Though living in Orlando, FL, at the time, I’d been in New York for five weeks, working at the US Open Tennis event in Queens at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. I had worked for several years with the merchandising company that sold merchandise during the Open. I ran the largest retail store on the grounds, the Octagon, which, for two weeks, averaged well over $120,000 in daily sales.
The Open officially ended on Sunday, September 9. On Monday, we conducted a day-long half-price sale. On Tuesday, September 11, we began closing down our stores, removing the displays, and inventorying the remaining merchandise. It was the first day in two weeks we weren’t wearing our navy blue polo shirt and khaki shorts. The adrenaline from the final weekend of the Open and the half-price sale was gone, and I was dragging. Venus Williams had defeated her sister Serena in the Women’s Final, and Lleyton Hewitt upset Pete Sampras in the Men’s Final. They were long gone while we were left to clean up.
I recall walking from the Octagon to our offices on the grounds when our general manager, Terry, told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We went into his office and turned on the television. There was no footage yet from the scene. We listened as an eyewitness described a large plane crashing into one of the towers. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and it was more likely that a small plane had hit the tower. Moments later, TV cameras showed the tower with a massive hole in the South Tower and smoke billowing out.
I had driven to New York because I didn’t want to be without my car for six weeks. I would have had access to one of the vans our company had rented, but I didn’t want to be controlled by the needs of the many. I brought two of my children with me, my son Alan (17) and youngest daughter Lauren (12). They spent a few days with me in New York before I put them on a plane home before school started. Among the places we visited was the World Trade Center (1973–2001) — Wikipedia, where we had lunch at the Windows on the World restaurant and took pictures from the roof.
Terry and I continued to watch news coverage when, unexpectedly, a second plane flew into the North Tower. We continued to watch as the South Tower collapsed on itself, followed by the North Tower. We saw people running from the buildings, covered in dust and ashes. USTA officials notified us they were closing the grounds, and we had to leave. About twenty of us came to New York to work the Open as managers. Most of us ran merchandising operations at arenas and stadiums across the country. We had over 500 temporary workers covering four shifts. Some of them worked for us for years, and we got to know them quite well.
The managers stayed in rented homes and apartments. Some of us were in Manhattan, and others were in Long Island and Queens. The people staying in Manhattan weren’t allowed to cross the bridges to return to where they were staying. Fourteen of us ended up staying in a three-bedroom home in Queens on Rose Avenue. People slept on beds, couches, and the floor. Rumors abounded, including alleged threats to blow up the George Washington and Triborough Bridges, local police stations were barricaded. Fear abounded, but people also worked together to get through.
I had always planned to leave New York on Thursday, September 13. However, the managers who had flown to New York could not fly out because the airports were closed. One manager who lived in Orlando elected to drive back with me instead of waiting to get a flight. Her mother told me to “get my baby home safe.”
Shortly after the flights hit the Twin Towers, cellphone networks were overloaded, but I was able to use a landline in the Octagon to call my children and let them know I was okay. While all our managers were accounted for, I had no idea about any of the temporary workers who lived in New York, some of them already working new jobs in Manhattan. It would take another year for many returning workers to discover they had survived. There were many whose status I had never found. In 2002, I went to the site of the World Trade Center, which was now a hole, surrounded by street vendors selling t-shirts and hats.
On the Thursday I left, we had to cross the Triborough Bridge, and by looking left, I would have seen the still-smoldering remnants of the Twin Towers. I couldn’t bring myself to look. The final bridge to cross before exiting New York was the George Washington Bridge. I thought about the rumors I’d heard about bombs set to go off. Never in my life was I so happy to reach New Jersey.
I arrived home the next day, dropping off Miss Charlie to her family. It took a few more days for the numbness to subside. I was still absorbing the death toll not only in New York but in Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. This year, the anniversary of September 11 slipped up on me. Now that I’m reminded, it will take another couple of days to store these memories. Writing about it helps, but it will all come rushing back next year. Until then.
It was the first few weeks of my first year of teaching, it was the very start of second period, I had a classroom of 9th and 10th grade students. The school locked us down for the day, in our second period classrooms. We watched the towers be hit, explode and go down over and over again, with our students, for the entire day.
Some of the students were young enough to not completely understand the gravity of what we were watching. Many were quiet. One student picked up on my concern and started to tear up and cry, asking to be picked up by her mother.
I watched the TV monitor, over and over for eight hours, and wept for my students, because I understood we would go to war for a very long time, and that many of them would likely enlist when they came of age. I could not wish this for them. I cried for days.
The events of the day come rushing back. We can never forget.