Chicken Soup for the Soul of America (9 page)

When my husband reached the Plaza Level, he was not able to exit because of the flaming debris falling outside. He proceeded down the steps to the Concourse Level and walked through several inches of water, which was coming from the sprinkler system, and was finally able to exit the building. He walked to the subway station and got on a train going uptown. He was probably on the last train to ever leave from there. He did not stop to make a phone call until he was in Grand Central Station.

When I heard his voice, I went completely weak. “Eddie, where are you?”

He said, “In Grand Central Station.” I could not believe my ears. He was right across the street.

I said, “Thank God!” He said he was coming to my office.

As I hung up the phone, it rang again. It was my second daughter, Jessica, again. She told me not to go to my mother's because she had heard the first tower collapsed, and my mother lives about ten or fifteen blocks from the World Trade Center and is in direct line with them. I did not give her a chance to finish. I said, “Daddy is okay, and he is on his way to my office.” I also told her I did not know what we were doing, but I had to evacuate the building and would call her later. I told her to tell my other daughter. I quickly called both my sisters to let them know Eddie was okay, and I was going to meet him downstairs.

When I got downstairs, I saw him standing in front of the building. I just hugged and kissed him and could not believe how fortunate we were. I was so grateful he acted as he did. Even though it seemed like an eternity, this all took place within a little more than an hour.

We decided to go to my cousin's apartment about four blocks away. Since the bridges and tunnels had closed, we would not be able to get a bus home. When we arrived there, we again called my sister and my daughters to let them know where we were. My husband told my youngest daughter to e-mail our oldest daughter, Judie, who is in medical school in the Caribbean. We later learned she had heard of the attack and was frantically trying to contact us.

My story has a happy ending. We pray all the time now for those who were not as fortunate, for those who did not make it and for their families. They are now in heaven—the only place greater than the United States of America.

Rosemarie Kwolek

A Day in D.C.

W
e all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.

Harrison Ford

“Don't go, Mom,” my ten-year-old daughter pleads while she watches me pack my bag for Washington, D.C. “I've got a bad
feeling
about this.” I have to go, I try to explain, I have an important meeting on Tuesday, September 11.

At the airport, I walk into the jetway to board the American Airlines plane and glance back. My nearly teenage son waits to leave the gate. I give him a reassuring look—the kind that says everything will be all right—and take a deep breath. I, too, am having second thoughts.

As my flight approaches Reagan National Airport, I am in awe by the sight of our majestic national monuments piercing the darkness of the warm night in a bath of glorious light. This is my first trip to our nation's capital—my first business trip for an editorial position that I have had merely five months.

Early Tuesday morning, September 11, I find myself in the House office buildings participating in my employer's lobbying effort. As we ride the elevator, a legislative aide says that a plane has hit the World Trade Center and there is a “big hole in the side of the building.” Although I question for details, he only knows this. I make a mental note to watch the evening news.

By 9:20 that morning, a coworker and I are walking toward the Senate office buildings for my scheduled meeting with the senator. We hear a noise that makes us look at each other and ask, “What was that?” We glance around. No one seems concerned, so we walk on toward Capitol Hill.

Near the Capitol, we stop to take photographs and watch a senator give a press conference. Our diversion is interrupted by the frantic screams of a woman, desperately calling out a name. My first thought was that she had lost a child. Trouble seems to be stirring—something is wrong.

We step closer to the Capitol and listen to a man in a military uniform give a press interview. We are shocked to hear him say that the Pentagon is on fire as he gestures in the direction of a dark tongue of smoke in the near distance.

Then a woman runs by crying uncontrollably—with a cell phone to her ear and a hand over her mouth. In the chaos, I look in every direction—trying to figure out what is happening. Reporters and cameramen are sprinting out of the Capitol, and they keep running. Then we hear shouts again—this time from security guards and police officers.

“Run!” the guards command with exaggerated arm motions pointing away from the Capitol. “Run!”

People scramble, scanning the sky for an unseen danger. A stranger tells us that it was a plane that hit the Pentagon, that a low-flying aircraft was in the area and they think that the Capitol might be a potential target.

We run. We are not positive from what, but clearly know that we are in the wrong place. My heart thumps in my chest, and I wish this wasn't happening.

The world around me is surreal. My thoughts swirl from the illogical—wondering if this means my appointment with the senator was off—to horrific visions of foreign airplanes dive-bombing our nation's monuments. In the numbing confusion, my mind fills in its own answers—answers straight out of wartime movies. I struggle to fight back visions of the entire city being leveled.

Many blocks away, the crowds slow to a walk and people look around. I notice two uniformed guards, who seem like the right people to ask just what on earth is going on. They tell us the Twin Towers in New York City were “hit,” the Pentagon was “hit,” and they had heard that the White House Old Executive Office Building was “hit” as well. I gasp. We were just at that part of the White House! (Later that day, I would learn the information about the White House was, of course, incorrect.)

Then the guards tell us the horrific news, that those planes that crashed in New York City and D.C. were hijacked American commercial airliners, filled with passengers.
Unbelievable.
I pause for a moment, slowly realizing that the smoke I saw coming from the Pentagon was wreckage where many innocent people just died. I say a silent prayer.

This was beyond belief. I wonder if the entire nation is under full attack. I begin to think that I just may not make it out of this city alive and grab my cell phone to call my husband. The call doesn't go through. I then try to call other coworkers in D.C. No use—none of the cell phones seem to be working. I ask myself:
All this for a job?

