Today, September 11th, we will relive that nightmarish day of 2001. We will relive it no matter how hard we try to suppress it. We will read the stories and blogs. Call family and friends. See the photos, yet again. And replay that footage over and over.
What I will remember most about that day and the weeks that followed will be the people who lost their lives or were badly injured. I will remember their loved ones. I will remember how our country stood together and came together to help and heal. I wish we could come together in that manner again, but without requiring a tragic catalyst.
I am no stranger to New York, having visited many, many times across decades. I entered the Towers as a tourist and ate at Windows on the World in the North Tower as a client in the mid 1980’s. I can go back even further to the time Philippe Petit made his fantastical walk between the Towers in 1974. That act was a sort of a human christening of the Towers. A monumental, almost superhuman tribute to the trident based, colossal cuboids.
They were larger than life, and they were beautiful. The Towers are gone. Thousand of people were tragically lost. Neither will ever be forgotten.
Copyright ©1986, Steve A Furman personal photo archives
My 7 year old son experiencing the 9/11 Memorial first hand in 2012
Copyright ©2012, Steve A Furman personal photo archives
Related Post features a photo gallery of the 9/11 Memorial weeks after it first opened.