9/11 Commemoration by

Remembering the loss of one of our own - Joanna Vidal

2021-09-08 17:33:21 UTC

In addition to the loss of members in the towers, the NYCBar staff also lost one of our own: Joanna Vidal, who had left a position with Meeting Services shortly before 9/11. She was a lovely young woman with a beautiful smile and an amazing future that was never to be. Here is her profile from the NYTimes. May she rest in peace.

http://www.legacy.com/sept11/Story.aspx?PersonID=104900&location=2

New_York_City_Bar_Association — 2021-09-08 18:16:36 UTC

In 2001 I was just old enough to know that something Big had happened. I could understand that it was very sad, and very scary. Even though it was over, it was still in the air -- everyone was still talking about it and feeling sad and scared, still. I think it must have been the first time that tragedy entered my life.

2021-09-08 21:25:57 UTC

Do you remember the sensation that the earth stood still during those first few days after the attack? NYC was silenced. The somber march of truck loaded with debris moving up the roadways. Papers posted everywhere with the faces of the missing. A few years ago I took out of town friends to the 9/11 museum. I was not prepared for my own reaction. I could not go into the room with all of the victims faces. I ran out of the room where videos were playing. It is as heart wrenching today as it was 20 years ago...

20 Years

2021-09-08 21:58:53 UTC

Like it is for many, the events of 9/11 are etched forever in my memory. But, so are the emotions. Fear. Sadness. Disbelief. They still come flooding back at this time of year.

My wife and I worked across from the Citibank building, and when reports of possible attacks on other landmarks and bridges came in, we rushed out of the office and walked across the 59th Street Bridge to find our way back home to Forest Hills and our son, who was only 6 months old at the time. The smoke rising from downtown was visible from the bridge. So was the palpable sense that thousands must have died, though that was only a guess at that moment. Everyone around us in shock walking to Queens in silence. Even now, it still seems surreal. So was returning to work several days later not knowing if the subway was even safe.

God bless those who died that day. We will miss them and think of them forever.

9/11

2021-09-08 22:15:35 UTC

I was about to arrive at Penn Station on the Long Island Rail Road when I noticed out the window of the train as we passed through Brooklyn smoke billowing from the first tower. I alerted all the other passengers in my car. We gazed in collective horror and then descended into the tunnel to go under the East River. By the time we arrived at Penn Station, an announcement was being made that the second tower had been hit by a plane, that the city was possibly under attack and that we all should avoid any landmark buildings.

At the time I was a law partner at Reboul MacMurray Hewitt, Maynard & Kristol in Rockefeller Center so I chose instead to walk south to get a view of what was going on. My wife Rachel and I had only a few months earlier purchased the loft in Tribeca we still live in today, but because our now almost 22 year old daughter Ari was just an infant had decided to stay with Rachel’s parents in Laurel Hollow, Long Island that week while we resurfaced our hardwood floors in advance of moving in.

I reached the Flatiron building where Fifth Avenue tilts west and had a clear view of both towers burning. I stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue among hundreds of others tightly packed given the vantage offered. A collective gasp could be heard as the first tower fell before our eyes and the entire crowd reflexively stepped back to get out of imaginary harms way, believing somehow the falling tower would send debris even as far as us. I was picked up off the ground by the mass of people and found myself moved back ten or so feet before the collective relaxed again. Screams and tears filled the air for a moment and then it was silent and the beautiful sunny September day, a perfect fall day in fact, returned but with the horror of what had just occurred permeating all our thoughts.

I had previously lived in Chelsea, across from the Whole Foods on 7th Avenue and decided to make a detour there and visit a close friend and his wife whose apartment had been just above ours. After watching the tv briefly to learn that the Pentagon had also been hit, the two of us went to the roof of my old building which had a direct line of sight view of the remaining burning tower.

As we watched it in flames and covered in smoke, it also suddenly fell before my eyes.

I’m not sure why, but with my new loft on Leonard Street, just east of a Hudson, I found myself needing to go see if my apartment even existed anymore. Silly to think now but from uptown it seemed like much of downtown was now destroyed. So I began walking south while almost everyone else was walking north to get away from the destruction. I again recall how beautiful the weather was on that walk and how bus drivers and taxis would stop to ask if I wanted a ride in the other direction. Everyone was so calm, friendly and helpful that day, although we all were clearly in shock.

