If you were born before Sept. 11, 2001 – even only one month before then – odds are that you remember that day and/or that it had substantial impact on your life from that tragedy?on. And you can tell us your story about that day in the comments below or on our Facebook page. To start the conversation, here’s the unique, personal 9/11 observation from one of our own contributors.
I woke up too late for my schedule on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. The day before, my wife and I adopted two new kittens whose squeaky mewings and baby claws kept me up late, so I slept through the alarm. As a result, when I finally did awake about 7 a.m., I jumped straight into the shower, then got dressed, then headed straight for my appointment.
I was still living in New Orleans, my native home until Hurricane Katrina a few years later, and my 8 a.m. meeting was in the French Quarter. I was to meet with folks from the Vieux Carr? Commission, which oversees private properties in the historic and tourist-favorite part of town, and for whom was I conducting a property survey study on the district. I didn’t turn on the car radio, though. I didn’t hear about the tragedy that started at 7:46 a.m. in that Central Daylight time zone. While I drove the four miles from my home to the Quarter, I only practiced the brief introduction I was to give that morning. At stop lights, I looked in the rearview mirror to adjust my necktie.
About 7:50 a.m., I parked my Toyota on Esplanade Ave. near Port of Call, the barroom diner where I hoped to have an early lunch later that day. I loaded up the parking meter with quarters, then walked down Dauphine St. towards the location of the meeting. But I quickly noticed that the streets were empty.
If you know New Orleans, you know the French Quarter is up and jumping 24/7, and especially that time of year. The high heat and humidity that plague the Crescent City start to turn down in September, so the post-Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest tourism season starts up. The Convention Center is booked solid with trade shows, too. Most bars and restaurants in the region are in a ?we never close? phase, and the streets are full of locals and visitors alike. But no one was there as I walked westward down Dauphine St.
The Quarter looked like a ghost town. Instead of crowd noise, all I heard was a lone street musician playing ?The Star Spangled Banner? with his alto saxophone. As I got a couple of blocks deeper into the district, I noticed a bar packed full of people, but that was still completely silent. Confused, I walked inside the establishment to see a crowd of tourists and locals alike hypnotized by the television mounted at the upper corner of the still dimly-lit bar. CNN was replaying the American Airlines jet crashing into New York’s World Trade Center, which occurred just minutes before.
I saw tourists from New York jumping for their cell phones, trying to call family and friends back home to check on their safety. Their calls couldn’t be completed, though. Cellular networks were jammed and couldn’t complete connection. A female standing near me ? a stocky middle-aged woman wearing a tennis visor on her thick and wavy hair ? was sobbing as she stabbed her cellular with her index finger to check on the wellbeing of her back-home daughter. ?She better be home, she better be home,? she muttered. Her husband, of similar short and stocky stature but with a substantially receding hairline, held her shoulders, but looked frozen, in constant stare at the television, awaiting further updates.?Their daughter worked in a WTC building, they told me.
I offered them my phone, explaining that the local 504 area code might not be as busy as the 212 to which their cellulars were registered, but that didn’t work, either. Quickly realizing another ?ahn ahn ahn? with my phone, short wife simply turned to short husband, and the two held each other as the second WTC strike played on the television in front of us.
I tried to do a quick and personal reassessment of the circumstance. My wife was at work at a local university; she and all her coworkers knew of the circumstance, an answering receptionist told me, and I couldn’t ask her to come to the phone while all at the office were crowded in front of the television for this tragedy, I was told. Another independent marketing consultant I knew, and with whom I shared a few projects, was supposed to be in New York City that day. I called her cell to learn that a terrible illness had (thankfully) stricken her the night before; she missed her flight. I knew where all my family was, and as I started to regather, I thought I should continue to the meeting I was supposed to attend 30 minutes earlier.
The New York couple followed me out the door of the bar. When I stood again on Dauphine St., I saw what I knew to be undercover police ? dressed as blatant tourists decorated in Mardi Gras beads and carrying Pat O?Brien’s souvenir glasses ? knock down their undercover status, requesting updates on the attack through their hidden radios, even speaking with uniformed police about the situation.
Witnessing that only deepened the impact. That undercover cops would subject themselves to personal endangerment, I thought, revealing their status while talking about the situation, meant that this circumstance was even worse than what was revealed by the sobbing tourists.
The New York couple had followed me out of the bar, but moved slowly, each with arms draped around the other. When I realized after the fact that they were stuck behind me, and because I had stopped to look at the otherwise-undercover cops, I turned to try to again offer personal assistance to them.
Someone else beat me to it, though. An obviously homeless man approached the couple, tears running down his face. ?Here,? he said, thrusting towards them both of his calloused and dirty hands that were clutching coins and singles he had maneuvered away from other tourists in his begging endeavors. ?Take it. Get back home to your family.? One of the undercover officers ? a female dressed in a low-cut blouse decorated with touristy beads ? broke her cover when she offered the homeless man her personal thanks. Witnessing his offering, the officer came up saying ?that’s good of you, Stanley.? She put her arm around him. ?That’s good of you.?
I don’t know if the tourists took Homeless Stanley’s offering, though. I turned away, forgetting about the meeting I was supposed to attend. On an unusually empty Dauphine St., I walked back to my car, and went home to the newly-adopted and only two-week-old kittens.
I took them both ? one part Siamese and one tuxedo cat, both of whom wailed and mewed like lost and hungry orphans ? and kept them near me as I returned back to my bed. All I wanted to do was go right back to sleep.
As I type this now, 13 years ago to the day, I have one of those now-13-year-old cats sitting in my lap sleeping, his Siamese sister right in front me rolling on the carpet to scratch her own back. I can only wonder if that New York couple has?their daughter.
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