A Different Sort of Remembrance

The tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is upon us with all manner of retrospective of those who perished, families who struggled on, memorials created and probably most emblematic: The Freedom Tower, which is being built as a shining beacon of resilience to the world that America was only temporarily laid low by the events of September 11, 2001.

Like many other people, I have very specific memories of that day because of how close we live to Manhattan. I had a view of the whole scene. Not two miles from our house I could see all of lower Manhattan enveloped in that cloud. And I could see the United States Air Force jets fly right over our house on their way to secure New York City. And I knew people who were at work in the city that day and my sister had been on a flight that day; I prayed for their safe return.

But this is a different sort of remembrance.

My parents moved to New Jersey from Wisconsin after World War II. It was no accident. My father was a salesman and was offered the New York territory--he didn't need to be asked twice. In my father's opinion, New York City was the center of the universe, truly the greatest city in the world. He used to say (long before there was an Internet), no matter what it was, you could find it in New York.

It is one of my fondest remembrances that when I was 12, my father took me to see the original "ground zero"--the actual newly created foundations of what would become the World Trade Center. It may have been because I was small, but they were absolutely huge and awe-inspiring--total bedrock! A couple of years later when the Windows on the World opened in the North Tower, we were among the first to have cocktails there. Whenever friends came from Wisconsin to visit, it was my parents' privilege to take them to the city. And the prime spot for those visits was Windows on the World.

My dad needed little excuse for a trip to the city, but the standout experiences my family shared was being part of the tall ship celebrations both for the bicentennial in 1976 and again for the Statue of Liberty re-dedication in 1986 in New York Harbor, aboard our boat, Rhubarb. The picture my sister, Sally, took at the Statue of Liberty event just says it all: Liberty on the left, the World Trade Centers on the right.

So even today when I see pictures of the Twin Towers--in "Working Girl" or the opening credits of "Sex and the City" or in any number of movies shot in and around Manhattan, I try very hard to remember them as they were--not a symbol of tragedy, but as the symbols of America that they truly were meant to be and all of the good times associated with them.