September 11th has always been, and will always be, a gut punch in our family. The day’s events were too personal, too raw, too traumatic. And the rippling ramifications of those horrific hours have spread through our lives for so many years afterwards, leaving indelible, never healing wounds of loss.

And it started as such a gorgeous day, both here in Pensacola – where major dad was still on active duty – and in New York City, where brother Bingley (you all have seen in the comments here) was doing his thing on Maiden Lane, about 2 blocks from the World Trade Center, whose basement, coincidentally, was his train station. But he’d taken the ferry that day, because he was meeting a friend.

…I picked him up at his hotel at 7:30 or so and we caught the 7:55 ferry out of Highlands, which is tucked in behind Sandy Hook, bound for Manhattan. Gosh, did I mention it was a glorious day? We sat on the roof of the ferry, laughing and joking on the cell phone with friends in Brazil as we sped along at 35 knots, the breeze rippling across our clothes. As we neared going under the Verrazano Bridge my friend said “That plane is awfully low.”
And so indeed it was, crossing the mouth of the harbor from west to east at a slow, leisurely pace and turning up the East river. But then we saw another jet follow it a few minutes later and I thought, well, if there were two planes then the controllers must be routing them that way because of the wind. One can rationalize anything, at least then. And yes, I’ve seen all the diagrams and maps of how the various experts say the planes flew that day and none of them mention this, but that’s what I saw.

We got to my office on the very end of Maiden Lane around 8:45 or so. I started looking through my emails and the first one I always read was from my friend Sylvia San Pio, who was a coffee broker at Carr Futures. Her husband, John Resta, also worked at Carr. They had gotten married in August of 2000, and man did we have a blast at their wedding. Sylvia was seven months pregnant with their first child, a boy they were going to name Dylan. I would always kid her that she was condemning him to a life of whiskey drinking, and she would laugh and say that at least they’d get some good poetry out of him.

Carr Futures was on the 92nd floor of the North Tower.

Flight 11 hit the 94th floor.

Our son Ebola and I were finishing up feeding the menagerie – including Ebola – and getting ready to wrangle the non-humans together for a trip to the base vet.

CNBC was on the telly in the living room, and from the kitchen, I heard Joe Kernan say something about a plane hitting one of the Trade Center towers.

Sheesh, I thought, “What idiot smacks into something that big unless they were irresponsibly hot-rodding while sightseeing or had a medical emergency?” and I called for Ebola to come look at the small stream of smoke. Of course, we both figured it was a small plane.

“Damn,” I told the kiddo. “I hope no one got hurt.”

I called Bingley at his office and he said, “It looks like a damn ticker tape parade outside. There’s paper blowing everywhere.”

…We turned on the small portable TV in the office and saw pictures of the smoke pouring out of the towers just a few block away. I had tried to call Sylvia but had gotten only a busy signal, which for some reason I took as a positive sign…

And then I called major dad and told him to turn the set at the headquarters. He said they were already watching.

I was just about to go back in the kitchen when, out of the corner of my eye, BOOM. The streaking shape, the momentary silhouette, a fireball.

DEAR GOD, NO

I think I screamed and put my hands towards the screen in supplication, as if I could ward it off. I know I heard Ebola at the same time, “ANOTHER plane, Mom! ANOTHER PLANE!”

In the Marines’ headshed on base, major dad said the CO turned to everyone with his hands on his hips and said, “Gentlemen? We are under attack.”

I frantically dialed Bingley again.

…Then the TV signal went blank, and we got word that a second plane had hit the South Tower. One of the oddities of that day is that the huge TV antenna was on the North Tower, but we only lost the signal when the South Tower was hit.

Anyhow, by this point the phone lines were a mess and the internet had gotten extremely overloaded, piggish and slow; the only way I was able to get any outside information (aside from the radio) was when I could get a line to my sister in Pensacola, who would then tell me what the TV was saying. No one had any idea what was going on. Obviously, there had been multiple hijackings, but whether it was 3 or 30 no one, least of all the media, knew. I truly want unedited transcripts of the broadcasts of, say, CNN and Newsradio88 from 8 am until, oh, 5 pm or so from that day. I think it is a critical piece of our history, to show the evolution from bliss to fear to resolve.

