[
Note:
This
post, originally published on September 10, 2010, is the most-viewed in
the history of The LG Report. It's being published again as we
approach the 11th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.]
It's hard to believe that nine years have passed since that horrific
day in September of 2001. Nine years. In a way, it seems like it
occurred a lifetime ago, but in another way, it feels like it was much
more recent.
As many of you know, I was in my office in downtown Manhattan on the
morning of September 11, 2001, about five blocks away from the World
Trade Center. Shortly before the first anniversary, I sat at my
computer and wrote 21 pages of stories about things that occurred on
that day and in the year that followed. I had passed on all offers of
grief counseling, preferring instead to cry by myself periodically,
usually while in the shower. My stubbornness may have been a mistake at
the time, but I'm the son of a native Greek father who only went to the
doctor when he had an appendage to present for re-attachment.
Actually, not even then. So writing about what I'd experienced was, I
believe, my catharsis.
I had a feeling, as I was memorializing those stories, that one day
they'd appear in a book. Six years later, I published a volume on the
professional lines insurance industry, and those stories comprised the
bulk of the chapter on September 11th.
A large number of people employed in the commercial insurance industry
perished on that day, including former colleagues of mine.
There
are many memories that I didn't record in those 21 pages; maybe
someday I'll reduce those to writing as well. It was a very surreal
time in the lives of most Americans.
The first event which made me realize how screwed up things had become
was when, on September 12th, I saw a Michigan State Police car cruising
along Third Avenue in Gramercy Park, not far from my apartment. Did New
York City really need help from that far away? I'll also never forget
emerging from my normal downtown subway stop on the way to work in the
weeks after 9-11 and seeing the remaining shell of the World Trade
Center Towers smoldering. The entire Ground Zero site emitted an odor of
burnt wire and rubber. During the first couple of days, I had to show
my business card to National Guard troops in order to be allowed into
the area where my office was.
One of the more emotional moments, at a time when such were plentiful,
engulfed me as I was on the phone with a woman at Hertz trying to rent a
car. It was a couple of days after September 11th and I wanted to
drive from Manhattan to my sister's house at the Jersey Shore. When the
rental agent, who, I believe, was in Oklahoma, realized that I was
calling from Manhattan and had been living through the event and its
aftermath, she suddenly dropped her businesslike tone.
"
What's it like up there? Are you OK? Can we do anything else to help you?"
Her
genuine concern and kindness struck a chord deep within me. It was at
that moment that I took a break from thinking about the craziness
around me to realize that September 11th was not a New York
catastrophe, or a Pennsylvania or Pentagon catastrophe, but truly a
national catastrophe that affected every single American in a profound
way. Those who were close to the events of that terrible day have no
special ownership of its tragedy or an enhanced right to receive
sympathy. All of our lives were changed immeasurably on September 11th.
Some of us, I believe, have a duty to report what we experienced so
that other Americans, current and future, may have a better idea of
what transpired on that fateful day.
With that in mind, below is a brief excerpt from the September 11th chapter of my book.
This is one of the few times that
The LG Report will not attempt to provide a humorous posting.
____________________________________________________________
[Excerpted from "
Claims Made and Reported: A Journey Through D&O, E&O and Other Professional Lines of Insurance," Soho Publishing November 2008; All Rights Reserved (
Click Here For Book's Webpage)
May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love
– Bruce Springsteen “
Into the Fire”
________________________________________________
“
Into the Fire” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 2002 Bruce Springsteen
(ASCAP.) Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All
rights reserved.
_________________________________________________
VIII. September 11, 2001
[
Note: This chapter is a revision of a piece that I wrote just prior
to the first anniversary of September 11, 2001, well before I knew
that I would be writing this book. I attempted to memorialize many of
the events that I had seen and heard about on September 11th and during
the year following that unfathomable tragedy. Given that so many
commercial insurance people died on that dreadful day, I thought it
appropriate to include those writings in this book. One-quarter of this
book’s net proceeds will be donated to the National September 11
Memorial & Museum.]
