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HOW I
REMEMBER
SEPTEMBER
ELEVENTH
Notes and photography by Tor de Vries.
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Photographs, web design and text copyright ©2001-2006 Tor de Vries, all rights reserved.
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I took these pictures exactly one week after the Twin Towers fell.
The Brooklyn Bridge was closed to most traffic, a sight I have never seen before.
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The most significant signs of change were the
smell, the barricades and the copious number of National Guard
on nearly every corner, warily watching the pedestrians. Then,
at the ruins themselves: the absence of something that was
once there. Look up. See the sky? You couldn’t there before.
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By tradition, Americans believe that their flag is a living object because it represents
a living nation. One nearby florist put this into practice with a flag made of fresh
flowers suspended over the storefront, maintained for several weeks.
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A reporter for the New York Post asked me if
the threat of more terrorist acts made me reconsider coming
to work. Well, of course. Everyone says that New York City is
where anything can happen, but we never meant this.
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At that time, my office was three blocks east of
the former World Trade Center. The only damage to the building I worked in
was to the ventilation system, which had to be cleaned out and
re-approved by the EPA. During the weeks it took, we opened windows
and wore shorts, t-shirts and dust masks. Lots of people wore
dust masks; in fact, Lower Manhattan was sold out of them, and
I had to buy them upstate for the entire office.
Other buildings were still without power.
Some companies rented truck-sized generators for backup,
dropping the power lines through the windows.
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Until it shut down in the summer of 2001, a company
called Metricom offered Ricochet, a wireless Internet access
service. They had their own network of wireless towers scattered
around the city. Former Metricom employees voluntarily revived
the Ricochet network, temporarily, so rescue workers could communicate
despite the near-total loss of land and cellular phone services.
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Many restaurants donated food to the rescue workers. Behind the McDonald’s booths were
thousands of packaged hamburger buns and ketchup packets.
Most stores in the area did not reopen for
another week or two. Written in the dusty windows were words
of defiance from passers by, mixed with the signatures of
hundreds of rescue workers. It was incredible to read
messages left by fire departments from Upstate New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont, Maine, even
parts of Canada.
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My wife and I were supposed to be at the World Trade Center
that morning. We had recently moved out of the city, and I commuted
by train on Tuesdays and Fridays while telecommuting on other weekdays.
Monday morning at 3:00am sharp, I was startled awake
by God telling me to go into the office on Monday instead of
Tuesday. As usual, I argued with Him for awhile because I had
a million reasons to work from home that day. He did not budge,
so I went. My wife stayed home, although she had expected to
join me on Tuesday so we could run errands together in
the shopping mall beneath the Twin Towers.
On Tuesday morning, I prepared to work from home. Around 9:00am, I received
a hurried message from my company’s president, mentioning
terrorist attacks and an evacuation. We immediately turned
on the news. There, live on television, we watched the second plane
hit and both towers collapse. I was overwhelmed. My wife wept.
God knew. God knew.
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“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city,
spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.
What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say,
‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
– James 4:13-15 (NIV)
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“Though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with
me.”
– Psalm 23:4 (NIV)
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“His faithfulness will be your shield
and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the
arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in
the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand
may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but
it will not come near you.... For he will command his angels
concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
– Psalm 91:4-7, 11 (NIV)
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Over three thousand people are dead or missing
as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks in America. If you
held a minute of silence for each of these people, you would
be quiet for more than two days. If you wrote a letter to every
affected family, one letter per day, you would be writing
for nine years.
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Shrines of remembrance quickly formed around New York, many of them remaining
even several weeks later. Conversations ceased as people passed by,
looking quietly at the photographs of the missing and the dead,
surrounded by flowers, candles, and words of prayer and support.
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“Secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.
The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.
These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.”
– President George W. Bush
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“This is not a time for further study
or vague directives. The evidence of terrorism’s brutality
and inhumanity, of its contempt for life and the concept of
peace, is lying beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center
less than two miles from where we meet today.... Look
at that destruction, that massive, senseless, cruel loss of
human life, and then I ask you to look in your hearts and
recognize that there is no room for neutrality on the issue
of terrorism. You’re either with civilization or you’re with
the terrorists.... The era of moral relativism between those
who practice or condone terrorism, and those nations who stand
up against it, must end.”
– NYC Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, to the
United Nations General Assembly
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The weekend after September 11, my wife and
I drove up to New York’s Adirondack Mountains in search of
anything not related to the attacks. Through the High Peaks,
nearly a mile above sea level, the trees were approaching
the zenith of their fall color. An odd juxtaposition tugged
at my mind: death flew over these beautiful mountains
on its way to New York City. It was there. Someone, unaware,
might have looked up and watched it go by.
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If you have any thoughts about this web site, please
share them with me by email. To everyone who has written to me with words of support – European business people, Midwestern teenage punk-rockers, and many more – thank you and God bless you!
You are welcome to link to this web site, but please do not link directly to individual photographs, only to the main URL.
Please consider a contribution to relief efforts for America's September 11 tragedy
or other natural and man-made disasters.
Related photo collections:
The New York Times (free subscription required),
TIME Magazine,
The Washington Post,
Life Magazine,
CNN (including this memorial),
the United States White House,
and other personal sites:
Butch Huntley,
Greg McNulty, and
more.
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More of our Adirondack photography can be found at ADKpix.com.
All photography, notes and layout on this web site are copyright ©2001-2002 Tor de Vries, all rights reserved.
No reproduction, exhibition or commercial presentation is allowed without prior written authorization from Tor de Vries.
Email me or visit my web site. Last updated July 4, 2002.
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