September 11

I'm one of those folks who thinks that this day should always be remembered, but I never have words that are adequate.

My September 11 story is pretty unremarkable. I got a phone call at 8:55 from my friend in Manhattan. After I so very patronizingly told her that it could not possibly have been a commercial jet that hit the building, I tried to log onto the MSNBC site. It was unresponsive. While I waited, another friend burst into my office and announced that the second plane had hit the other tower. We left the office and headed to my house (no TV's in the office and the internet was just useless).

The two of us were the only two people that I know of in our workplace (the Cincinnati office) who left the building, went home and watched the news coverage. Most of my colleagues just continued to work as if nothing had happened (and quite frankly, it's always puzzled me--who could remain incurious? who could focus on a day like this?). Like so many others, I waited for news of my friends who worked in the World Trade Center (miraculously, not a single one out of the seven people that I know were injured or killed), and news of our two colleagues, who were staying in the Marriott, finalizing a sale to meet DOJ requirements. They were both fine, but we didn't know that at the time.

The one image that I can never forget is my friend, kneeling under a tree in my front yard, sobbing--he cried (he told me later) for those lost, for those who lost someone, for our country, and for his two small children who would grow up in a world that would never be the same. It was a brilliantly beautiful day, marred only by a grown man so overcome with grief that he was unable to walk from my front door to his car in the driveway.

The New York Post has a memorial site, as does the New York Times.