WHAT WAS THAT THUNDEROUS NOISE? It sounded like my upstairs neighbor's furniture falling, perhaps a bookcase. And why was everyone outside screaming? I wished they would be quiet (I'm not a morning person). Twenty minutes later, it happened again--the booming noise, the screams . . . and then the lights went out. The building started to shake. I fell to the ground. When I got up, I couldn't see a thing out my window. Not a ray of light, not a piece of debris, not the leaves that usually press against it. There was only darkness, dirt, and smoke. Just an hour before, it had been a beautiful, sunny day. I grabbed my cat and ran.
Outside, it looked like a nuclear bomb had hit. The once black tar on the streets, and the green benches and trees that constituted Battery Park, were covered with white. Shoes were strewn along the path, and empty baby carriages had been abandoned. People were running, and couldn't stop to pick things up.
Amidst the hysteria and screaming people, I picked a direction and ran, along the water, heading toward the tip of Manhattan. Out of the blue, Coast Guard rescue ferries appeared, and I jumped into one, along with about ten other people. A 15-year-old girl sat on the side of the ferry, her hands clasped in prayer. She crossed herself. No one spoke, but all had tears in their eyes. The air from the first fallen tower was thick. It was hard to breathe. Once
we were a few yards out into the water, the second tower, which appeared to have been tilting in our direction, fell. It had not fully hit the ground before a Coast Guard worker suggested that we say a prayer for all those who had just died. We prayed. I swallowed hard.
We made our way to a triage center in New Jersey, where we spent the day listening to the radio for updates on the number of deaths. We sat across the river watching helplessly as the towers burned. I stayed with strangers the next few nights until I made my way to the house of relatives. The apartment building was closed for two months. All my furniture had been contaminated and had to be replaced. I dealt with hazardous waste cleaners, agencies, and FEMA inspectors. My office, which was right next to the 7 World Trade Center Building, had one wall blown off. The office was displaced for eight months. But I was lucky. I lived.
Three thousand did not. And now the families of many of them are being forced to resist efforts by the left to hijack the memorial at Ground Zero. The plan? An "International Freedom Center," to be filled with a host of anti-American exhibits and exhibits that have nothing to do with 9/11. Debra Burlingame, sister of a 9/11 pilot whose plane was crashed into the Pentagon, and a member of the board of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, first blew the whistle on these plans in a June 8 article for the Wall Street Journal.
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