Strolling past the now gone St. Vincent’s Hospital entrance on 7th Avenue, I remember seeing hundreds of gurneys lined up and at least three dozen doctors ready to receive injured patients. I saw a doctor I actually knew and he said no patients were coming and we later learned it was because you either lived or died that day. Not much in between.

I eventually made my way to my apartment and the building was fine. My super at the time said the first plane passed directly overhead when he was on duty in front and he’d been able to read the numbers on the underside of the wings and belly of the plane

I started to trek a bit further south but could see dust and debris so thought it likely unsafe to venture further.

Manhattan had been entirely sealed off after my train, one of the last, arrived so I began to think about what to do for the night when Rachel called to tell me that the trains were running again and that I should get back out to Long Island if at all possible. I walked back to Penn Station and actually easily caught a train back to Cold Spring Harbor.

Because south of Canal Street was closed off for many months while the debris was cleaned up, as residents we could get past the barriers but our floor workers could not.

So Rachel and I, along with our daughter Ari, stayed in Laurel Hollow until February when we were finally able to go back home to Tribeca.

Many HEPA filters later, and thinking then that the city and especially Tribeca were doomed, we wondered what might happen next. Over the next years and decades we were of course relieved and delighted to see this part of NYC emerge even better than before, although it has been hard hit now again by Covid.

My world and the world itself forever changed on 9/11. And each year I make sure I go to my corner of Leonard and Hudson to observe the lights that shine skyward to commemorate that day.

I will never forget.

Kris Brown, Life Sciences/Tech Partner, Goodwin Procter LLP, NYC

9/11

anne1102 — 2021-09-08 22:29:31 UTC

33 weeks pregnant, I was the GC for a small software company at 140 Broadway, just across (then) Liberty Plaza, later Vuccotti Park, from the southeast corner of the Trade Center. Because I had painful pregnancy-related sciatica, I was at my doctor's office far uptown when the planes struck. My colleagues witnessed the planes hitting, the chaos, the destruction from our offices on the 25th floor. Others were injured on the ground trying to get to the office, others were out of town or out of the country and struggled to get home. I got home safely, and sat glued to the tv, incredulous and horror-stricken.

The next 24 hours were pure terror about everything, the not knowing, the fear that it might happen again, wondering what kind of world my child would enter.

The next weeks were spent working from my small Manhattan apartment's bedroom and borrowed offices in midtown. We had to make sure our employees were safe and with their families, and had the resources they needed to function. One colleague lost two uncles, many others lost former colleagues and family members. We got calls from the White House and the SEC to get a significant client, a major piece of the non-visible operations of the financial system, back online before the markets reopened on the 17th. We did this with unreliable phones and internet. Colleagues were going to wakes and funerals for weeks. I had to plan for my maternity leave.

Later on, we hired a woman whose husband was a retired member of the FDNY - he had retired because he had spent months in the pit in the Rescue and Recovery operations without reliable protective equipment. The carnage in that family continues to this day.

It had begun to recede in my mind, but the last 18 months of COVID have brought back a similar feeling of not knowing, and feeling like nothing is safe again.

Twenty Years: My Decision to Become a Lawyer

2021-09-08 22:31:37 UTC

Growing up as the son of Soviet Russia refugees, I knew how lucky I was to be born in America. I was brought up to appreciate the path my parents had given me. I always wanted my career to mean something. So when I was applying to law school there was one moment that I kept thinking about. This one moment changed my life and was the basis of my law school admission personal statement.

Twenty years ago was when I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. Twenty years ago was 9/11.

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'It seemed like just any regular Monday; I had gotten ready for school and looked forward to my second week of third grade. We were learning the multiplication table for the very first time. But something was off. This eerie fluke of students being picked up for early dismissal overshadowed the normal ebb and flow of the school day. Our outside recess was cancelled, replaced with an indoor recess where the student body lessened by every loudspeaker announcement. By noon my mother had left work early, another unusual incident, to pick me up from school like the others. The look on her face was foreign to me, as if she had seen a ghost, her eyes red and teary with fresh water droplets running down her face. By noon of that day something unfathomable had occurred nationwide; it rattled my mother, which I knew because it was the first time I saw sheer fear in her eyes and complete worry in her tears. That Monday was September 11th, 2001.

Growing up, I was always bewildered by New York City. For my family it was our symbol of Americana. The Statute of Liberty greeted them when they emigrated from the Soviet Union as refugees. Times Square always seemed like the center of the world for me. The skyscrapers, the people, the stories—New York City seemed like center of the world, even to my pre-adolescent self. But on that day of infamy, Manhattan changed. It was no longer the safe haven I had pictured it to always be. It was no longer a sanctuary for refuge. Instead, it was ground zero. This was my generation’s Pearl Harbor.

