Written by D.J. Reiter
On September 10th, 2001, after recapping the New York Giants’ poor performance on
Monday Night Football, my Dad told me he was going into lower Manhattan the next
morning to meet with a client.
It was an ordinary detail in an ordinary conversation. The kind of thing your father tells
you when you’re away at college and catching up. There was no reason to give it much
thought.
By the next morning, it was the only thing I could think about.
I was at college in Ithaca, NY, about three hours north of my hometown of Mahwah, NJ.
That morning, I woke up significantly earlier than I normally would have to finish some
last-minute homework for a 10 AM history class. I turned on the “Today Show” and saw
the coverage of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. What we would soon
understand was the first plane.
I called my Mom.
“What the hell is going on?”
I knew where my Dad had told me he would be that morning. Thankfully, my Mom was
able to tell me that his client had emailed in the early morning hours and canceled the
meeting. He was home with her.
My Dad was safe.
I have thought about that a lot over the past 25 years.
I don’t know where he would have been when the planes hit, what he might have
encountered, or how he would have gotten home. I won’t pretend that a meeting in
lower Manhattan means I know what would have happened to him. But I know the fear I
felt before my Mom told me he was home. And I know how grateful I am that he was.
Growing up in Northern New Jersey, Manhattan was part of my understanding of home.
It was “The City.” You didn’t have to explain which one.
So much of what I know and love about culture, art, food, and sports began there. The
things I got to see, taste, hear, and experience as a kid, then as an adolescent, and by
that point as a young adult, helped shape my interests and the person I was becoming.
The city gave me access to people, ideas, and experiences that made my world bigger.
It’s impossible for me to separate growing up from growing up near New York, in the
shadow of “The City.”
And it was nearly impossible to grow up in Northern New Jersey without knowing
someone whose parent or family member worked at the World Trade Center, or near it
in lower Manhattan. These were our neighbors, our friends’ parents, the people in our
communities who went into the city every morning and came home every night.
Once I knew my Dad was safe, there were still so many other people to worry about.
I barely left my dorm room for most of that day. I stayed glued to the television, watching
the same images, listening for updates, trying to understand something that became
more horrifying as the morning went on.
I was three hours away from home, watching a place that had helped raise me come
under attack.
Looking back, I wish I had left my room. I wish I had found my friends and let myself be
around other people who were scared, confused, and trying to make sense of it, too.
Instead, I isolated myself on a day when I needed company. At the time, I just kept
watching.
There’s something that still feels strange about having gotten up early to finish
homework for a history class, then spending the day watching an event that would
define so much of the next 25 years.
The assignment mattered when I woke up. Within hours, it was hard to imagine how
anything ordinary was supposed to matter again.
But ordinary life did resume, even as the world changed around it.
We went to war. Airport security changed how we traveled. Terrorism, surveillance, and
national security became part of our everyday conversations. Decisions made in
response to that day shaped lives around the world for decades. An entire generation
has now grown up without knowing the world the rest of us keep referring to as “before.”
We saw extraordinary courage and compassion. First responders went toward danger.
People helped strangers get home. Communities supported families whose losses
didn’t end when the television coverage moved on.
We also saw fear turn into suspicion and cruelty toward Muslim Americans and people
perceived to be Muslim. An honest remembrance has to include that, too.
I think about the willingness people showed to care about someone they didn’t know. I
wish we were better at sustaining that without needing a catastrophe to remind us.
Twenty-five years later, I’m a father myself. I understand more about what I was afraid
of losing that morning. Your Dad is your Dad. Even when you’re old enough to know he
isn’t invincible, some part of you still expects him to be there.
My Mom got to tell me he was home. Thousands of families never got that relief.
That has to remain at the center of remembering this day. The people who died had
plans, appointments, families, and ordinary conversations the night before. There was
supposed to be another phone call. They were supposed to come home.
On 9/11, we’ll hear their names and see the images again. I’ll think about being in my
dorm room, calling my Mom, and hearing that my Dad was with her. About the city that
shaped me, and the friends I wish I’d spent that day beside.
I’m still grateful that meeting never happened. And I’m thinking of everyone who would
give anything for one ordinary detail of that morning to have been different.
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