Missing the Twin Towers

10/17/2001-
I've been thinking about going into NY- maybe I'll try this week or next - just don't know if I'm ready for it yet. Right now at least it's just TV, going down there will be something else entirely. That's when I think I'll have to truly face that it actually happened - that my favorite buildings in the world are no longer there and that 6,000 innocent people died in them. I used to love taking people to the Twin Towers - no matter my political views between NY and NJ - now I will never be able to take anyone up to the roof of those great buildings. Last year I had been to them four times, this year I only got to show people them once - at the end of July. If my friends from Indiana and Michigan hadn't come out - most likely I wouldn't have gone to them at all this year. When we were on the observation floor they asked me if I was going to get anything at the gift shop, I said "No, I can come back here anytime."

Here is a site that memorializes the many New Jerseyan's that lost their lives in the Twin Towers attack - http://www.nj.com/crisis/lr/ There was a funeral yesterday for Kevin York age 41 at the church of my old school in Princeton at St Pauls. Todd Beamer, the person that helped bring down flight 93 and prevented it from reaching it's destination - lived down the road from me in Cranbury. I think there were six victims in Plainsboro where I live. I didn't personally know any of these people - but I can't get out of my mind all the people that I had seen in the Twin Towers. People just going about their business - the people working at the gift shop, Sbarro's Pizza - even though it was over priced and I would never eat there, the elevator operators, tourists pointing out the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, the people peacefully reading or eating lunch at the statue in the plaza down below. I had seen the QE2 leaving NY harbor SO MANY times from the top of the Twin Towers - heading out to England. I was in the towers last year on the 4th of July with a friend of mine from Canada and her 10 year old nephew to see OpSail 2000 - watching the sailing ships, battleships, aircraft carriers, looking down on them and New York Harbor from a quarter of a mile in the air. I was at Liberty State Park in Jersey City this year for 4th of July to watch New Jersey's fireworks - with the Twin Towers as their backdrop. I will never be able to share these experiences with anyone again. From the first time I had been there in 1981 to the many times afterward - I had never tired of visiting them.

My uncle worked on the 106th floor - I often wonder what would have happened if he wasn't transferred down to North Carolina. Would he have still have been working there so many years later on September 11th? Between the victims, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the terrorists and the anthrax mailings - I feel like I'm living in the middle of a huge whirlwind of emotion that won't stop.

The Star Ledger put together a poster to sell - the money is being donated to the Star Ledger Disaster Relief Fund and will be distributed to the World Trade Center victims. It costs $5.00 at - http://www.nj.com/crisis/index.ssf?/crisis/more/flagsofnj.html

Well I guess enough rambling now. That's the news from New Jersey.

Bob
http://www.AboutNewJersey.com
http://users.hsonline.net/rrosetta
http://www.AboutNewJersey.com/TwinTowers/twintowers.htm