Visiting New York One Week After

By Dick McCullough

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September 11, 2001. A day of such infamy that by the twelfth, the bombing of Pearl Harbor almost seemed honorable. And one week later, I had to fly the reverse route of Flight 93, the ill-fated flight of heroes that crashed into rural Pennsylvania. SFO to JFK on United in a Boeing 767. I told myself flying would never be safer, nothing to worry about. Secretly, I hoped that I wouldn't be called to bravery like the passengers on Flight 93. But, if called, I promised myself I would answer. I went to SFO early, expecting chaos. My wife dropped me off at the curb, policemen everywhere. She wasn't allowed to tarry. As I entered the United terminal, I was surprised to find it crowded. As I made my way to the check-in counter, airport security was yelling to all of us to clear the area, pushing us back the way I had come. All UA personnel also were forced to leave. No one knew why. This did not lessen my anxiety. But it did explain the crowd.

As we were being shepherded to another area, I asked a UA employee if I could go straight to the gate if I had an e-ticket. She said yes and pointed to a fairly short security check-in line. I went through security without a hiccup. I was somewhat disappointed, and also concerned, that the security process seemed, if anything, more casual than before the attack. Guards were talking to each other, laughing. None of my luggage was searched, even though I had a laptop, numerous electronic accessories in my briefcase, a razor in my dop kit and who knows what else that might be, in the wrong hands, used for evil. During the flight, I kept telling myself I was safe. But I kept scanning the aisles, looking for wild-eyed terrorists in scraggly beards that I could tackle. We were all fortunate there were no Sikhs on my flight in desperate need of a restroom.

As we approached JFK, the pilot announced the attendants should prepare for our arrival. I looked out the window. We were too high for landing. I became suspicious. I listened to the pilot. I watched the flight attendants. All appeared normal. I wondered if there were a conspiracy of the entire flight crew. I waited for the plane to veer violently off course, ready to spring into action, but having no idea what action I might be preparing to spring into. I told myself to get a grip. We landed without incident. That is to say, without me embarrassing myself.

Instead of at United's beautiful, modern terminal, we gated at some bizarre, long forgotten and disused section of JFK, and took a circuitous route through an ancient part of the airport, eventually spilling out in front of the curbside taxi stand. The raw plywood walls, the haphazard path, emphasized that I was entering a new New York, entering a new world.

On the ride into Manhattan, I had a view of the NY skyline. It was completely black by then and the city lights sketched the city's profile in sparkling jewelry. I was taken by the beauty of NY at night, when all the trash and grime is invisible. As I scanned the view, allowing the scene to calm me, I briefly forgot our recent collective tragedy. My eyes moved right to left until I came to a glowing white cloud drifting among the skyscrapers. Like a nuclear cotton ball, the site where the World Trade Center Towers used to be was a visual scar on Manhattan's night.

The blazing floodlights illuminated the steam and smoke still rising from the rubble, more than a week later. For 24 hours a day, for the past 8 days, rescue workers had been pouring water on the twisted mass of metal as they searched the wreckage for survivors. And their boots were still melting. After checking into my hotel in the Gramercy section of town, I went to dinner at a local bar housed in the ground floor of a building 110 years old. Local bar, local crowd. The outside windows were covered in hand written signs of support for the missing, the rescuers, the city itself. American flags were everywhere the signs weren't. I went in, found a seat at the bar and was handed a menu by a gruff barman who didn't speak so much as bark. Inside the menu was an insert asking for prayers for a local photographer who was missing. As I left the bar, I noticed a handwritten sign announcing the location and time of the photographer's wake. Like many others I was drawn to the site, somehow called to see and to pay homage. Manhattan was oddly subdued. I have been there many times. But never had I seen it so quiet. Never had I felt so unthreatened, so unalienated. The city just didn't seem to have the heart or the energy to bother rejecting me. I found out later that crime was down 34% in the week following the disaster. All over New York, its citizens are temporarily more conscious of their commonality than their diversity. Their collective loss binds them together as it does the nation.

I passed Union Square, where impromptu memorials had been set up. Dozens of bouquets of flowers were piled in front of a statue of Washington sitting stoically on a horse. Votive candles in the hundreds were scattered on the ground, peacefully, silently flaming for the lost. Posters, banners, flyers of missing persons were strung up on walls and fences. The drum of a Yogi softly pleaded for world peace. My eyes started to well up so I walked away.