The morning of September 11, 2001 began like most other mornings for me
at the time. I woke at 6:30 am and spent 32 minutes riding my exercise
bicycle in my living room on East 18th Street in Manhattan while
watching TV. I then showered and got ready for work at AIG’s downtown
offices. Every morning, just before leaving my apartment, I’d rip a page
off my horoscope-of-the-day calendar to see what the stars were
predicting for me. This routine was attributable to my mother, who
passed away in 1993. She used to put a horoscope-of-the-day calendar
into my Christmas stocking every year starting in about 1980. After my
mother died, my sister Maria continued the tradition. My guess is that I
had read my daily horoscope almost every morning for 21 consecutive
years.
That day, something very strange happened even before I left my
apartment. I was about to rip off September 10th’s page to read the new
day’s prediction when I said to myself, for no discernible reason, “
The world is different now, I’m not going to read horoscopes anymore, I don’t believe in them.”
With that thought, I unceremoniously threw the entire calendar into
the garbage. This was the first time in 21 years that I knowingly
refused to read my daily horoscope.
Outside on Third Avenue I flagged a cab and headed south to my office at
AIG in the financial district, in keeping with my routine. I want to
emphasize here that I don’t claim to have ESP or any special ability to
see the future, but there was an unusual aspect to my commute. Riding
down Third Avenue (which turns into Bowery Street in lower Manhattan),
there was a point in Chinatown, called Chatham Square, where the Twin
Towers would become visible from the cab after being obscured earlier by
buildings. In my mind’s eye, I would regularly imagine the Towers
exploding from a high floor just as I entered Chatham Square. I didn’t
know what would cause an explosion and I certainly never thought that a
plane would be responsible. Nonetheless, I was envisioning a large
eruption of gray and black smoke. This vision was the only reason that I
knew the name of Chatham Square (whose sign was rather obscured): I
felt strongly that someday it would be an important detail and I took
special note of it. Over the previous three years, whenever I’d arrive
in Chatham Square to see the Towers unharmed I would literally breathe a
sigh of relief. Even on September 11, 2001 I had that (false) sense of
security upon seeing them intact.
My next significant memory of that morning occurred shortly before 9 am.
My home phone service had inexplicably been malfunctioning for a few
days and I finally got around to calling Verizon. I was dialing customer
service when a colleague, Jason Brown, entered my office to tell me
that he heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the World Trade
Center Towers. I looked out my office window and saw dense clouds of
paper fluttering high across the sky towards Brooklyn. It reminded me of
the many ticker tape parades that I had seen along lower Broadway
after a championship season or during a world dignitary’s visit. But I
knew there was no parade that day. Something was wrong.
A bunch of us went downstairs to get a better look. Standing on the
sidewalk in front of 175 Water Street with an ever-growing crowd of
upward-looking gawkers (much like the throngs in a 1950s science fiction
film watching descending UFOs on a city street), I remember thinking,
or perhaps hoping, that helicopters with fire hoses would show up…of
course, they didn’t.
Mesmerized, a colleague, John Feniello, shook his head and said, “
That fire is going to burn for days.”
Of course, he had no idea, nor did I, that the fire would burn not for
mere days but for months – but not high in the sky, rather much lower,
among the ruins of the Towers. But it seemed logical at the time; it
was the only thing that we could believe.
When the second plane hit the South Tower, any doubts I had that this
was a terrorist attack were immediately erased. We knew the country was
under attack. Shrill screams could be heard and genuine panic started
to set in, even though the worst was yet to come. Security guards
announced that our building was closing for the day and told everyone to
leave the area immediately. Much of the crowd started heading toward
the ferries that were gathering at the foot of Wall Street. Others
started walking uptown toward subways or buses that might, or might not,
be in service. People also began walking across several bridges to
escape the city.
It was a horror movie coming to life.
But I couldn’t leave, not at first anyway. I wanted to watch the
firefighters battling the blazes. There’s no rational explanation, but I
didn’t want to move until I knew that the situation was under control.
After a while of just staring up at the Towers, I heard a deep rumbling,
like gigantic concrete bowling pins colliding. The noise didn’t last
long, maybe five seconds at most. Before I knew what was happening, the
South Tower slipped down out of my sight. It just disappeared…like a
high-rise house of cards, its base kicked out from under it by an angry
child. Moments later, the three-story building in front of us stood
taller than the 110-story tower in the distance that had just been
compressed back into its foundation. It was the sickest feeling, one
that I don’t think I can quite explain. I saw it and I heard it and I
felt it but I still can’t believe it. The Twin Towers seemed like the
100-year-old oak trees in your front yard: they couldn’t be moved or
bent. If anything, they held up the sky. They anchored lower Manhattan
and provided a sense of direction for every New Yorker who’d ever lost
his bearings.