Every historical era has brought moments so dramatic, that they become instilled, almost photographically. Past generations knew exactly where they were and what they were doing during these defining moments. However tragic these national events were, they permitted countless individuals to have eye-opening epiphanies that not only changed their perspective of the world but also caused them to reconstruct their identities.

The news was broadcast in the background as my mother and I long-sufferingly waited around the phone to hear from my father—who worked in Manhattan. The attacks on the World Trade Center gave me, an 8-year-old boy, the first vision that the New York was no safe haven, as I had believed. That day even robbed me of some innocence. But it was not a day wasted. I vividly remember President George Bush’s first address to the nation and the subsequent hope and unity within the country. I began reading up on other Presidents of the United States, recognizing that each president’s occupation was a lawyer at first. Truth be told, I too wanted to be President of the United States, the glimmering figure of hope for citizens everywhere and to act as the catalyst for social positivity. To become President of America may have been an idealistic notion, but with it came my yearning for public service and civic duty.

From that moment on I had been overcome with a sense of urgency to be part of something where I can see the fruits of my labors—the faces of the people who are benefitting from my work everyday. Life is more than the things you can learn in a textbook. It encompasses what you can do in a professional and social setting. I focused on life of public servitude from New York City elections, to national public policy and lobbying, and even directly in the field of law. For me, success would be judged by my ability to impact those around me whilst simultaneously making a career out of it.

So where was I on September 11th? I was 8 going on 23. I was a boy who learned that the world was not without its imperfections. But it was my world. As President Bush said that day, it was my “responsibility to go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just just in our world.” That is exactly what I intend to do, wherever my career takes me.'
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Today I am a lawyer.

Sept. 11, 2001

2021-09-08 22:37:14 UTC

Attending English Class in Montreal.
9 years old.

It felt like the world stopped. The novel genuine 21st century world; the one where hope and human dignity still slightly existed.

French-Canadian, I felt like my long-standing sibling —the United States of America— had lost both its arms and a part of its soul.

God Bless all the ones who suffered and were murdered in this tragedy.

God Bless America. It will remain strong and never forget.

Christine Shanks
Lawyer (Bar of Quebec, Canada)
LL.M. Candidate at Fordham School of Law

2021-09-08 22:42:39 UTC

Was in Montreal at an airport conference at the time. Rented car and drove home to CT. Had worked on the 46th floor of South Tower at the Atty General’s office 20 years prior. Every time I drove past the site I still saw the ghost of the towers.

2021-09-08 23:27:06 UTC

In September 2001 I worked in a lab with no tv, only radio. I listened to the attacks unfold and the reactions of the radio hosts all day while I worked. When I got home, I sat in stunned silence with my family watching as the news kept replaying the attacks and the towers falling over and over. I moved to NYC three weeks later (it was already planned). I'll never forget the wreckage and the lights they beamed up from where the towers had stood. And all of the funeral cards lined up on my new roommate's dresser.

9/11

danielbfeintuck — 2021-09-08 23:52:19 UTC

I had just started my senior year at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, NY. While not in NYC-proper, Northern Westchester had a lot of commuters, many of whom were in the finance industry. I had a few classmates who had parents working in the Twin Towers. Most of them made it out alive, including a neighbor who worked on the 89th floor of the North Tower. However, there were some who didn't make it, and one whose mother would die a few years later of lung cancer that she contracted while helping with the cleanup.

I remember the chaos. Rumors of the crash started to spread around school, yet nobody could access the internet and teachers were very careful about spreading information. I remember our principal getting on the PA system and announcing "The South Tower is down, the North Tower is on fire," something that made absolutely no sense to me. When I got to 5th period science class, my teacher had access to the internet and showed pictures. It was totally surreal. And then the South Tower fell...

Finally, I got home and watched everything on the news. At that point, one by one, the other building in the WTC complex fell. Unlike earlier in the day, the severity of the day had settled in, and it no longer felt like a movie. It was very real and very terrifying.

I will forever be haunted by the attack itself and the days after, and I will never forget those who were at the WTC on that day.

Daniel B. Feintuck, Esq.

