In the aftermath: A day in NYC

By now it is a familiar sight. Everybody has seen the devastation that was once the World Trade Center (WTC) on television over and over again. The image of the wreckage is constantly being burned into our brains through pictures in newspapers and magazines.

How many times has the news replayed the collapse of the buildings? Our eyes are almost used to the sight by now. So, although I knew it would be an emotional experience when I went to New York to see the WTC last week, I was not expecting the feelings that boiled up inside me at the sight.

I have lived in New York my entire life, barring this past year and a half of college. I was not a city dweller. I lived on Long Island. Still, the City was a familiar place to me.

I was aware of the WTC; I had visited it many times. Yet, I did not really pay much attention to it. It was just something I always assumed would be there. I knew it was important to New York, and I appreciated that fact, but that is as far as my thought process went. I never thought further about it until Sept. 11.

Since that day, the WTC and the situation surrounding it has never been far from my mind. I wanted to see the tragedy first-hand, to help if at all possible, but I was not sure if I was ready to handle the sight. I had commitments that kept me here for a while, but I knew I would see it eventually. I knew that it was just something I had to do. I finally got my chance last weekend.

As I stepped off the train into Penn Station, I knew immediately that something was wrong. It took a few minutes and a few blocks until I finally realized what it was. NYC was practically empty!

I was there on the Friday after Thanksgiving—the busiest shopping day of the year—in the place that earned the title “the city that never sleeps,” and it was practically deserted.

In addition, stores were begging for business. I counted about fifteen signs on one block announcing that a store was open. Businesses were obviously suffering; there was nobody there to buy anything.

It just was not the City without the crowd. However, the closer I got to the WTC, the more crowded it got. There was a green cloth fence surrounding the area. Inside, firefighters and policemen labored; outside spectators gazed in shock and horror at the sight before their eyes.

It was not as if we were able to get particularly close. It was not as if we were able to see anything that gruesome. It certainly was not like we were seeing something we had not seen a million times before on television. Yet, everybody who was there was touched.

Perhaps it was the memorials that covered the walls. There were flowers, collages, notes, pictures and candles from all over the world. It could have been the way so many people gathered together at the sight, not simply to gawk, but to pay tribute to the victims and heroes of that day.

Some of the people around me were quietly weeping while others had unshed tears in their eyes as they struggled to keep an outwardly calm demeanor.

Perhaps the most touching sight was of the firemen and policemen, still hard at work months after the tragedy occurred. Regardless of which one it was, I was deeply moved and terribly saddened.

It is amazing to me that I was able to find some happiness in that day. New York was still New York, crowds and all. It was just that they had someplace more important to be than the shops that day. There were still street vendors at every corner; but instead of peddling watches, sunglasses, or pirated movies, they sold American flags and patriotic pins.

The native New Yorkers still possessed their “Try me!” attitude, but wore it with even more confidence because they had been tried, and they were proving themselves ready for the challenge. I know that things will never be the same, but we are recovering. It is a long road ahead, but we will succeed.

I will leave you with a thought from one of the many poems that decorated the fence around the ruins of the WTC. It read, “Monday we were boasting about our ethnicity—we were Spanish, African-American, Irish, German, and so on. Tuesday we were all Americans.”

Laura Sass

Sophomore

English major