The collapse and disintegration of the South Tower seared my brain. I
sincerely hope that I never see anything as stomach-churning again.
People around me started screaming and crying. Everyone on the sidewalk
knew someone who was in the Towers – a relative, a friend or a business
acquaintance. Some people threw down briefcases and started running. I
kept staring in shock. At that instant, I think everyone on the
sidewalk knew that we had just witnessed the death of an unimaginable
number of people. It occurred to me almost instantly that even the most
battle-hardened soldiers never see so many people killed in a single
instant. The aircrews who dropped the atomic bombs in World War II were
not five blocks away at ground level when their payloads did their
dirty work. And five blocks was relatively far in a sense; hundreds of
firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and other
heroes were right on site. One firefighter later described the scene in
this way: “
Everything was on fire, everything you saw was burning. It was what I imagine Hell to be like.”
Quickly, certainly more quickly than I’d have imagined, a thick white
cloud of smoke came rolling at us. It was a five-story-tall fog and it
was moving fast. For a few seconds I froze. The bright September sky was
being obscured. Then a guy not ten feet away from me breathlessly
shouted “Run…ground smoke…it could kill us!”
I suddenly realized that there might have been deadly chemicals in the
plane. There was no rational basis for this belief; but then again,
nobody knew anything for sure at that point. The frenzy spread
instantly: people dropped briefcases and bags and started running,
screaming, just trying to get away from the smoke as quickly as
possible. I remember thinking, “Those bastards, they might get me too,
this could be how I die…” The fear of death was real and it was
everywhere.
About two or three hundred of us ran straight toward the East River,
only a block away, and then north past the South Street Seaport. I’ve
since heard that some people actually jumped into the river to avoid the
smoke but I didn’t see that. As we ran up the closed FDR Expressway
the dense white fallout followed us. We formed a seemingly endless herd
of stampeding business suits. Burning smells and the piercing screams
of emergency vehicles joined to assault our senses. It was a war zone,
although until that moment I don’t think that I had ever actually
thought to imagine one. The word that describes it best and one which
I’ve never truly experienced before: Bedlam.
I was alternately running and walking with four coworkers as we headed
to my apartment about two miles away on 18th Street. A friend from San
Francisco who was in town on business, in the lobby of the North Tower
when the first plane hit, had – by some unbelievable stroke of good luck
– noticed me amidst all the confusion and joined our group. When we
were about halfway up the FDR, a guy who had been listening to a
hand-held radio via earphone yelled out “The second tower just fell.”
People gasped but we all just kept running. A few looked back.
When we got to my apartment, I wanted to tell the outside world the
names of those who were safe. However, I still had a dead home phone and
cell phone service was, at best, sporadic. Fortunately, my computer’s
internet connection was working so I sat down and composed a message to
everyone in my e-mail address book. To this day, many years later, I
have not re-read that e-mail because I know that it will bring back many
painful memories. But, I later learned, it was forwarded around the
globe to those interested in first-hand accounts of the events in New
York City on that dark day. My friend’s wife, who is an elementary
school teacher, said that she used it in her classes as an example of a
first-person account of September 11th. Here is that note:
__________________________________________________
From: LG727@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 12:58 PM
To: Larry.Goanos@aig.com
Bcc: Everyone in my address book
Subject: The Surreal Events of Today
I am shaking like a leaf in a windstorm as I type this. I cannot
believe the events of today, as I'm sure you can't. I was in my office
at 8:50 this morning when a colleague came in and said
that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center and papers
were flying everywhere. I looked out the window of my office and saw a
ticker-tape-parade type stream of papers flittering across the sky.
After a few short minutes and various reports, some erroneous, a group
of us descended in the elevator to the ground floor of our building,
where we exited and looked to the left a bit where we saw Two World
Trade Center, five blocks away, ablaze from the top third of the
building. It was unreal. The black smoke and red flames framed against a
clear blue sky.