2021-09-09 00:44:21 UTC

Thoughts on 9/11/2001

My strongest memories involve the after effects. I worked for NYS Dept of Labor then. Some of my colleagues were downtown that day attending meetings in the vicinity or retirement seminars in one of the twin towers. One of my colleagues, in the downtown vicinity that day, several weeks later was forced to stop work as a result of suffering from PTSD because she witnessed the event in person. The result of 9/11 was growing familiarity with PTSD among civilians. Some future retirees were killed as a result of attending the seminar, as were state workers whose offices were in the WTC buildings.

Also, I and coworkers at Dept of Labor witnessed the suffering of Muslim men and women as a result of blatant racism following this attack. This I will never forget that. We will never achieve safety by targeting people based on race, religion, etc.

Sylvia Kaplan

I was on my way to NYC from Long Island . I distinctly remember a woman shouting as she was speaking to someone in the WTC: " what do you mean a plane has flown into the building ? Click the line went dead . The train doors did not open . An anouncement was made the train was heading to Hicksville , LI .The train kept going as we sat in silence wondering what was happening . On arriving at hicksville LI, we were ushered off the train and put on a bus to Smithtown, Long Island . We all discovered what had happened in NYC , on the bus ride as a man had a radio and was listening in ,as the world changed that fatal day . Last week i was at Hicksvile station the first time in 20 years . I have always avoided going there . I had always avoided going there . I was grateful i went as it was part of the healing process. The station had been renovvated over the years . The pale yellow walls were no longer there , thus i could not relieve being rushed off the train and heading down the endless stairs to the buses lined up outside the station . May Their Memories Be A Blessing . Ugoji A. Eze, Esq .

2021-09-09 00:56:04 UTC

Experiencing suddenly from afar

2021-09-09 02:17:00 UTC

I had finished a graduate degree in NYC in May 2001, and moved out of the city to Baltimore in August. I vividly remember returning for a friend’s birthday dinner the weekend of Sept 8-9, and gazing at the Twin Towers as my Amtrak train headed south the evening of 9/9. The next time I saw them, of course, was that awful morning two days later. I won’t detail what that morning felt like - the memories are still raw, and so many of us have them. Rather, I’ll share that on that day, and on the days that followed, it was a very odd experience to be “no longer a New Yorker,” and grieving from afar, when I still felt such a palpable connection to the city and to my many friends still there. In some ways, most especially as I witnessed New Yorkers’ resiliency, it cemented my NYC identity. It would be some years before I returned to live in NYC again, and I’ve now been here (my third stint) for about a decade. It’s a place I’m proud to call home, and its people very much “my” people.

2021-09-09 02:41:20 UTC

I remember like it was yesterday...watching it happen out my window on 7th Ave...the triage team racing to stand outside St. Vincent’s...people trudging up 7th Ave from downtown, crying, hugging...the helicopters, for days and weeks after...the burning smell later on...ceaseless sirens…city shut down below 14^th and guarded by military while I pushed a stroller through the streets…watching first responders race downtown, thinking still of how many have fallen ill or have died because they helped others...heartbroken and stunned, thinking of all those lost and how scared they must have been...the "missing" signs covering my neighborhood...people from all over the world sending tiles to hang near the pottery store across from St. Vincent’s (some still hang there today)...reading NYT obituaries every day for weeks and crying...and knowing the world was forever changed.

2021-09-09 13:32:20 UTC

The subway skipped my usual stop (Rector St.) and everybody got off at Whitehall. There was a weirdly convivial atmosphere upstairs, as a burly group of police and firefighters came laughing through the crowd and shouted in a jolly way, “Make way, Make way!” Outside, I stopped when I saw the (first) Tower was on fire. A woman near me on the sidewalk said this was terrorism – I was doubtful, remembering there had been near-misses with planes in the past. I went upstairs to my office in one of the Seaport buildings, but everything changed a few minutes later, when the Towers collapsed. It was a long and strange walk to Grand Central Station. I thought of my friends at Brown & Wood and Keefe Bruyette & Woods; as it turned out, some lived and some did not. The President spoke of al-Qaeda ("Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime"), and I hoped for a firm, measured and effective response. For a moment, almost the whole world was our ally. - Jack Lerner

