkoma (where we lived) was an enclave for NYC cops and firemen. The sudden shock of it hit home -- the woman was from our neighborhood -- and it added to our rage. We lost 11 people from our town, including seven firemen and a cop. I had to teach in the city, but my wife attended every funeral she could. She didn't know any of the victims, but felt compelled to show her support. Ironically, in November on the morning when we were scheduled to return from the wedding in Oregon, a plane crashed in Queens and I was terrified of flying that day. We got through it only because we had a cell phone that we could contact people on our layovers to ensure that there were no more crashes.
My wife also spent a lot of time buying she more than a dozen tee shirts that had come out. Her cousin was late for work that day and missed the mayhem by minutes. Our flag was outside for months.
I went to a church I had left several years before that Sunday. The pastor asked for a special offering to support churches in the WTC area. He got more than $12,000.
The days went by slowly. In late November, I injured my knee and was out for nearly five months. When I returned, three of the teachers I had been relieving were gone. The assistant principal was told she would not be re-hired at the school. There was a general chaos with children running amok at will. I finished out the school year and transferred to a school on the lower East Side less than a mile from ground zero.
On the first anniversary, the class had a low-key observance of the day and continued the school year. A couple of days later, there was a sniping a few blocks away. Helicopters circled the building and the school was locked down. The children freaked out and it didn’t get better for the rest of the year. My teaching days were over. In a very small way, I was just another victim of the attacks.