The crowd on the sidewalk grew exponentially until we were standing
shoulder-to-shoulder, at least 300 people staring upwards. One of my
colleagues had just been in the lobby of One World Trade when the plane
hit. He said smoke immediately came shooting down the elevator shafts
and filled the lobby as people exited in terror. Pandemonium. He ran
back to our
building, covered with soot, where he stood with us to watch in
horror. We all stood around gaping at the flames, not aware of any
possible danger to us. I sat and thought about how many people I know in
those two towers who have no doubt perished. I'm aware of at least
seven people from my subsidiary of AIG who were in one tower on a high
floor. We do a lot of
business with Aon, an insurance broker on the top three or four
floors of Two World Trade Center. As I type this, emergency vehicles are
swirling by on the street outside my apartment on 18th Street. The
massive cloud where the WTC used to stand is visible out my living room
window.
As we watched the flames, after about twenty minutes, all of a
sudden World Trade Center Tower One, which we could only see above the
40th floor or so ,collapsed before our eyes. It was the sickest, most
surreal, most stomach-churning thing that I have ever seen in my life.
My nerves became electrified, in a bad way, and I felt almost like I
would collapse as well. Other people did. People started crying and
getting hysterical, obviously because they knew people in WTC One and/or
know any of the many, many police and firemen and rescue workers who
were in and around the building trying to extinguish the fire and save
lives. I just heard the mayor on the radio and he said he can't even get
a rough estimate of how many firemen and police and EMTs died in the
two WTC Tower collapses, he just said the number would be very large,
staggering.
This whole day is unfathomable.
As I type this I continue to shake. I think about all the people who
I know in those two towers and I can feel tears well up. There will be
far too many funerals to attend. Many bodies, I'm sure, will never be
identified. It is unbelievable. At least 50 to 100 people I know died
today. Can you imagine that? Unless you're in a war, which I think we
will be soon, that doesn't
happen. Many of you too, if not all, are in a similar situation,
maybe you know even more who passed. Hopefully many of our friends and
acquaintances were away on business or vacation, or running late. Our
lives are changed forever and I don't think I'm being dramatic in saying
that.
A few seconds after WTC One collapsed, a large, probably five-story
high plume of white smoke erupted, far denser than any fog I'd seen
living in San Francisco. All of a sudden, someone yelled "ground smoke,
run, it can kill us!" and people began panicking, although, I must say
it was a controlled panic if there can be such a thing. Hundreds of
people began running, although not trampling each other, actually
helping each other to some extent. Although one friend of mine asked a
car service to give him a ride to Westchester (the car was empty but for
the driver) and he said, "Sure, $2,000." I'll let that statement stand
as its own condemnation of mankind, or at least one (hopefully small)
segment of mankind.
As we walked/ran up the East Side under the FDR, past the South
Street Seaport, the white cloud of deep dust/soot/whatever, followed us
intently. It was moving at a good pace and, I must say, I feared for my
life briefly, either from dying of smoke inhalation or being trampled.
I don't think I was
alone in that feeling, it was very, very scary, and my words don't
do it justice. We continued running and walking up the East Side, myself
and four co-workers. All of a sudden I heard someone say "Larry
Goanos!" I looked and it was Fran Higgins, a friend from San Francisco
who's brother-in-law, John Doyle, works with me at AIG. He was scheduled
to be in a meeting at Two WTC at 9 am and was running late, it took
him an extra hour to get in from his sister's house in Westchester and
he was in the lobby when the first plane hit. He ran outside and saw
debris falling and three people actually jumping off high floors in
order to kill themselves via the impact rather than await being burned
by the intense flames. Reports are that many other people jumped as
well. Fran didn't know where to go so I invited him to join me in the
trek to my apartment about two miles north. He had two heavy bags but
lumbered on. His father narrowly missed the bombing at WTC in 1992. Two
bullets dodged by his family at the WTC.
Cell phones weren't working. People were screaming out names. It was
sick (to re-use a phrase again and again; it is, sadly, the most
appropriate.) The FDR expressway was closed. People were running
everywhere, keeping an eye on the large cloud following us. Some were
ready to jump into the East River to escape the smoke if need be. As we
got about six or eight blocks up the FDR someone who had an earphone of
a radio in their ear reported that WTC 2 had just collapsed as well.
The whole thing was the sickest, most twisted, surreal, screwed up
thing that I had ever heard or imagined.