20th Anniversary of 9-11

2021-09-09 15:33:02 UTC

So, I was working downtown right off the corner of John and Day. I was coming from an arbitration on Maiden Lane diagonally across from Cadwalder Wickersham & Taft. I saw burnt pages from McKinney's Statue Books and Stock trade forms floating down and I assumed since it was primary day either an election stunt a disgruntled employee or a fire. I saw someone running down towards the east river and I was walking back towards my office and he said the WTC was hit. I assumed it was like in the 1940's when that plane crashed into the Empire State Building. As I was walking back the WTC was in the background and the Federal Reserve was to the side and I heard what sounded like really heavy glass breaking and the sound of a either a blockbuster or pineapple blowing up and then saw a fireball coming from the back of the WTC which I later learned was the second plane hitting. I figured if a plane crashed that it might have been the fuel tank going up in flames. I went back to the office and heard that there were simultaneous crashes and I thought to myself Red Dawn the Patrick Swayze movie and thought we might have been invaded . Two people called me and asked me to go check on people who thankfully never made it down there that day. One of the idiot lawyer's in my office ran over there to look and I thought to myself this guy isa moron why would you go towards that and risk getting hit by debris? Sure enough he hurt his foot . I was out checking on someone and was about 15 feet from my office building door when someone was running and heard a roar and like I envisioned a volcanic irruption there was a. wall of grey heading toward me. I ran back into the lobby and shut the door. This is the only time I got scared because I thought it was a gas attack and I thought please let me go quick because seared lungs are extremely agonizing. The dust settled and it looked like a volcano had erupted and everything was covered in about three inches of ash. My high school friend , also a lwayer was working at 34th Street and he walked down to me and suggested we donate blood at the downtown hospital on Gold Street. We tried but they said they didn't need it as there weren't many injured. I figured the best way to get hone was to walk to the G train which was still running as it didn't go through Manhattan. We walked to the Brooklyn Bridge where the MTA were providing free bus rides across the bridge. We walked to Smith Street Station boarded a G train and went home. Before entering I took off my close because they had dust and I was pretty sure that the dust was toxic and washed it off in the slop sink in the incinerator room. We came back several weeks later but the idiots at Con Ed had rewired the building wrong and started and electrical fire in our building and some idiot almost got alot of people killed by telling them the wrong location of the stair case. I was also extremely angry that some employees were told to stay at their desks by employers who were then killed becasue they listened to them. A month or so later I got very angry at Japanese (Asian) tourists who were blocking the sidewalk and taking pictures and I elbowed them to make them move as I thought they were being very disrespectful as the pile was now a graveyard. Other than that I feel regret because it probably could have been avoided but there was an intelligence failure and it can happen again and we did not get the #2 guy from Al-Queda unfortunately.

2021-09-09 15:45:20 UTC

It was my first year at Brown and my first legitimate time away from NYC-my home since I was a child. Within a day after my mom left me alone in Rhode Island and drove away, I had already gotten myself arrested on the streets of Providence for being a "minor in possession of alcohol" having been unaware that in Rhode Island, your body can act as a container.
I was lucky. Since I would turn 18 in 2 days, any charge would be erased in three days. Regardless, dealing with a court appearance before a Rhode Island Superior Court within two weeks of my arrival didn't seem the best way to commence my Ivy League career. Nevertheless, like an adult, the morning of September 11, I dug up my one suit, hailed a cab, and made my way down College Hill around 8:45 am, making sure to leave myself plenty of time for my 10:30 am court date.
The traffic in Providence is terrible and had I had any knowledge at all about how far away I was from the Court, clearly walking downtown would have been the wiser choice but as I had not yet been downtown at all, I did not have the benefit of this insight and thus, made the rookie mistake of taking a cab. It was one of the best mistakes I've ever made.
While inching our way downwards, I was lost in my own thoughts. Being a New Yorker, I genuinely appreciated the cab driver did not try to force me to make conversation. However, at some point, I became aware that traffic had slowed to a total stop. Around the same time, I began halfway listening to what was playing on the radio. I initially thought that we were listening to some dystopian modern knock of War of the Worlds but then I realized two things at once: there were no commercial breaks and the level of specificity was in rather poor taste. Around that time I also realized that despite having left myself more than enough time to get to court, for the first time in my life I was going to be late-and thus I finally got up the nerve to say something.
"Sir, I realize you can't do anything about the traffic but can we please turn to a different radio program? This one is really a bit much."
I'll never forget when the cabbie turned around. He just looked sad. At the time it registered with me that he was Muslim but honestly the importance of that for him didn't sink in for me until years later. He simply said that we were listening to the news and that dispatch had already told him federal buildings were canceling hearings so he'd take me back to campus. I asked him to tell me what he knew and he said both towers had fallen. Planes crashed into them. Nothing else was known yet. I said I was from NYC. I tried to use my phone to call home and of course I couldn't get through. At some point I began to start panicking at which point he asked if it would be helpful to take a second and watch the water before going back to campus. I told him I didn't have enough money to cover the fare and he said to charge me for something like that would be unamerican. After sitting for a bit, we drove back up the hill and he dropped me off. We never crossed paths again.
I was fortunate that the first face i saw, while away from home and all alone and after having done something incredibly stupid and gotten caught, was not one of judgment but one of kindness. In the wake of so much horror and violence, I encountered humanity in that cab ride. I didn't realize then how rare it was.