I leaned out my window and looked up Maiden Lane at the two beautiful smoking towers that had always seemed so strong and sure. The paper continued to flutter down.

I called my Bride in her car and got a hold of her on the Garden State Parkway as she was driving to work. I said “Honey, don’t worry; I’m ok”. I could tell by the tone of her “Uh, ok, I’m glad” reply that she had no ideas what was going on (the KC and the Sunshine Band I heard blaring in the background was another clue that I picked up upon).

“Turn on the radio,” I said, “Planes have crashed into the World Trade Center.”

I called Kcruella, Ebola’s godmother and my fellow Marine. She was working in the Prudential main office in Cranberry, N.J. at the time. “What are you talking about?” she asked me. No one at that massive office had heard.

The staff all gathered in the cafeteria, and when the TVs came on, she told me later, two of the girls passed out – just keeled over and hit the floor in shock. Their husbands worked in the towers and they had had no idea, no warning what was going on.

Having to do something, we still went to the vet on base and, of course, that TV had everyone’s eyes glued to it.

And then…and then the first tower went. That wasn’t possible, was it? What we’d just seen?

I shot out the door, stood shaking outside the office, pounding the cell phone keypad, over and over, trying to reach Bingley.

…Thousands of people were milling about in the street below staring mutely at the glorious towers as they burned and belched out thick columns of black smoke and rained paper down upon everyone and everything.

What could we do? What should we do? As we nervously looked at the tall green skyscraper across the street we hadn’t a clue. How would we get home? Hell, would we get home? We had no idea.

And then I heard incredibly high pitched screams of terror from the street. I ran to the open window and looked up the street. I saw people sprinting frantically towards the river, running a desperate race to escape this huge roiling khaki-colored cloud that was bursting down the street between the Federal Reserve Castle and the Chase building. I shouted for everyone in the office to close the windows, and they did so just in time, for immediately the cloud enveloped us in its dark dusty shroud of fear. Where seconds before one could literally have seen for miles one could now not see a foot through a mantle barely illumined by a diffuse gray/green/khaki glow that eliminated all reference points. We were isolated. Alone.

My little brother, my little brother, and I could do nothing to protect him. I came damn near to wrecking the car on the way home as we heard the other tower come down over the radio.

Terrified, frantic with worry, just agony, upon agony on agony, not knowing.

…There seemed little point in leaving just then: where would we go? So we waited. Eventually the air cleared and we could see that the ferries were loading people for the trip back to the Highlands, so I grabbed a pack of coffee filters and handed them out to people to use as a mask (my only useful act of the day. Well, that and the many bottles of wine I opened that night at home).

Miraculously, Bingley called me when he was safe on the ferry. Thank you, Lord, for watching over him.

But so, SO, many thousands of others – THOUSANDS – who were doing nothing but living their lives in the city and, later as we learned, at the Pentagon and aboard a plane that crashed a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, never got that blessed phone call. Never got another hug, or kiss, or felt a loved one’s caress, or a friend’s warm touch.

Ever again.

The bastards. Oh, God – the visceral anger is as fresh this moment as it was 22 years ago.

What Bin Laden started that day has continued taking its toll.

My father was a Gulfstream instructor and had had 2 Saudi pilots scheduled for that day who didn’t show up for their sessions. Daddy called the FBI, but they never contacted him to follow up. He never did see the students.

It tore her heart out, Kcruella said – the hundreds of cars parked at bus station and subway transit lots whose owners were never coming home from the city to pick them up. Month after lonely month, until they were finally towed off.

The Benghazi attacks.

The cancers, chronic illnesses, and injuries, mental and physical, still stealing lives from the toxicity which enveloped and permeated the site.

Kcruella would lose her only child and our precious nephew to a suicide bomber at Bagram Air Base 15 years later, thanks to this day. We admit to sleepless nights counting the hours until our Ebola was home safely from that same cursed airfield in Afghanistan.

Bingley’s precious friends and their unborn little man?

…With regard to Sylvia, John and Dylan…

all that was ever recovered were a few of John’s teeth.

The losses cut so deeply and those scars still have never healed. They cannot.

September 11th.

We will always remember…

…and NEVER forgive.