I continuously hit the redial button on my cell phone and clearly understand why people in dangerous situations call home. The feeling is overwhelming to communicate one last message—to let your loved ones know you're fine . . . or not fine. I want to tell someone what is happening and how much I hate being where I am now. I want to tell my kids that I am sorry for not heeding their warning not to go. Then I wonder if those airliner passengers tried to call home too.

We begin to walk, following the crowds, but to where we don't know. Police officers are directing traffic. We walk by a senator who had gathered together what appeared to be his office staff. We stop for a moment to see if we can glean any more information, then walk on.

At a traffic light, my coworker recognizes a congressman who has rolled down his vehicle window and is talking with people—telling them the latest information as he knew it. My coworker urges me to take his photograph and I suddenly remember—I am a journalist. For a brief second, I wonder if I should head back into the action for “a story.” Images of my family fill my mind, and I immediately know that I am not a hard-core reporter.

The streets are crowded with honking cars, and sirens blare everywhere. I begin to cross, and my coworker yanks on my arm as a car speeds recklessly around the corner. The irony—would I survive this morning, only to be hit by a car?

Yet the people in the streets were surprisingly calm and orderly—following the police officers' directions. My coworker and I head back to our hotel and regroup with the others.

The first thing nearly everyone does is phone home—to get word out that we are all right. I felt desperate to have my children know that their mother is alive, and I need assurance that they, too, are okay.

Crowds gather around any available television to watch the horrific events unfold before our eyes and to comfort one another.

I go to the lounge and find it full of people, their eyes glued to the television. I am asked if I'd like a glass of wine. No, I reply, I need something a little stronger today—the news report had just flashed a list of commercial aircraft unaccounted for. We feel like “sitting ducks.” We wonder what this might be the beginning of—or what might come next. Our hotel is in the same building as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal office buildings surround us. I want out of there.

As the afternoon drags on, I cannot sit idly in my hotel room. I walk, observe people playing cards in the lobby, and make my way to the rooftop pool to look around the city. Several people are swimming, as if it were a normal day. A plane flies over and people cringe. “It's just our fighter jets,” a man loudly calls out to the group on the roof.

On the street corner, a family with packed suitcases holds a sign with their anticipated destination—desperately trying to find a way out of town. Several groups with their buses readily available are boarding and leaving town.

Back at the hotel room, my coworker arranges for our own quick departure via Amtrak. There is no way either of us will get back on an airplane any time soon—especially on the East Coast. I wonder how this day has changed the world in which we live.

I don't sleep that night. At 1:00 the next morning, six of us pile into a taxi that takes us to Union Station to catch the 3:00
A.M.
train home. The sooner we leave D.C. the better.

Many long hours later, the train pulls into the midwestern farm town where my family awaits me. I am back home. I step off the train, grab my children and hug them . . . as if I have been given a second chance. Yes, it is going to be all right.

Maria Miller Gordon

Last Call

As smoke and heat diminished from the mangled steel and glass,

The hope of rescue workers faded in and out so fast.

These heroes of our nation working tirelessly to find

A sound, a breath, some proof of life, to keep that hope alive.

The victims were so innocent, just doing their life's work,

In a nation called America, the most free on this Earth.

Suddenly, a worker finds a cell phone flashing red.

He plays the “last call” message, and this is what it said:

“Hello, it's me. I'm calling to tell you I'm all right.

I've made it up to heaven; I tried to call last night.

The group that I arrived with is strong and brave and tall,

And proud to be Americans while answering God's call.

“I love you all and know I've been in all your thoughts and prayers.

You need to know I felt no pain and safely made it here.

Now let me say a prayer for you of closure and of life,

Move on with courage and with faith that we will reunite.

“I know it's sad; I'll age no more, but in this you can trust:

My dreams were put back on the Earth in particles of dust.

That dust is in the air you breathe; I've passed it on to you.

So please breathe deeply every day and make my dreams come true.”

Dave Timmons
Submitted by Tom Lagana

The Vigil

In the darkest hours of the night, Judith Kaplan, dressed in her Sabbath finery, sat in a tent outside the New York City medical examiner's office, singing the haunting repertoire form the Book of Psalms. From midnight until 5
A.M.
, within sight of trucks full of body parts from the Word Trade Center, she fulfilled the most selfless of Jewish commandments: to keep watch over the dead, who must not be left alone from the moment of passing until burial.

Normally, this orthodox ritual, known as sitting
shmira,
lasts for only twenty-four hours, and is performed by one Jew, customarily a man, for another Jew. But these are not normal times. Thus, the round-the-clock vigil outside the morgue on First Avenue and Thirtieth Street is already in its eighth week. The three sealed trucks may or may not contain Jewish bodies. And the
shomer,
or watcher, is just as often a young woman as an old man.

Ms. Kaplan, twenty, a senior at Stern College for Women (a division of Yeshiva University), is one of nine students who has volunteered for this solemn task on weekends, working in shifts from Friday afternoons until nightfall on Saturdays, the holiest part of the week. The rest of the time, the task is performed by scores of volunteers from an Orthodox synagogue, Ohab Zedek, on West Ninety-Fifth Street.

Devout Jews cannot ride on the Sabbath, putting the subway or taxis off-limits for the long trek from Ohab Zedek to the morgue. So, the Stern students, whose dormitories are within blocks of the morgue, have filled the breach. They were recruited by Jessica Russak, twenty, a student who takes the dawn shift, peeking out of the tent as the sky brightens to time her morning prayers.