7 World Trade Center

2021-09-09 15:53:44 UTC

That morning I was late to work because of a meeting with the priest, treasurer and fellow warden of my church in Scarsdale. So I wasn't there on the South side of the 13th floor of 7 World Trade making coffee when the first plane hit. I didn't see the bodies falling down. I was on the train and learned about it from a fellow commuter who was listening to Howard Stern on his headphones. When I got to Grand Central and saw the towers smoking on the TVs in Hudson News I turned right around and took the next train back to Scarsdale. From the train I called my parents to tell them not to worry about me. My father hadn't heard yet--they didn't watch TV--and he responded to the news with the broken voice of a man who had seen firsthand the horrors of the Second World War. I had not heard that voice before. When I got home I called the treasurer, Jack Cronin, to thank him for delaying my trip to the city that day. I told him that a hijacker must have pointed a gun to the head of the pilot and made him fly into the tower. No, he replied. A trained pilot would not obey that command. They must have killed the pilot and flown it themselves. Thousands died, Dorothy. It was the first I heard. Later that day my office was destroyed when 7 World Trade Center collapsed after fires raged through it. I have no interest in reliving the horror of that day. I will not go to the memorial museum or watch a film about it. I heard on the radio yesterday that people who lived and worked nearby suffered from PTSD and depression for months. I certainly did. I gave over my responsibilities as warden to junior warden Barbara Palmer because I just didn't care anymore. A few weeks after 9/11 I was at a luncheon in Greenwich for my alma mater and someone said, about something or other, "It's all good." No, it's not, I said. It is not all good. I didn't lose any friends or colleagues that day. No one in 7 World Trade Center died to my knowledge. But that part of me that thought that the world was continually getting better died.

Dorothy Heyl

40 Centre

philipschatz — 2021-09-09 16:35:57 UTC

I arrived at the 2d Circuit clerk's office early to file a request for an extension. As I sat on the benches waiting for it to open, a woman came out of the office crying. "Why are you crying," I asked. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center," she answered. My first thought was that it was another small plane like the one that hit the Empire State Building. "Can I go in?," I asked. "Go ahead," she said. I went into the clerk's office and asked if I could file my papers. I was told to wait. As the papers were being processed, the building shook. "What the hell was that," someone shouted. "The TV says its another plane," someone answered. "That doesn't make any sense," someone else said. I took my papers and walked out of the courthouse. People were standing on the steps gaping at a big black hole in one of the towers. It was a beautiful morning. The hole was surreal. I walked north on Centre Street, and ran into a judge on his way to hearing motions at 111 Centre. I told him he should go home. He insisted he had to start the calendar on time. I took the train to Grand Central and was in my office on 43rd street well before the towers fell.

My high school experience of 9/11

2021-09-09 21:29:31 UTC

I recall walking into my first-period High School class, I believe it was Government and Social Studies with Ms. Cohen, and everything ran as usual. Someone came in around 8:50 AM and casually informed the class that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. Park West High School was in Hell's Kitchen. It was predominantly a mix of Black and Latino students, so when we heard about the first crash, we collectively thought it was a small plane similar to the plane crash that killed R&B singer Aaliyah two weeks prior.

However, by the time the second plane hit, someone came into the room screaming, "We are under attack!" Before the second period started, Mr. Brancato, the school principal, announced that no one was to leave the building. The guards monitored every exit to make sure no students left the building.

The halls were awkwardly silent and empty. Some of us started to walk around with no real sense of direction. Teachers were in classrooms trying to students while they themselves were scared. Students from other schools were brought in and secured in the lunchroom. Parents and Guardians started to arrive at the school to pick up their children.

And yet, it hadn't hit me that New York was really under attack. All I knew was that people were trying to leave the area. Some cried while others were shocked.

