9/11/01

It was nine years ago today. I showered, dressed, kissed Nancy and Trisha goodbye, and made the drive from Toms River to Eatontown, where I was still working for Comcast Cable Advertising. It was a beautiful fall day, cool air and bright blue sky, with a half moon overhead that would slowly blend into the sky as it descended. I said good morning to my compartiots, Louise and Denise, and started printing out our log reconciliations from the Monday before. Tuesdays during a non-billing week were generally slow-type days, on which we could concentrate on polishing log templates or catching up on entering orders and then running avails.

A WABC-TV news anchor broke into the waning minutes of "Good Morning America" at about 8:55 a.m. to report that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. The news cameras trained on the towers. At 9:03 a.m. a horrified world saw another plane hit the other tower. At 9:42 a.m. came word that the Pentagon had been similarly hit. By 10:50 came word that yet another plane had crashed in Pennsylvania.

2 WTC collapsed at 9:59 a.m. 1 WTC a half hour later. Comcast sent everyone home as soon as they could get their work done for the day. I saw the smoke from the parking lot in Eatontown, ruining the beautiful blue sky day.

New York City, town of many nicknames, sadly earned a new one that day: Ground Zero.

Nearly 3000 people died in the carnage of all the combined incidents. Please pray for their survivors today.