An old television show famously ended with “There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” Well, there are hundreds of 9/11 stories in Rockaway. This is just one of them.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was my daughter Katie’s second day of kindergarten. A day earlier, her mother—my ex-wife, Lisa—had taken off from her job at the World Trade Center so she could dress Katie in the outfit they bought together, bring her to school, and take Katie and her big sister, Jessica, home from St. Francis at the end of the day. No one could have imagined it would be the last time Jessica and Katie saw their mother.
Except for a special “second day of kindergarten” photo, that Tuesday started as just another school day—routine. Alarm at 6 a.m. Shower. Dress. Wake the girls. Dress them. Breakfast. Book bags. Walk to school. Clean the plates. Off to work.
The clockwork continued for my short drive to the office until I heard bizarre words from the traffic reporter. (I have no idea why I was listening to the traffic report during my 15-block commute.) It was 8:48 a.m. and the reporter in the helicopter said, “A small plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” What? It was a perfectly clear day here in Rockaway. How could that happen?
I drove up Beach 126th Street to the bay wall. I could clearly see an arm of black smoke arcing southwest out of the north tower, the one with the antenna. There literally was not a cloud in the sky. I knew right away this was a terrorist attack. With the eyes of a 37-year-old man, I could see the plane hit high on the upper third of the building – definitely above 90. Lisa was on 89 and should be OK, or so I thought.
At my office, I dialed Lisa, but the lines were jammed. I don’t think I was even able to leave a message. Surely her husband and others were calling to tell her to evacuate. My next call was to the client I was supposed visit in DC later that day. It might have been on that call that I learned about the second plane and that neither was a small plane; they were passenger jets.
I went back outside to see for myself. Now there were two plumes that merged. The second impact was far lower than the first. Fortunately, Lisa was not in that building, or so I thought. My emotions swung from shock to anger. I remembered that the 1993 WTC bombers said they’d be back for both buildings. Now they were and I was pissed.
Back at the office, my co-worker, Kim, and I tried to keep tabs on what was happening and get work done, if we could. When Kim told me that one of the towers had collapsed, I did not believe her. I ran up to the corner again. There was now a giant cloud of smoke. You could just tell that 1 WTC was still standing and burning but there was no sign of 2 WTC. I did not know it at the time, but the collapse took Lisa’s life.
I was still angry and in disbelief. Did most people evacuate? Would the first tower fall, too? Within another half hour, both buildings would be gone, along with who knew how many innocents.
I was glad the girls were safe, in a bubble at school but that did not last. Parents were pulling their children out of school. I needed to get Jessica so that she did not hear rumors about her mom. My mother came over to watch the girls at our apartment. I told them what I thought was true. Some bad people attacked America by flying planes into the Twin Towers. Someone spoke to Mom. She got out but we don’t know when she will come home.
Not long after that, I found out that much of what I heard was wrong. Someone had reached Lisa by phone before the second plane hit, not after. She was in the building at the time, not outside. She worked in the south tower, not the one with the antenna. There was no way of knowing if Lisa was OK.
Back in the office, I gave Kim the update. I can still feel the dread and despair in her voice when she repeated that Lisa worked “above the impact.” We knew it was bad, but little else. By nightfall, word was going around about who didn’t make it home – WTC workers and firefighters. The bells rang at St. Francis, but I stayed home with the girls.
The next few days were, to use a cliché, an emotional rollercoaster. A giant one. Everyone who had a friend or family member in the towers was desperate for information, but we got more rumors than anything else: She’s in an encampment of survivors in Battery Park. Her name is on a list of survivors. She has a leg injury but is safe. She may have been transferred to a site outside the city. Every positive rumor, no matter how far-fetched, brought false hope. Shortly thereafter, reality crashed down hard.
As adults, we tried to work through the emotions and keep a brave face for the children. Katie—a couple of weeks shy of her fifth birthday—did not care what we had to say. She just wanted her mother home. Jessica was trying to understand what happened her own way. One evening, I watched her from a distance as she set up a tall laundry basket as her tower. She knocked it over, got inside, then crawled out slowly as a survivor. Jessica, still 9, was playing out a story to manifest the hope in her heart.
As for me, after the third or fourth crash, I had a moment of extreme clarity. Lisa was dead. My mission was the girls. Nothing I had been feeling mattered. It was time to put emotions aside and go to work. I doubt that if I had been a grieving widower hanging onto hope that I could have made such a sharp pivot.
I, obviously, did not go and announce my thoughts to the girls. They needed more time to slowly grasp that Mommy was not coming home. When the time finally came to have the conversation, maybe a week later, I told the girls that I thought Mommy was an angel now. She wouldn’t be coming home. Jessica said she understood but that she thought her mother was still alive. She wanted to hang onto hope, and I did not disagree with her. Katie’s response was more direct. “I don’t want Mommy to be an angel.” Period.
Our family was luckier than many. Toward the end of the month, word came that Lisa’s body was recovered. We had one of the several overflowing funerals at St. Francis. In time, we also learned more about what happened to Lisa that morning.
She and a group of co-workers at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods were getting ready to evacuate when United Airlines Flight 175 hit their building like a cruise missile, severing three of the four staircases. At some point, Lisa and four or five co-workers gathered by the one staircase that might be open. Black smoke was pouring up. Some decided to wait for help. Lisa, along with one or two others, decided to brave the fires, to try to get back to her girls. Apparently, she made it down and out but could not get far enough away before the building collapsed. She died near the perimeter.
Our family was one of 70 or so in Rockaway that suffered this sudden loss. It was a blow for which no one was prepared, but we did not walk this road alone. I am proud of all the ways America responded to the challenge and stood by those who lost.
That support was most palpable for me in the small interactions of everyday life here in Rockaway. Neighbors wanted to help; they needed to help. I did not cook dinner for six months. Someone arranged a round-robin of cooks and food showed up at my door every night. (That was big, not small.) Teachers made sure I went on almost every school trip, so the girls wouldn’t see other mothers and think, “My mom’s not here.”
And there were many discreet offers of help. A simple, “You good?” in a situation that might require help. No fanfare. No one insisting on being a “hero.” Just that rock solid feeling that a helping hand is a few inches away if you need it. Rockaway had our backs.
I won’t pretend the blow of 9/11 did not reverberate in my daughters’ lives in the years that followed, but today, Lisa can look down and be proud and at peace, seeing the young women her girls have become. That is in no small part because, at that terrible crossroads of life 25 years ago, Rockaway was there for us.
I have rarely spoken of these experiences over the last 25 years because it is not my nature. But, for those who lived through the tragedy, saw people suffer, helped people in need, and lived the credo “United We Stand,” it is imperative we share our stories before they fade or get rewritten. This is our history. This is America. This is Rockaway.
