September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2012

I had just dropped my children at pre-K. It was early so I decided to drive over to the grocery and pick up a few things for dinner. I was still living in Astoria, New York.



My cell phone rang, a friend asked me frantically, "Barbara, where's your husband?" I answered "he's at work." She said "doesn't he work near the Trade Center?" "Yes," I said, "across the street." "My God, Barbara don't you know?" (PAUSE) "Turn on your radio!" I hung up, turned on my car radio and heard what sounded like an elaborate joke. People talking about terrorists, a plane accident downtown. I froze. My cell rang again. It was my then-husband, "someone just flew into the Trade Center with a plane. Looks like an accident. Just want you to know I am fine." "O.K." I said, "thank goodness." My husband told me later that he literally was putting his phone back in the cradle when he looked out the picture window in his office, across Church Street just in time to see a second plane hit the second tower. He walked out to the main office and told his staff, "I don't care what management says. Grab your things people, we're going to the basement." His staff quickly grabbed their things and by the time they got to the lobby, FBI sharp shooters in black riot gear were in their lobby directing people out of the building to Broadway (across from City Hall) and told them to 'walk North on Broadway, keep walking and don't turn around.' He said they had gotten pretty far up Broadway when a rumble like an earthquake could be heard. The ground shook. Between the streets and building a cloud of dirt and debris poured out. He told me he was afraid to turn around. One of his co-workers with him had -- and said "The towers. They fell!" People were running up the street so fast they ran out of their shoes, leaving them behind like artifacts. It was, he told me, like a bad Godzilla movie. The reality was too much. He finally stopped at the apartment of a doctor friend in the Midtown 30s where he waited out the day. The only person who was able to reach me by phone was my Father; living in Scottsdale, Arizona and watching television horrified. My mother had died almost 1 year prior. I couldn't seem to make a call out and my internet service was down (and stayed down for a few weeks). Dad asked me for the phone numbers of my husband's family in Canada. Once he calmed me down -- he started calling. My Dad was that kind of person. 

My first roommate in NYC, Bert, had passed away from congenitial illness in 1999. Far too young. After starting a children's theatre program in Harlem that runs to this day. When we both got here after college, we would go down to the Trade Centers every Sunday we were both in town and not on tour. We'd have lunch there, run lines and just walk around in the quiet. I was glad he wasn't here to see this. 

My best friend in the U.K. was trying frantically to reach me. My family in Canada was calling and trying. People I hadn't spoken to in years were trying to find me. Communications shut down for weeks in NYC. Some, it seems, for good. I didn't know if my husband was dead or alive until later that afternoon. He told me he'd tried to call a number of places around our home, our friends, our neighbors -- to no avail. Finally he called the kids' school. When I went to pick them up the principal met me at the door, "he's alive" she whispered to me. I was relieved, though he came home very late -- the kids were asking where he was.  Walking home across the Queensboro Bridge. They knew something had happened. WHAT had happened they didn't know. My husband came home dusted with soot. He didn't go in to work for about 3 months. 

The office was closed. Fusilage from one of the planes landed on the roof of his building. His office window was blown out. 2 nights after, in the cool of the evening -- the acrid smell of burnt electrics reached us in Queens in the middle of the night. The next day, I got calls from friends in Suffolk County, NY. The smell reached all of them just a couple hours later. My bedroom window faced the (now RFK) Triboro Bridge. It was quiet. Too quiet. No birds, no insects, no sound. The streets were like a tomb. Three to four times a day huge black helicopters flew close over the roof of our building.
 

To this day, my estranged husband tells me he still hears the horrible sound of bodies hitting the ground in his dreams. His name is on the 9/11 Health Registry. 

My kids are now teens in high schools - pursuing their dreams. I survive. Yes, 9/11 changed us all. We are still in Iraq; Osama is dead; sharia law is running rampant in parts of Europe and the U.K. 

 Lives changed forever on 9/11/2001. 

Have we learned our lessons from 9/11?