There are those moments that we all remember in life, perhaps the birth or death of a loved one, a victory, a defeat. Occasionally, these are memories shared with family and friends. Today is one we share with the world.
I doubt anyone can forget the exact time and place when they first heard about what happened in New York City that morning exactly 10 years ago. A friend’s wife was in the Towers, trapped in an elevator when the first plane hit the building and cut its cable. She and the strangers jammed in beside her were able to pry open the doors smash through a wall and escape, just barely, as the first building fell behind them.
I experienced nothing so horrific. But it is nonetheless a memory that will be forever etched in my mind. I had just finished an interview at the 2001 Frankfurt Motor Show when I was told by a PR person from Saab that something had happened in New York. The first word reaching Europe was garbled. Two planes had collided over Manhattan and then fallen on the towers. But minutes later, when I reached my next destination I was told the more frightening truth: two planes had been flown intentionally into the Twin Towers and by then the first had collapsed. Moments later, someone screamed from nearby as they watched the second collapse on a TV monitor.
The show came to a quick halt. Every video screen that could be hooked to cable or satellite suddenly displayed the awful scenes from New York. Few words were spoken and the crowds quickly thinned. I don’t remember how I got back to my hotel but as I fumbled to open the door to my room I felt an arm around my shoulders. The cleaning woman who I had tried talking to in my broken German earlier that day was now trying to console me in her equally broken English. That’s when the tears began to flow for the first time.
She walked in with me as I turned the TV on. CNN had the video of the second plane hitting and then the towers falling, one then the other. Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That day, I believe, anyone watching those images would thus be described as insane for we all kept hoping that the next time the loop was replayed the results would be different. The planes would simply fly by in that warm and nearly cloudless sky, the fires in the Towers would burn themselves out and perhaps charred and wounded they would continue to reach into the heavens.
All flights were quickly grounded in the U.S., and so I, like the many 100s of other Americans attending the Frankfurt Motor Show, was stuck indefinitely in Europe. In a strange way it was the best thing that could have happened. The following evening thousands of Germans marched in silence in a candlelight vigil next to our hotel. Repeated in cities around the world, it is something I often think back to, as much as the headline from a British paper that declared “We Are All Americans Today.”
It was a rare moment of solidarity that wasn’t to last as long as we all might have hoped, though as we mark the first decade’s passing since the 9/11 attacks America’s moment of painful memory is again being shared worldwide.
Soon after I post this remembrance I will board a flight – ironically, back to Germany for the 2011 motor show. With luck, there’ll be no delays this time. But I imagine there will be many conversations en route about what this day means. A decade out I am not sure we yet fully understand. It has been said that several generations must pass before history can truly be seen with clear eyes . But there is no doubt that history changed on that late summer morning in downtown Manhattan and the impact will be felt and remembered for many decades to come.
May we never forget those who were lost that day.
I remember the day too. I was still working at a GM plant in Indiana, not retired yet, and a friend came up to my work station and said that a plane had crashed into a building in New York City. Being a history buff (actually having a degree in the subject) I instantly remembered a time when the Empire State Building had been hit, I believe in the 1940s, and then also remembered a midair collision in 1960 over New York City. I never considered anything other than the event being an airplane crash disaster. As my break time approached, I noticed more and more coworkers crowding into our break room, which had TVs at both ends and was always tuned to CNN. At that point I knew something unusual was going on, something significant, because all of these workers were not supposed to be on break, and the supervisors were going into the room with them. I too shut down and hustled into the way-too-crowded area, just in time to see the replay of the second jet flying into the tower. The normal thuds of stamping machines had ceased by this time, replaced by the most eerie silence one could imagine. We watched silently for probably a half-hour, when our stunned supervisors slowly realized that we needed to get back to work. But they also let us work in extra breaks that morning, allowing us to keep up with the events. At lunch time, I went out to my car and called first my wife and then my mother. I was a bit surprised that I was able to get through to both of them, as I had heard that the phone circuits were overloaded. It was a beautiful late summer morning in Indiana. Everything seemed so normal. I remember the Kennedy assassination when I was in junior high, and remember clearly the events of that day and the days that followed. Never thought I would see anything that momentous again. Goodness, how it changed everything.