By Mary-Justine Lanyon
9.11.2001. It’s a date when everyone old enough to remember it knows exactly where they were that fateful day.
The 25th anniversary has come and gone but I was curious about where my mountain friends were that day.
I was still living in northern New Jersey. I was standing in my kitchen with the Today Show on the little black-and-white TV on the counter. Suddenly they broke in with breaking news.
Like everyone else, I was absolutely stunned. And then came the news of the second plane hitting the second tower.
Our daughter, Amanda, was a junior in high school. Her class got the news that the brother of one of her classmates had been in one of the towers. Amanda called me, begging me to pick her up. She wanted to be at home.
My husband, Armand LeSage, was working as a golf course superintendent. Most of his crew members came across the river from one of the New York boroughs to work on the golf course. Because all the bridges were closed, they could not go home.
We bought burgers and sides and had a barbecue for the men. Then we gathered up chaise lounges, blankets and pillows so they could sleep in the maintenance barn. One man had never been away overnight from his little daughter; he was understandably very upset.
What we witnessed in the aftermath is what so many people have commented on – a sense of unity, loving concern for one another. There were American flags flying everywhere, even attached to car windows.
I had to go into Manhattan several times a month for my job. Each bridge was guarded by National Guard personnel. Our car was thoroughly examined prior to being able to enter a parking garage. We had to show photo identification to enter a public building.
And then I got a call from a member of the Girl Scout troop I was the leader of. She told me of a local woman, pregnant with her first child, whose husband had been killed in the terrorist attack. “We have to do something to help her,” my young friend said.
I contacted the woman, who said her mother had come to stay with her so she was fine. But what she did need was held walking her two big dogs. My Girl Scouts sprang into action, creating a schedule and taking that task off the woman’s hands.
When the baby girl was born, we were all invited to her christening.
Every year on this anniversary, I think of all these things. I remember the two people from my church who we lost. And I think about the young woman who had been in a tower during the 1993 bombing. She was told to shelter in place in 2001 but she was having none of that. She walked down all those floors and survived.
So where were you? If you were here on the mountain, these attacks happened at the crack of dawn. What horrible news to wake up to.
For many years, the late Dean Powelson, who taught sixth grade at Mary Putnam Henck Intermediate School, had his class put on a 9/11 assembly for the other sixth-graders. It was a moving ceremony that taught these youngsters, none of whom were alive in 2001, what happened that day. It brought history alive for them.
Years after 9/11, I read the book The Day the World Came to Town and more recently I saw the musical Come From Away, based on that book. It tells the story of the 38 planes that landed in Gander, Newfoundland, because U.S. air space was closed following the terrorist attacks. The people of Gander opened their homes and hearts to thousands of people from all over the world.
I came away from the book and the musical with one thought: This is how the world should be.
0 Comments