Eventually we made our way to my friend Jim Riely's place on East
22nd Street. As fate would have it, my phone had gone out of service
last night and I was going to call Verizon to fix it this morning. My
cell was working only in spots because of the great strain on the
system. At Jim's we found Jim, Dan O'Connell, Colleen Dempsey (Doreen,
Jim's wife, works uptown and ,I'm sure, is safe) and Chris Doyle, Jim's
partner. Because a lot of you know a lot of these people, here are the
names of people who I know are safe beside those above (a lot of phones
are down but my internet cable connection is working, at least for
now): Dennis Gustafson, Rose Mosca, Peter Wessel, John Feniello, Sandy
Nalewajk, Kirk Raslowsky and Jennifer Raslowsky and their young
daughter Alexandra (who they were just about to drop off in day care at
the WTC when the first plane hit; they made it our office in tears,
clothes askew, Kirk had just thrown down his briefcase, grabbed his
wife and daughter, and ran) John Iannotti, Ray DeCarlo, Greg Flood,
Mike
Mitrovic, Kris Moor, John Doyle, Susan Eagan, Gail Mazarolle, Dawn Paolino.
If you know any of their families and don't know if they've been contacted, please call them if your phone works.
Many more are safe, I'm sure, it was just hard to get a gauge with
all the smoke and pandemonium. There are now six of us in my apartment
watching CNN.
I stopped and picked up more bottled water on the way here because
people were saying there are rumors of chemical warfare and possible
contamination in the water (probably not true but why take a chance.)
Things seem to be calming down a bit now (I've been taking a break
between typing to let others send e-mails) but I'm sure our lives will
never be the same. The tranquility of life in America has been
shattered, we have been dragged into the trenches with the rest of the
world. Our soil is no longer sacred, protected ground. Anyway, the
people who I've mentioned are all safe, as am I. God bless America and
God bless us all.
___________________________________________________
My friend Dennis and I met twenty five years ago, when we were both in
college. He came to live for a summer with the Campaniles, close family
friends of ours who live down the block from my childhood home at the
Jersey Shore. A Virginia native, Dennis was interning for the summer
with Kidder, Peabody on Wall Street. He is now Father Dennis, a Catholic
priest in the New York Archdiocese. One of Father Dennis’s good
friends, Father George, was an auxiliary chaplain with the New York City
Fire Department in September of 2001. He was summoned to the World
Trade Center shortly after the first plane hit on the morning of
September 11th. That day, I was told, marked the first time in the
history of the New York City Fire Department that all 30 auxiliary
chaplains were summoned to a single fire. They gathered at St. Peter’s
Church on Barclay Street, about two blocks north of the burning towers.
Father George said that virtually every fire truck racing to the World
Trade Center stopped at St. Peter’s so that the crews could confess
their sins (the majority of NYC firefighters are Roman Catholic) before
charging into the flaming buildings. The commanders admonished their
subordinates to skip confession because of the magnitude and urgency of
the situation, but the rank-and-file firefighters paid no heed. These
men forced almost every truck to stop at the St. Peter’s on what would
be the final fire call for most of them. Father George sensed that these
brave men did not necessarily foresee the Twin Towers collapsing, but
they knew that they would very likely lose their lives saving others
and they wanted to square up with God first. So many firefighters
stopped for this final holy sacrament – despite the unprecedented
importance of their mission – that the priests had to absolve them of
their sins en masse as they jumped off the trucks. There was no time
for individual confessions. These courageous public servants knew that
they were going to die, and yet they pressed onward to discharge their
duties. In the face of the fiercest fires anyone had ever seen, they
had no thoughts of their own safety, only of saving others. Ironically,
St. Peter is believed to usher the deceased through the Gates of
Heaven. Perhaps on September 11, 2001 his work began for 343
firefighters at a church bearing his name.
I have not seen the story above – every word of which I believe true –
anywhere in the media. Despite that, I think it’s an important account
to record. The same holds true for most of the other entries in this
chapter, collected during that fateful day and in the year that limped
along behind it. In most cases I have not changed the temporal
references so that it’s clear these were the thoughts of someone writing
just a year after September 11, 2001. Every New Yorker, and every
American, has vivid recollections of personal experiences connected to
those attacks on our nation. As we all know, it was not merely a New
York tragedy or a Washington, DC tragedy or a Pennsylvania tragedy; it
was an American tragedy which left no citizen untouched. This chapter is
one New Yorker’s attempt at documenting some of the events of that
horrific day and its aftermath in the following year.
