On 9/11, 'We are OK; our city is not'

We had Passover once at Windows on the World, the spectacular restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center, with views of Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey. It was a big treat.

Sometimes we went out on Jewish holidays to give my mother a break from doing it. Our apartment was small. Sometimes we extended the dining room table with a bridge table or made a children's table in our bedroom. It could turn into a large group including our extended family. I remember getting dressed up to go to Windows on the World, and then the long ride up in the elevator.

Ben was in kindergarten, Joe still a tiny little thing.

Ben had been fascinated (OK, obsessed) with presidents. On his bookshelf, books about sports and books about presidents. We read presidents' biographies. He had a presidents placemat, which I have kept all these years.

When we passed Greenwich, Connecticut, on the way down to New York, he was so excited: President George Bush was from there. He even wanted to detour and drive around. I actually can't remember if we did. It would have been difficult because the parkways would have been jammed with people going to "the old country."

Ben could recite the presidents in order. My mother had him do it for the occasion. I can see him in his little bowl cut with bangs. If it was these days I might have made a Youtube video and turned him into a star. He was a star anyway.

My parents were at doctors' appointments on 9/11. They were walking up Fifth Avenue when a Good Samaritan got them a cab. My father had gotten unsteady at this time a little more than a year before his death. It was a minor miracle.

When I went to The Republican to do my part in the stories that we were all feeding to one reporter, I (also miraculously) got through to my cousin Bruce in New York. He told me that my parents had gotten home to the apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, from which you could see the smoke downtown.

"We are OK," Bruce said. "Our city is not."

My father sat on my living room couch months later in the spot near the window where he liked to read The New York Times in the morning sun.

"The bastards," he said.

What they had done to our city. It was, and is, a living thing to us. I haven't lived there for a long time, but it is still my city. I wasn't there, but yet I was.

Compared to all the tragedy, this was, and is, incredibly minor. But I was so sad that he saw the destruction and he never saw our city repaired. At least my mother had that.

On 9/11, 79 employees of that spectacular restaurant in the sky lost their lives. They were among 2,753 who died in New York, out of a total of 2,996 in the country.

A few thoughts on 9/11

So much has been said and will be said today, I wasn't going to write a thing.

And yet, here I am.

The names are being read aloud as I read this over, and I am reminded that my small slice of sadness is nothing compared to those directly affected. But it happened to us all in some way, so here is what I have to say.

New York is my home town. I've spent my adult life in Massachusetts, but when people ask me where I'm from, I often say, "I'm from New York but, but I live in Massachusetts."  I love it here too, yet the connection isn't the same. My parents are gone, but I still have relatives and friends in "the old country,"  and I continue to go back as much as I can.

Like many others on Sept. 11, 2001, I watched it on TV. Then I raced to the newspaper. The place was buzzing with activity in efforts to put out a special edition for the next day. Everyone had at least one job. I had two.

My official job was trying to track down Jane Garvey, who lives in Amherst (in our circulation area) and
was then director of the Federal Aviation Administration.

My other job was frantically trying to find out the whereabouts of my parents, both lifelong New Yorkers then in their 80s, who had gone out innocently that morning to doctors' appointments.

 Garvey was in Washington, D.C., and couldn't be reached, but I did talk to her husband, Hampshire County Sheriff Richard Garvey, who said he had spoken to his wife and she was in a safe place. I honestly can't remember what else he said, but I did get a quote that I sent to the city desk to be included in a "wrap" for the next day.

I couldn't get ahold of my parents, but I did hear from Bruce, my cousin Jeanne's husband, from their apartment in New York. He said that my parents had managed to get back home. I can still hear his words: "We are OK. Our city is not."

My father died five months later of a brain tumor. I was so sad that this was one of his last memories of  New York. My mother lived another five years, and at least she got to see the city rebuild.

Life went on, and the city regained its vibrancy, but of course it was never the same.