Remembering 9/12

For many, September delivers melancholy moods. As Labor Day becomes more distant in the rearview mirror, memories of summertime escapades fade. Schools are back in session, and work patterns become more stabilized.

And, of course, we also have memories of 9/11. Everyone deals with the impact September 11, 2001, had on us as individuals, families, and members of communities in our own way. Given the upcoming 20th anniversary, more coverage will be given to remembrance of those tragic events –and our reactions to them-- than in recent years.

Others will wax poetic on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 better than me, so I won’t.

I want to focus on 9/12 for a minute.

It was one of the few days in a lifetime where I, along with most people, didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to feel. Didn’t know where to go.

September 12, 2001, was years before social media and the rise of political digital flame throwers, so there weren’t many external voices telling us how to feel or who on our own side in the political mainstream to blame. Everyone had to think for themselves.

Watching the early morning news that Wednesday was difficult. Terrorists had already claimed responsibility and most of the emergency rooms in southern Manhattan that prepared for scores of injured New Yorkers remained empty. The focus quickly pivoted from healing the injured who never arrived to searching for the dead.

Needing to clear my head, around 8 am, I walked over to the New York Sports Club across the street from my 4th floor East 90th street walk up. The oddness of the day quickly became apparent, noticing a local broadcast news reporter working out in a random corner. Being in high tech PR, my brain internally instantly gasped at the reality of a reporter not reporting during the most significant news event in decades. It seems he didn’t know what to do either.

By mid-morning, I finally decided to venture into the office. The office had already accounted for the safety of all employees on Tuesday, but not much else was known as to when and how work would start again. Unlike today’s remote work capabilities, very few employees had laptops, which were mainly reserved for managers. Mobile phones were not as ubiquitous as today.

The great unknown was how to get to the office. Reports were vague on how open roads were or how far south subway trains were traveling. Under normal conditions, all trains from the upper east side eventually converged in the financial district, near the World Trade Center. These were anything but normal conditions.

The 86th and Lexington Avenue subway station was open, and the 6 train appeared to be operating. However, the subway platform was more crowded than the Yankee Stadium station after a World Series game. Despite the volume of people, if a pin were to drop, you’d hear it.

These types of crowds usually vaulted New Yorkers into survival of the fittest mode, always finding a way to push themselves onto a train. This day was different. No pushing, no shouting, no disgruntled looks. Everyone waited patiently, and everyone eventually got on. In a city where you always knew where you were going and how to get there, that day, no one knew how far the trains would go. No one knew much of anything.

I eventually made it to my 33rd street stop and walked over to my office on Madison Avenue, the streets midtown south eerily empty. Later I found out 14th street was the end of the line for trains heading south.

A few of us were in the office, and reports started to trickle in on family members and friends who perished or were still unaccounted for nearly 24 hours later. Universally, the sentiment was to forget about work for the next couple of days and get to the office when you could. For most, that meant the following Monday, which was fine. No one was going to pitch a tech story to a reporter for weeks to come. It was already challenging being in tech at that time. It would later become apparent this was the final needle in the tech bubble bursting.

Patience and understanding, two very un-Gotham-like traits, took priority for the next several days.

Two days later, on Friday, President Bush traveled to Ground Zero. Years later, a still somewhat sane Rudy Giuliani recounted a conversation with the President driving down the West Side Highway. Bush commented on his surprise at the number of New Yorkers lining the highway to wave and support his arrival. The former Mayor responded with, “Yes, and not one of them voted for you.” It was an accurate exaggeration. New York is a largely democratic town, but no one told New Yorkers not to be there. They lined the streets with signs of support and patriotic paraphernalia because it was a natural thing to do at the time. No one feared the potential for counter-protestors, which would have been a near certainty today.

During “the bullhorn” speech at ground zero, Bush momentarily went off-script to respond to a first responder who couldn’t hear the President. “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” These five unscripted sentences may go down as the most important, most well-received public comments he ever made as President. This is probably one of the last statements made by a President of the United States that wasn’t torn apart and used as a wedge for the sole purpose of generating click based divisiveness.

The following Monday, Bush signed Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, which unanimously passed the Senate. In the House, it received a single nay vote. 99.998% of federally elected officials all had the same position. Derek Jeter—number six on the all time MLB hits list--received a lower percentage of votes in his Hall of Fame election. On September 12 and the days that followed, no one feared unity. To a certain point, we welcomed it. We needed it.

It was the greatest crisis many have ever experienced. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know where to go. We didn’t know how to feel. Without a title wave of external voices pummeling us with digital sledgehammers, nearly everyone rallied around each other and seemingly did the right thing. We took care of each other, and everyone persevered.

For the most part, it wasn’t until years later that 9/11 became a politicized event. On September 12th, no one distributed talking points calling for the President to be impeached. Elected officials didn’t issue press releases or make public comments praising the terrorists for their leadership ability. Pundits and politicians –with no new ‘followers’ or ‘likes’ to be had—kept conversations mostly civil. The very essence of our being wasn’t defined by competing political perspectives over what happened on 9/11. At the time, we all universally agreed. We, the people, were the priority, and we were united.

While it was absolutely one of the saddest and most tragic events of my lifetime, deep down, I’m relieved and thankful for how we, as a community, responded.

I would never wish it to happen again, but if it did happen today, I fear a hate and rage-filled divided response would tear us apart to the point of self destruction. In just 20 years, society has been degraded to the point that Unity is a political and societal liability. We. Must. Do. Better.