I must admit, I was not paying attention to what people were saying. My focus was on trying to find a way to leave and go home. One thing I won't forget about that day was when my best friend's younger cousin burst into our classroom—she went to a different school, closer to ground zero, and her mother, my friend's aunt, went to pick them up—and said "***** let's get F*** out, they getting us" in her heavy Bronx accent. My best friend left with her family, and I was still searching for a way out.

I managed to exit the building through the back exits, either staircase E or F, around 2 PM. I walked towards ^51st and ^12th, hoping truancy wouldn't catch me. I then walked towards 9^th Avenue and started seeing a different New York. The streets weren't empty, but there were very few cars moving. I began to see people covered in dirt and blood walking north. I heard people saying that there weren't any trains or buses running, and cabs were overcharging people. The streets felt different, and I couldn't explain why. I was trying to position myself somewhere I could see the cloud of smoke I heard people mention, but no luck. I headed north to 96^th street, where the 1 and 9 trains ran to and from Dyckman. I had never seen the 96^th street station so packed. People were pushing, shoving, crying, and passing out. Many had walked from ground zero to the Upper West Side in hopes of finding a way to get home. It was strange to witness this. New York was vulnerable, fragile, wounded, and gloomy that day.

I walked out at the 168^th and Broadway station, and for the first time in my entire life, I saw something I had never seen before. The streets of Washington Heights were empty. If you have ever been to Washington Heights, you would know that its hustlin' and bustlin' twenty-four seven. Only a handful of people were walking, cars were not running, and only one bodega was open. I bought a tropical fantasy, something to eat, and made my way home. Everything seemed eerily wrong, sort of like an episode of the twilight zone.

I walked up to our apartment, and I was the only one there (my family arrived hours later). I turned on the tv, and the news was playing on the local channels. I kept it on channel 11, and that is when it hit me, that was the moment I realized that a tragedy had occurred. The news kept replaying scenes of people jumping from the Twin Towers. The anchors were crying as they showed videos of people who had to choose between burning or jumping. One particular video plays in my head because it was someone who used a plastic bag when they jumped, I would assume to try and break the fall. I kept thinking about how that person decided to jump, knowing full well that the end would lead to death. It was that or the news anchor saying that they had never witnessed something like that or perhaps both, led me to tear up. I learned about life and death in such an unexpected way that day. I will never forget September 11^th and the days that followed. I can safely bet that every New Yorker present that day can attest to the shared sentiment that 9/11 will forever play vividly in our minds.

-Jeremy A. Garcia
2L at Penn State Dickinson Law

Watching it Happen

2021-09-10 15:24:21 UTC

My colleagues and I were watching through a southern-facing, floor-to-ceiling window on a high floor in midtown with a clear view down to the Twin Towers. We were watching smoke pour out of the building-wide hole the first plane had made and trying to square what we were seeing with the radio news reports that it might have been an accident involving some sort of small plane. Then a Boeing 767 flew slowly uptown along the Hudson River, did a long, wide U-turn, and accelerated toward the second tower, speeding up to over 500 miles per hour as it closed in.

If only it had been treated as the heinous crime it was rather than dignified and exploited as an act of war, how much better off we all would be.

I made a career change, determined to do something more meaningful if continuing to live in New York City would mean dealing with the likes of this.

Thousands of Calls to City Bar LRS

2021-09-10 17:58:58 UTC

The morning of 9/11 I was in the hospital recovery room as the 1st tower was hit. Then the 2nd tower was hit. They came down and the legal community came together. Firemen and police walked through the fire and smoke of that man-made hell, and died.

Then back at work at the City Bar, there were meetings every day considering what lawyers could do to help survivors and the families of the deceased. Laws had to be changed to expedite death certificates, children of the missing and deceased had to be taken care of with custody and guardianship issues, questions regarding validity of marriages, whether persons who had lived together or simply registered in a hotel as husband and wife during vacations in states those recognized common law marriages had marital or inheritance rights that could be recognized in New York. This became even more important for access to the Victims Compensation Fund set up to compensate the families of those who died.

Many hundreds of lawyers volunteered to help those impacted by the attack that day. The Legal Referral Service was the initial focal point to match volunteer lawyers with those who needed help navigating the legal issues. In addition to the City Bar staff, more computers were dedicated to this effort and were manned by volunteer lawyers, taking call after call from those who lost loved ones.

