Gerald C. Matics -- Author

Maybe it's morbid, but I have been listening to parts of the KYW-1060 NewsRadio coverage from September 11, 2001.  Every year they stream their archived coverage, unedited and uninterrupted, in real time throughout the day, and every year I can't help tuning in.  I have a dreadful fascination with the events of that day, and the broadcast always takes me back.

With my son Jack just starting first grade this week, I know he's going to start hearing about September 11, and he's going to have questions about it as he grows older.  It was, after all, a defining moment in our history -- like Pearl Harbor or the JFK assassination, the kind that causes people to remember where they were and what they were doing when it happened. There will be no shortage of reminiscences and recognitions of that day in the media, but I feel compelled to set down some of my own stronger impressions, if only as a way to preserve them for him.

I was working as a proofreader in the labeling department of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals at its King of Prussia location (no longer there), and I got to work around 9:00 that morning.  It was a gorgeous post-summer Tuesday, sunny and warm, and I was dragging my feet about going into the building.  I hadn't listened to any news that morning, so the first I knew about anything happening was when I walked into the proofreaders' room on the third floor.  Most of the other proofreaders were there, as I recall -- including Mustafa Khalil, a Palestinian, and Adel Bakr, an Egyptian.  Both Muslims, both good guys.

The first thing I remember was Mustafa talking about a news report of a small plane crashing into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Early reports were that it was a twin-prop commuter plane, and it sounded like no more than a horrible accident: something to feel bad about for those involved, but not much more than a blip on my personal radar.

That attitude changed.  I don't remember actually hearing about the second plane hitting the south tower, but we were getting updates from Lou DeBernardino, a proofreader who often walked around with a radio in his pocket and buds in his ears; usually he listened to music, but as the day wore on there were fewer and fewer music options on the radio anyway as broadcasters switched over coverage to their news-formatted sister stations.  As Lou moved about the room, picking up jobs from the rack and walking them back to his desk and then returning them to the rack when he finished, he gave increasingly more sobering updates.

I remember with some clarity many of the day's events, but there are three moments that remain, for me, digitally sharp.  The first of these indelible impressions came from one of Lou's updates.  Around 9:45, about an hour after the first impact and forty or so minutes after the second, he was giving a running commentary of events as he walked a job back to the rack.  In the middle of it he literally stopped in his tracks and said, "Holy shit, they crashed into the Pentagon!"

Whatever shred of hope anyone had clung to that it was somehow a bizarre pair of accidents -- or if an intentional set of events, at least something confined to New York -- died at that moment.  There was no longer even a dim possibility that the entire nation was not under attack.  Personally, although I don't remember having thought the crashes were accidental before then, Lou's announcement of the Pentagon hit somehow crystallized it for me, bringing it home with force.

The rest of the morning I'm not too clear on as far as the what-happened-whens -- I know that I heard about Flight 93 diving into a field in western Pennsylvania, but I don't remember any details about it -- but I can tell you for sure that I didn't get a great deal of work done.  At some point I wandered downstairs to the cafeteria, where someone had set up a pair of televisions tuned to the virtually omnipresent coverage.  (As I recall, almost every television and cable station in America was covering the event, the only exceptions being those with children's programming, such as the Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel, and a handful of PBS stations that were also providing a safe haven for young viewers.) They were replaying certain events like the tower collapses in a window in the corner of the screen, but I'm pretty sure I saw one of the towers collapse live; I say this because there was audio, and the reactions of the camera crew were as profane as could be; the camera was, I think, on the Jersey side.

As I said, my memories of the rest of the morning are a little hazy, but at some point shortly before noon I decided to go out to my car, thinking that I needed to be alone and retreat from the news coverage for a time -- and this began the second hard-as-diamond recollection I have of that day.  I walked outside and was struck by the surreality of such things happening on such a beautiful, tranquil day; looking back, I think that tranquility, that quietness, actually struck me on a subconscious level.  I got in my car and sat there with the windows rolled up, closed my eyes and leaned my head back on the headrest for a few minutes before the curiosity about what was going on got to me. So I turned on the radio for the first time that day, and the first thing I heard was the anchor saying, "There are no commercial planes flying anywhere in the United States right now; the only planes in the air are military."

At that moment it hit me: that tranquility I'd noticed was partly due to the fact that there were no jet noises to be heard whatsoever.  I got out of the car and looked all over the sky but saw nothing, as of course I wouldn't, and the quiet was almost eerie.  For the first time in history, all non-military flights were grounded while officials sorted out what, exactly, was going on.

Eventually I walked back inside, and right into my third sharp memory.  It was lunch time, and although I didn't have much of an appetite, I headed back to the cafeteria.  By this time both the news anchors and some regular folks had started to say that the world had just changed, and I think I craved some small measure of normality, even though there was little chance of finding any.

I got a tray of food and found a seat at a table; it happened to be next to Mustafa and Adel, my Muslim co-workers and friends.  Of all the people I'd seen that morning, no one was more distraught over the sensless violence than those two -- and they had more reason than many.  Already Osama bin Laden had been mentioned as the prime mover behind the attacks, and of course people's early suspicions that fanatical Muslim extremists were involved proved to be correct.  But both Mustafa (who married an American woman) and Adel were somewhat Westernized men who had adopted the United States as their home and appreciated the freedom they found here; I remember once having a conversation with Mustafa about Israel and Palestine, and he told me that Yassir Arafat didn't speak for him or a lot of other Palestinians who simply wanted to live in peace with their neighbors.

Now Mustafa turned to me and said, "This is the worst thing that could have happened for Muslims.  People won't look at us the same anymore.  Everyone will look at us and think that we think like them." I didn't have to ask who them was.  And of course, for a long time, he was right -- and for many people, he still is.

That was it for memories for me on that day, although there are a lot of things from the aftermath that I think about from time to time.  I watched a somber telethon a day or two later that raised money for the survivors and the families of the fallen, and I remember Clint Eastwood in an ill-fitting suit saying into the camera, "They [the terrorists] wanted 300 million victims; they got 300 million heroes," and Dave Matthews singing a solo version of "Everyday."  (I later saw the video for the song and couldn't help noting the stark contrast between the images in the video, in which a man spends his entire day offering hugs to strangers, and the hatred behind the attacks on so many people the hijackers had never met.)

But the thing that really stuck with me was seeing the film shot by a pair of French brothers who happened to be filming a documentary about a company of New York firefighters that day and wound up with a unique record of their rescue efforts.  Unfortunately, the most powerful images were the helpless faces of the firefighters in the lobby of one of the twin towers before they collapsed.  Their captain was dictating instructions into a walkie-talkie but would stop every few moments whenever a loud thud sounded on the roof, and all the firefighters would lookup at the ceiling and cringe in horror; they knew the thudding objects were people leaping from the burning building above, some hand-in-hand with others, preferring a death by impact to one of incineration.

Those are my reflections on this eighth anniversary of that horrific day.  We've hoed a long row since September 11, 2001, and a lot has happened, both good and bad.  As individuals, the survivors and the families of the victims have done their best to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives and move on -- some successfully, some not.  As a nation, we're embroiled in two wars, and whatever you think of the rightness of the missions and the motives of those who declared them, the men and women of the military who continue to fight on our behalf are true heroes who deserve our support and our thanks.

So as you go through your day, take a moment to consider your own reflections.  Where were you?  What were you doing?  And how do you see it all today?