More 9/11
I sent out a link to a group of close friends about the 2996 project, which is a tribute by volunteer bloggers to the people who died on 9/11. Each was assigned a person to research and write about.
My friend Barbara Roggeveen wrote back as follows:
Thanks for sending this along. Maybe someday this fall I can read it - not today.
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Both my children and their now-spouses were living in NYC that day. Mark was on call at one of the hospitals. My now son-in-law was working in the building over Grand Central Station and was evacuated a multitude of times that day. His family in the Netherlands watched the evacuations on CNN and worried all day. My now daughter-in-law was working at city hall and had to walk home half the distance of Manhattan. Their friends were walking from 170th street to Brooklyn.
I was working at the Red Cross Blood Services helping to coordinate the calls and people coming in. It was a mad house. My friend Sharon was trying to reschedule the staff from all the buildings in Boston, at Harvard and MIT that had been shut down. Donors were coming in to an unstaffed donor room. But we got it staffed and all were open some until after midnight. What many of us did not know was that Sharon's niece and her fiance worked on the 89th and 91st floors of tower 2 and while she was handling all this chaos she knew nothing about her niece. Fortunately she was able to walk out thanks to the help of some construction men. A pregnant woman with her stayed with the police in the lobby. The men helping her made her go to the subway with them. She survived. The pregant woman died in the collapse. Her fiance also miraculously made it out and they are married. He finally can get on a plane but neither will go into a high rise. At RC we worked like crazy with all those who wanted to help and were so busy for 6-8 weeks, we did not have a chance to deal with the horror ourselves. It began to hit us hard then.
My children's friends who worked in the towers were lucky - one was in court, others out of the office and others working at home.
Anne rode her bicycle to the staging area for the ambulances near pier 49 and saw none of them moving. Mark and the group scared a patient as all the medical staff flooded his room to look out at the tower. Only one stayed long enough to see the second plane fly in. They all had gone into emergency mode but knew by late afternoon that the emergencies would be few and far between.
Pete and I were there the next weekend enroute to a wedding in PA. Flags flew from every bridge down I-84 and fire engines sat on the bridges the firemen waving flags and people honking at them. New York was a different scene. As we walked into Anne and Erik's apartment building the signs "Have you seen .... ?" were on the walls by the mailboxes and elevators. The trip to the hopsital where Mark was working was tougher. Signs coated the emergency room windows, garbage trucks blocked the streets moving only when an ambulance was coming in. The memory of those faces makes me shiver. Trucks carrying refuse were streaming down another nearby street carrying it to the barges to be taken to the dumps. People wanted to be in touch with each other. Everyone wanted to know how you were and for you to ask the same of each of them. Flags hung in every window. Crossing the GW bridge and from NJ you could see the smoke and haze from the towers. Not a pretty sight!!
Our children would allow us only to take a bridge to Pennsylvania but the wedding was beautiful and the sight of a country coming together was awe inspiring. That is what I want to remember now the other memories are too raw.
----
This perspective is from someone not actually there. Kristen, my friend, was actually in NYC that day. Hope I hear from her.
My friend Barbara Roggeveen wrote back as follows:
Thanks for sending this along. Maybe someday this fall I can read it - not today.
----
Both my children and their now-spouses were living in NYC that day. Mark was on call at one of the hospitals. My now son-in-law was working in the building over Grand Central Station and was evacuated a multitude of times that day. His family in the Netherlands watched the evacuations on CNN and worried all day. My now daughter-in-law was working at city hall and had to walk home half the distance of Manhattan. Their friends were walking from 170th street to Brooklyn.
I was working at the Red Cross Blood Services helping to coordinate the calls and people coming in. It was a mad house. My friend Sharon was trying to reschedule the staff from all the buildings in Boston, at Harvard and MIT that had been shut down. Donors were coming in to an unstaffed donor room. But we got it staffed and all were open some until after midnight. What many of us did not know was that Sharon's niece and her fiance worked on the 89th and 91st floors of tower 2 and while she was handling all this chaos she knew nothing about her niece. Fortunately she was able to walk out thanks to the help of some construction men. A pregnant woman with her stayed with the police in the lobby. The men helping her made her go to the subway with them. She survived. The pregant woman died in the collapse. Her fiance also miraculously made it out and they are married. He finally can get on a plane but neither will go into a high rise. At RC we worked like crazy with all those who wanted to help and were so busy for 6-8 weeks, we did not have a chance to deal with the horror ourselves. It began to hit us hard then.
My children's friends who worked in the towers were lucky - one was in court, others out of the office and others working at home.
Anne rode her bicycle to the staging area for the ambulances near pier 49 and saw none of them moving. Mark and the group scared a patient as all the medical staff flooded his room to look out at the tower. Only one stayed long enough to see the second plane fly in. They all had gone into emergency mode but knew by late afternoon that the emergencies would be few and far between.
Pete and I were there the next weekend enroute to a wedding in PA. Flags flew from every bridge down I-84 and fire engines sat on the bridges the firemen waving flags and people honking at them. New York was a different scene. As we walked into Anne and Erik's apartment building the signs "Have you seen .... ?" were on the walls by the mailboxes and elevators. The trip to the hopsital where Mark was working was tougher. Signs coated the emergency room windows, garbage trucks blocked the streets moving only when an ambulance was coming in. The memory of those faces makes me shiver. Trucks carrying refuse were streaming down another nearby street carrying it to the barges to be taken to the dumps. People wanted to be in touch with each other. Everyone wanted to know how you were and for you to ask the same of each of them. Flags hung in every window. Crossing the GW bridge and from NJ you could see the smoke and haze from the towers. Not a pretty sight!!
Our children would allow us only to take a bridge to Pennsylvania but the wedding was beautiful and the sight of a country coming together was awe inspiring. That is what I want to remember now the other memories are too raw.
----
This perspective is from someone not actually there. Kristen, my friend, was actually in NYC that day. Hope I hear from her.
posted by Linda @ 2:57 PM
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