September 11, 2001: I woke up that warm, sunny Tuesday morning, unemployed and with no reason to get up early, and, as was always the case at the time, the first thing I did was turn on the radio. It was after 10:30, so it had already all happened. And the announcer -- a woman whose name I never learned -- on WCBS, 880 on the AM dial, said, "The World Trade Center is gone."
What? What do you mean, "gone"? The World Trade Center is gone? A pair of 110-story skyscrapers -- actually, a seven-building complex -- doesn't just disappear. Gone? What, did aliens come along and beam it up, like on Star Trek?
If it had, there would still, theoretically, have been a chance to get it back. But, no, that was not the case.
Did I hear it right? I had just gotten up. I was still half-asleep. Maybe I misunderstood. I went to the TV, turned it on, and... nothing. Of course. Every station had its transmitter on 1 World Trade Center. Except one, WCBS, Channel 2. Theirs was, and remains, at the Empire State Building. If you didn't have cable TV, then they were the only ones broadcasting. And all that was left of the World Trade Center was a cloud of black smoke.
The planes:
* American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767, with 92 people on board, took off from Logan International Airport in Boston at 7:59 AM, meant for Los Angeles International Airport, and hit 1 World Trade Center, the North Tower, between the 93rd and 99th floors, at 8:46.
* United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767, with 65 people on board, took off from Logan at 8:14, also meant for Los Angeles, and hit 2 World Trade Center, the South Tower, between the 77th and 85th floors, at 9:03.
* American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, with 58 people on board, took off from Dulles International Airport in Loudoun County, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., at 8:20, also meant for Los Angeles, was turned back toward Washington, and hit the west wall of the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, also across the Potomac River from Washington, in Arlington, at 9:37. Victims: 184.
* And United Airlines Flight 93, another Boeing 757, with 44 people on board, took off from Newark International Airport in New Jersey at 8:42, meant for San Francisco International Airport. The passengers, having heard on their cell phones about the other planes, decided to fight back, and stopped the hijackers from reaching their target, which U.S. intelligence later decided was the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington. Instead, at 10:03, the plane crashed into a field in rural Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, usually identified by its mailing address of Shanksville, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, and 130 miles northwest of Washington.
The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 AM. In 2003, in commemoration of the magazine's 50th Anniversary, TV Guide listed "South Tower Falls" as the most memorable televised moment ever, topping the 1st manned Moon landing in 1969. The North Tower followed at 10:29 -- mere seconds before I woke up.
There's an overpass about a mile from where I was living at the time, where State Route 18 goes over the New Jersey Turnpike. It's next to the Tower Center complex, the 23-story "minor league twin towers," as I called them, where the bus takes me into Manhattan. From that overpass, on a clear day, you could see the World Trade Center. On 9/11/01, all you could see was a plume of black smoke, going back seemingly forever.
Three days later, I stood on that overpass again, and it was a plume of white smoke. No, it didn't mean there was a new Pope, or that the Towers would be back.
My father worked at the World Trade Center, as an engineering consultant for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the complex's operator, for six months, before he decided that the commute was too long, and he quit. That was two years before the attack. It was a week before he found out that everyone he worked with got out all right.
Not so lucky were, depending whose figures you believe, and whether you count people who got sick from working the rescue and salvage jobs afterward, about 2,750 people. Eight of them were from my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. As far as I know, I never met any of them.
East Brunswick's memorial
There were 1,747 who, at the time, were living in the State of New York. Of those, 1,147 lived in New York City. There were 694 from New Jersey, including 3 from my parents' hometown of Newark, and 3 from next-door Bloomfield, where they lived when I was born.
There were 92 from Massachusetts, 81 from Virginia, 65 from Connecticut, 50 from Maryland, 49 from California, 30 from Pennsylvania, 11 from the District of Columbia, 10 from New Hampshire, 9 from Illinois, 6 from Texas; 5 each from Florida and Rhode Island; 4 each from Alabama, Georgia and Maine; 3 each from Louisiana, North Carolina and Ohio; 2 each from Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Oklahoma; and 1 each from Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
There were 13 from Britain, 6 from Germany, 5 from Canada, 3 from Australia, 3 from Japan, 2 from China, and 1 each from Bermuda, El Salvador, Grenada, Ireland, Israel and Sweden.
There were 13 from Britain, 6 from Germany, 5 from Canada, 3 from Australia, 3 from Japan, 2 from China, and 1 each from Bermuda, El Salvador, Grenada, Ireland, Israel and Sweden.
At first, we didn't know how bad it would be. The front page of the New York Daily News on September 13 suggested 10,000 people had died. It was quickly revised to 5,000, and then, when records were checked to see who was in the Twin Towers and hadn't been found alive, and checking against duplicate entries, down to 3,000, still the worst one-day loss of life on American soil since the American Civil War.
