Ten years later, after the fall, after it all. I wish I could remember most of it, that day, that train ride across the Meadowlands when I glanced out the window on that glorious Tuesday of perfect weather and perfect sky.
I was going to turn 40 in exactly one month and in my mind I was planning a party to end them all. And my glance, casual and ordinary — out of the right side train window.
Something not quite right … thick, black smoke pouring out of the North Tower, Tower One.
I remember grabbing the sleeve of my seat mate and saying, “Oh my God, the Tower”s on fire.”
He looked at me like I was a nut as the train barreled through the Hudson River tunnel toward Penn Station.
Once above ground, I tried to get a cell phone signal, no luck.
I called my sister in New Jersey and got through.
“Gary”s new office is on the 100th floor of North Tower.”
I ran from 32nd and Seventh Avenue toward my office at 26th and Lexington.
It was 9:05 a.m. In a weird blast of karma, I ran past an oncoming woman who I waited tables with in Jersey when I first returned East in ”98. “Run like hell,” she said. “Something”s not right. The tower”s been hit.” She looked like a gray ghost.
The moments too many to mention, the blur of it all. Standing in my CEO”s office, watching it all fall down on a big screen TV. Gotta go. Gotta get out of there.
I, like thousands, walked from my midtown office to, and over the Brooklyn Bridge while looking over my shoulder wondering, what?
We all know the story now. My stepbrother, Gary Robert Haag, was never found. No wedding ring, no grocery list, no shoe — nothing.
He, like so many others who were heroes and villains, innocents villaified, those unnoticed who died nondescript and the valiant officers who we were able to give fitting last rites.
Our losses are profound as a collective heart.
The losses continue as our heroes succumb to the illnesses and treacherousness of being “a hero/heroine.”
And yet, I am here to tell you the story of a city with a rebuilt heart and fervor for this country that is unparalleled.
We”ll come back. Hell, New York will be around with cockroaches and Twinkies.
Gary wouldn”t have had it any other way. God Bless America.
Jennifer Leigh Williams
