Eight years

Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street
New York City, Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, looking South, about 11 am, September 11, 2001.



I was in New York City on 9/11, working in an office just off Times Square. For a while, our whole department huddled around someone's tiny black&white TV, no cable, just a fuzzy antenna picture of what was happening a couple of miles away. Like everyone else, we were afraid: here we were, in a tall office building, half a block from a very obvious target. Anyone who was in the city that day knows the irrational, undeniable fear that comes from being under a terrorist attack. I understood in a very different way what it would have felt like to live in London during the Blitz, or just outside Hickam Field.

And then, a couple of us walked across town, and I knew, looking down Fifth Avenue, a very different experience: what it felt like to be in Miyajima-Guchi down the road from Hiroshima.

Looking down a broad, sunlit boulevard and seeing an enormous, roiling cloud carrying within it the death of thousands.

Please keep in your thoughts and prayers today the families and friends of all those who lost their lives in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, and especially the heroes from the NYFD, NYPD, and Port Authority Police.

Comments

Amen, May we never forget!!!