My Husband Was Almost In Tower One 25 years Ago--Each Day, A Gift

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I was walking the other day when suddenly faced with a choice: let Bruce Springsteen’s “Into the Fire” play on my phone or skip to the next song. I need to monitor myself each time that song surfaces from the playlist to see if I can handle it. It’s about the first responders who went into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. It’s a poignant memorial to these people, and a terribly heartbreaking song.

I decided to let it play—big mistake, or maybe not. As soon as the first refrain started, I had to sit down on the curb and let loose perhaps the most hideously desperate tears I’ve ever cried over that song and that day. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I let it run its course, and I was surprised how long it took.

Why? I wondered. Why this year? Why now? It’s the 25th anniversary — a big year — so maybe that’s it. This year is a special reminder of that horrible day. Twenty-five years can allow so much life to pass through, yet so little forgetting of that day.

My two sons were toddlers then, and they sat playing with toys on the floor of our den where the TV was, when my husband caught wind that something was happening. We had no smartphones back then, no constant hook into the world’s activity. Someone called him.

He rushed to turn on the TV, and there on the news, things were playing out. The first tower had been hit, the one my husband had been in just days before, the one he was supposed to be in that day, but thanks to an unbelievable act of serendipity, he was home instead. The company he worked for, Cantor Fitzgerald, was at the very top of World Trade Center One.

We watched the news, and right away my husband suspected this might have been an intentional attack. He and his colleagues at Cantor used to ponder how they’d survive an attack on the building. Would they smash open windows and try to sail down to the ground holding onto a desktop, like a human plane? I heard them discuss this over dinner one night, in disbelief.

“You’re not strong enough to hold onto the desktop,” I interjected. “Wouldn’t the strength of the drop pull it from your hands?” But then I realized it didn’t matter whether they were right or not, whether they’d sail down to the Manhattan sidewalk in one piece or, well, the unthinkable. What they needed was some shred of logic that would ease their background fear as they worked on the topmost floor of the tower that had already been targeted with a parking garage bombing in 1993.

They knew people wanted to do wicked things to those buildings.

As I sat on the curb, wiping the tears from my eyes, I thought of my husband’s face when we watched the first tower fall on the news as our sons played on the floor. I’ll never forget that moment, his face, his cry. “Noooo!!!”

We watched as the explosion of dust and building filled the air. I’ll never forget the newscasters pausing their speech, watching with the rest of us in stunned silence. It was a moment like no other. We didn’t know how many people had made it out before the building fell, but we figured no one had made it out of Cantor. Later, we learned this was true. We heard about how the people my husband worked with had called their loved ones to say goodbye.

Cantor Fitzgerald needed to get back online as soon as possible because it was the largest inter-dealer US government bond broker. As luck would have it, a fair number of the tech staff had been let go in the week or two preceding the attacks. My husband joined them the next day in NYC to work to get the system up and running.

The gathering of this shell-shocked group helped them to work through the aftermath, at least a bit. They were in the presence of others who knew and felt the same. The shock of their company being obliterated combined with the shock of their circumstantial luck was so much to process. Cantor had the largest loss of life of any company that day. All of them, gone.

These are the kinds of things that put you on the curb for a long while, crying depraved tears. I lost no one that day, but I know people who did. Their journey far surpasses mine.

That day will never truly die. History will never let it, even after those of us who experienced it are long gone. Traumatic world history is like that. You mustn’t ever let it go, even if you want to.

The Springsteen song doesn’t mince words:

The sky was falling and streaked with blood

I heard you calling me

Then you disappeared into the dust

Upstairs, into the fire

I often say I’ve got a first responder personality. When trouble happens, I get up and move towards a solution instead of running in the other direction. But would I really do what those firefighters did? In the face of extreme risk, do I have the courage to enter harm’s way? Would I risk the life I have?

I don’t think so. I’m not that much of a courageous lifesaver. When I think of my sons, I’m glad I wouldn’t risk my life. When I think of not opting to save others, I feel apologetic. But who really knows? In the spur of the moment, probably a lot of us would step up to save a life, not calculating the risk because there wouldn’t be time, and hoping for the best.

My husband and I took our adult sons to NYC some years ago to tour the sights together. Our oldest was born there, and the youngest was conceived there. We toured the 9/11 Memorial. I didn’t really want to, but it was the right thing to do. As we moved around the memorial wall outside, where the names of those who perished are engraved, my husband meticulously looked for those he knew — there were many. He would find one, then tell us something about them. It was as if he had to find each one, no matter what. There are nearly 3000 names. It was a hard thing to see, but the right thing to do.

We left to have dinner and resume our more upbeat visit to the city. My sons have no idea what 9/11 was like for us, and those who have an idea will slowly leave this earth. All that will remain will be the words. For now, our memories will be told, and hopefully people will hold them the way I hold the words of wars and tragedies I never knew.

Twenty-five years is a long time, but to my mind, it isn’t. I’ll never forget that day, and I don’t want to.

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Be well, my friends.