Allen J. Charne
Former Executive Director
Legal Referral Service

A Trip north to Reach my NY Home

williamclassof73 — 2021-09-10 18:31:22 UTC

I worked in FL and commuted weekly to my Long Island home, my partner watched the twin Towers hit AM on 9/11 from our home area. As all air travel was grounded, my only option was to use a rental car to drive all the way north as best I could. Hertz and the other rental companies announced that temporarily, all 'drop off' rules are suspended, so I was able to return my south FL car to BWI, and then Amtrak north to New York, finally LIRR home from Penn Station. I knew that the nation was forever changed, as I saw the carnage before me, and how America's Mayor led us in those early days. In the years ahead, I came to understand better the profound changes to us all, I recommend Susan Faludi's book 'The Terror Dream,' she mentions and I was already aware of how well John Ford's masterpiece on film 'The Searchers' captures the American spirit in times of extreme stress and danger. We were and are under an existential threat from foreign terrorist sources emanating from Islamic terror roots. The twentieth anniversary of the four air jets which attacked our homeland 9/11 remind us all of that ongoing threat.

I Love New York

2021-09-10 18:48:00 UTC

The image from that day that most sticks out in my mind happened while I was walking home. I was in high school and there was very little information shared with us during the few hours we were there. Students who had parents who worked at the Trade Center were asked to come to the office; we knew there was an attack but there were so many rumors, I had no idea what to believe. I didn't think I had anyone in that area that day but I didn't know for sure - I was scared. As I walked home, I saw an older man come outside and start lowering the American flag he had flying outside his house to half mast. I broke down sobbing. This simple act of mourning foreshadowed so much.

I was lucky - I didn't lose anyone. But my home, what I saw as my City, had been attacked and it still feels like I lost something profound that day. I had always been a proud New Yorker but what I saw on 9/11 and the days and weeks that followed cemented my deep and unending love for this place and the people in it. My dad had retired from the NYPD earlier in the year but he called his old precinct and begged them to let him come in to help with the recovery. They told him they were overwhelmed with volunteers - everyone wanted to help. There were endless examples of people all over New York willing to give anything and everything to help in the wake of the attack.

Tomorrow is going to be really hard. But as I write this on 9/10/21, under a perfectly blue, beautiful sky just like the one on 9/11 20 years ago, I am choosing to focus on that love for New York and New Yorkers.

Memories from John Feerick

2021-09-11 12:11:44 UTC

On 9/11 I was having breakfast with Michael Cardozo in the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center discussing his interest in a position as Corporation Counsel. He saw smoke from the World Trade Center and said something was wrong there. We both looked at it, without knowing what had happened, and decided to leave immediately. On the way out of the building someone said to Mike that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. We were shocked to learn of the two planes. I ran back to Fordham Law School, then in session, to cancel classes and to ask everyone in the school to stay in place as it was not clear whether it was safe to leave and take a train home. We encouraged the student body to go to the amphitheater where we had a screen and saw the collapse of one or two of the buildings. Shocked and stunned students, staff and faculty feared for family members, and some immediately left, while a Jesuit priest and a Jewish rabbi joined us in the amphitheater said prayers for all who may have been harmed in the building collapses and in the surrounding area. I later learned that 4 law school graduates had died as well as family of other members of the Fordham University community. I remained at the school that day assisting students and others in a state of shock and not yet ready to leave. I also attended, in the afternoon, a Jewish prayer gathering of students in one of the classrooms. After everyone had left that day, I got in my car and drove home to Mount Kisco.
-- John Feerick

New_York_City_Bar_Association — 2023-09-13 18:28:37 UTC

I'm thinking about 9/11 and how the Legal Referral Service was the only number given out for the families to call so our staff could enter the survivor info into newly developed software that was used to connect them to the many volunteer lawyers who helped them navigate the legal issues.

I remember so many of the calls that I personally took and the staff handled in that time. I remember how the whole country came together to support New York. And the meetings with Maria Imperial and so many others every day. Changing laws related to declaring death, using Common-law marriage rules from other states to confirm such marriages for couples who had registered as husband and wife if hotels in those states or had traveled to those states while living as a married couple. This enabled them to qualify for many benefits, including the Victim's Compensation Fund.

The country that came together is so divided now. Can what fell and cracked open be put together again?

We were blessed to be able to respond in a time of such need.

Al Charne - former Executive Director of the City Bar Legal Referral Service

2026-09-04 18:05:45 UTC

I was just seven months old when the attacks happened, but I am incredibly moved whenever I hear those older than me travel back to that moment in time, remember exactly where they were, and reflect on the lasting images. There are few things that tie New Yorkers so closely together. It's always interesting to see how much people's stories overlap with others'.