NY has been transformed from a city of diverse competitors into a family of mourners. Walking down to the site, I could not fail to notice the flags pasted to store front windows. Flags on cars, on t-shirts. Missing persons flyers pasted on bus kiosks. Policemen directing traffic at intersections with functioning traffic lights, lumbering randomly throughout the city, sitting in chairs like night watchmen. Passing doorway conversations about virtually nothing but the disaster and missing friends, family. The somber serenity that covered the city like a soft blanket. I got my best view of the unimaginable when I reached Greenwich and Reade. A barricade manned by large, serious policemen made it clear I wasn't getting closer. The area surrounding the barricade looked like a flea market. There were tables full of various and sundry items, bottled water, flashlights, other supplies. There was a Campbell's Soup booth doling out free cups of soup to refresh the souls of the heroes digging for survivors but finding only body parts. There were two large rectangular buildings that looked like mobile homes with a tractor-trailer parked next to them. Each rectangle was a portable McDonald's restaurant. And passing out free food to rescuers.

Firemen, soldiers, policemen, FBI, local security, other volunteers, shoulders rounded in fatigue and disappointment, slowly rambled past the barricade in groups of three or four. Behind me were dozens of media people, media equipment. Thick wires criss-crossing the street like a plague of snakes. Behind the media army, a white motor home bristling with antennae was parked, off by itself. On its side was painted "United States Secret Service."

I looked down Greenwich and saw an immense brown mound of twisted metal and rubble, it's solidity that of Earth itself, roughly 3 stories high and tapering off slowing out of sight behind buildings on both the right and left. Smoldering, with a fireman in a cherry picker pouring water on its massive bulk. I stared at the steam-smoke slowly rising from the mountain of metal four or five blocks in front of me. It took a few seconds for me to realize that there was a second, larger mound hiding in the blue-gray haze that must have been 5 stories high. My first thought was "Of course there are no survivors. In that crush, there aren't even bodies."

The next evening I went to a business meeting that ended about a quarter to nine. President Bush was scheduled to speak to the nation at nine. I ducked into the first place I saw that had both food and TV, Mickey Mantle's on 59th. Mickey Mantle's, as you might guess, is a sports bar. It has a dozen or so TV's scattered around, all broadcasting different sporting events. That night, all TV's were tuned to the president's speech. Every person in the bar was staring up, watching, listening, occasionally cheering and applauding. A couple of heavy set men in rumpled suits, ties askew, came in and sat at the bar. They asked the bartender to switch on a ball game. The bartender rolled his eyes as if they'd just asked him to strip naked and slowly shook his head no. Shrugged his shoulders. A European TV crew filmed bar patrons watching President Bush and then, after, argumentatively interviewed them for their reactions to the speech. I left NY a couple of days later. Took a taxi to JFK, traffic was light. JFK, one of the busiest airports in the world, was deserted. United had moved from their terminal to share space in another, older, smaller section of the airport. Probably the same terminal I entered earlier in the week. Security was much tighter than in San Francisco. At x-ray, I was asked if I had a razor in my luggage and then asked to remove it. It was confiscated. The contents and then liner of my dop kit were carefully searched for hidden weapons.

When we boarded the flight, an announcement was made that the flight was so empty all rows could board at once.

As I stretched out in my seat, I thought about New York. How different it was, how transformed. I thought about how it felt to be there. How emotional it was, I was. And why. New York, to me, has always been a little distant. Cold. Intimidating. But the epitome of success. Like the big man on campus, captain of the football team, hunky boyfriend of the homecoming queen. Big, strong, arrogant, fearless, great teeth. And the rest of us are just skinny freshmen. We admire him. Envy him. Even perhaps fear and resent him. He is the best we have to offer. The strongest, the toughest. America's go-to guy when the game is on the line.

But the unthinkable has happened. Somebody knocked our big man on his rear. Bloodied his nose. Humbled him, at least temporarily. That our biggest and our best is this vulnerable scares me silly. But something else has happened, too. We've seen how New York reacted. We've seen New York's underbelly, sure. But we've seen it's compassion and generosity, too. New York, in its profound suffering and grief, has shared an intimate moment with the rest of us. It has shown us that beneath it's cocky bravado, there is a tender and broken heart. A strong and decent spirit. An unbelievably tough and resilient character. New York, I have always respected you. But I have never loved you because I have never really known you. Until September 11, 2001. I love you now, New York. You are the pride of America.

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