The Call
My friend John works at Marsh’s world headquarters in midtown at Sixth
Avenue and 45th Street. On the morning of September 11th he and his
colleagues heard the reports of a plane crash and looked out their
midtown windows to see the flames and smoke consuming the WTC North
Tower that housed additional Marsh offices. Frantic calls to coworkers
in the World Trade Center went unanswered.
By early afternoon Marsh management decided to survey their World Trade
Center employees’ families to determine who was accounted for and who
wasn’t. They asked for volunteers to call employees’ homes to see if
they had checked in with their families. John, wanting to help out in
some way, volunteered. He was given a list of names and phone numbers.
He called the first few numbers and got only answering machines. Then a
woman finally answered at one residence. “Hi, this is John, I work for
Marsh,” he began, “I’m calling to see if your husband has contacted you
to say he’s OK.”
The woman who answered the phone began crying. “I thought you were him,”
she said through her tears. She hadn’t yet heard from her husband.
John gave the woman two Marsh hotline numbers. His stomach twisted into
a knot as he hung up the phone. John dialed another couple of numbers
but then turned in his list, unable to make any more calls.
Michael Cahill
Mike was the one I knew the best out of the three Marsh FINPRO victims
whose memorials I attended. When I worked at Marsh for two years in the
mid-1990s I had called Mike often for his advice on fidelity insurance
matters (about which I knew nothing and he was an expert.) When I
returned to working for AIG, I dealt with Mike from the other side of
the table. The universal opinion on Mike was that he was a great guy who
was always willing to help out and had as much integrity as anyone in
the business. He was the kind of guy who you knew would be an exemplary
brother or teammate; Mike was always there for you when you needed
him.
Mike’s memorial service was held at St. Aidan’s Church in East
Williston, New York (Long Island) on a morning in early October of 2001.
The place was already jammed 20 minutes before the start. In
retrospect I recall a rainy and gloomy day but I’m not sure if my
memory is accurate or simply clouded by the general nature of the
proceedings. Like hundreds of others in the packed church, I filed in
quietly and found a seat. What transpired over the next hour I won’t
recount in detail, although I can tell you that the first three to
speak at the ceremony (Mike’s parish priest, his brother and his boss
at Marsh, Tom Vietor) all rose to the occasion and did an admirable job
under staggeringly sad conditions. The last eulogist however, Mike’s
wife Colleen, left to rear their two beautiful young children herself,
took it to another level. She spoke with unparalleled eloquence,
passion and composure.
I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand from where Colleen drew her
strength (the inspiring memories of Mike, no doubt, had much to do with
it), but I have never witnessed such a display of courage and composure
in the face of a tragedy of this magnitude.
Her eulogy was funny, endearing and engaging. It was simultaneously
heartwarming and heartbreaking. It captured the essence of Mike
perfectly, at least as I knew him, which only magnified our sense of
loss. She recounted, among other things, that the story of
who-pursued-who in the relationship differed depending upon whose
version you heard, Mike’s or Colleen’s. They had met as summer-share
housemates in the Hamptons. According to Mike’s version, Colleen sat by
the pool reading a paperback with eyeholes cut right through the book
so that she could follow his every move.
Colleen’s eyes, amazingly, remained dry throughout the eulogy. Both her
words and their deliverance were truly inspirational. The final piece
to Colleen’s tribute was an REM song, one of Mike’s favorites. St.
Aidan’s graciously allowed the family to play the recording over the
church’s loudspeakers as the memorial concluded and people filed out
even though, strictly speaking, it was against church policy. I don’t
recall the title, but it was about a guy who, smitten with a woman,
calls to ask her out but gets her answering machine. It mirrored in a
way Mike’s own courting of Colleen. As the song played my eyes were
drawn to the couple’s innocent children fidgeting in the front pew of
the church. It was a sledgehammer of sadness and it found its mark in
most of us. As Colleen walked up the center aisle to exit, the
previously-muted sobs of the crowd began to rise in unison, unabated.
All but those few souls who had already cried themselves out were in
tears as the church emptied.
________________________________________________________________
For information on the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, please go to
http://www.national911memorial.org/.