Among the notable people who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks were television producer David Angell, conservative TV legal analyst Barbara Olson, and hockey player-turned-scout Garnet "Ace" Bailey, each of them on board one of the planes intended for Los Angeles. (Bailey was no relation to the old-time hockey star Irvine "Ace" Bailey.) Alice Trillin, a teacher and film producer, and wife of author Calvin Trillin, also died that day, but her death was separate from the attacks.
In 2001, smartphones were few and far between, a lot of us still hadn't really figured out the Internet, and for those of us in the New York Tri-State Area who still didn't have cable TV, Channel 2 was the only station we had left. So we had one channel, and the same damn thing on, for an entire week.
And that's all we watched: Images of the carnage, updates from police and fire department leaders, politicians making statements, pundits speculating about America's response to al-Qaeda and its allies. The parallel was made to the 4 days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. But distractions were few. No regular TV programming. Certainly, no sports, for an entire week, before the various leagues started up again.
And that's all we watched: Images of the carnage, updates from police and fire department leaders, politicians making statements, pundits speculating about America's response to al-Qaeda and its allies. The parallel was made to the 4 days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. But distractions were few. No regular TV programming. Certainly, no sports, for an entire week, before the various leagues started up again.
Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of New York, put his municipal counter-terrorism center in 7 World Trade Center. They had to evacuate it. He and the others inside nearly died when the North Tower collapsed. He bounced back from this blunder to represent the City and its recovery before the public, and Time magazine named him its Person of the Year, ahead of President George W. Bush -- and Osama bin Laden, who approved and ordered the attacks.
For reasons that aren't worth getting into here, it took until May 1, 2011 for the victims to be avenged. The official memorial at the site was opened on September 11, 2011, the 10th Anniversary of the attacks. And the new One World Trade Center opened on November 3, 2014, with a height purposely set to match the year of America's independence: 1,776 feet.
A temporary memorial at the Pentagon, for the lives lost there, was dedicated on September 12, 2002. A permanent memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2008. The Flight 93 National Memorial was dedicated at the Pennsylvania field on September 10, 2011, the day before the 10th Anniversary. The names of the victims at these sites are also inscribed at the main memorial in Manhattan.
For those of us too young to remember the JFK assassination -- and maybe for those of us who are old enough -- 9/11 remains the most shocking event of our lifetimes. It shouldn't be.
After all, a foreign foe killed 3,000 of us, and our government said it would do whatever it took. And it lied. But the next government did what it took.
*
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 happened in the morning, so there was time to decide to take what was, then as now, the obvious step of postponing most professional sports indefinitely.
Minor League Baseball was already in its Playoffs, and canceled the rest of them. This enabled the Brooklyn Cyclones, a 1st-year farm team of the Mets, to be declared Co-Champions of the Class A New York-Penn League, along with the other team in the Final, the Pennsylvania-based Williamsport Crosscutters. They won their 1st full Pennant in 2019.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced that games would resume the following week, on Monday, September 17.
The games that were scheduled for Tuesday, September 11 through Sunday, September 16 were moved to the week after the end of the regular season, thus pushing the postseason back a week, resulting in the 1st-ever November games that counted in MLB.
These are the games that were supposed to be played on September 11, and got pushed back to Monday, October 1:
* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-1 at the old Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.
* The New York Mets lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-1 at Shea Stadium in Queens.
* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 1-0 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.
* The Tampa Bay Devil Rays beat the Boston Red Sox, 10-3 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. (The Tampa Bay team is now named simply the Rays.
These are the games that were supposed to be played on September 11 that got pushed back to Tuesday, October 2:
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Atlanta Braves, 3-1 at Turner Field in Atlanta.
* The Florida Marlins beat the Montreal Expos, 4-3 at what was then named Pro Player Stadium in Miami Gardens. (The Expos are now the Washington Nationals, the Marlins are the Miami Marlins, they play in Marlins Park, and Pro Player Stadium is now named Hard Rock Stadium.)
* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at Comerica Park in Detroit.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-1 at Miller Park in Milwaukee.
* The Kansas City Royals beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.
* The San Francisco Giants beat the Houston Astros, 4-1 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.
* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Colorado Rockies, 10-1 at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix. (Now named Chase Field.)
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 5-2 at what was then named Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. (It's now SDCCU Stadium, and the Padres now play at Petco Park.)
* The Seattle Mariners beat the team then known as the Anaheim Angels, 14-5 at Edison International Field. (The team is now known as the Los Angeles Angels, and their ballpark as Angel Stadium.)
* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Texas Rangers, 9-4 at the Oakland Coliseum.
Not in the country affected by the attacks, UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, decided that the day's Champions League matches would go ahead as scheduled, in spite of some of the teams objecting:
* Arsenal lost to Real Mallorca, 1-0 at Estadio Son Moix on Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain.
* Liverpool and Boavista of Portugal played to a draw, 1-1 at Anfield in Liverpool.
* FC Nantes beat PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands, 4-1 at Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes, France.
* Panathinaikos of Athens, Greece beat Schalke 04, 2-0 at Parkstadion in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
* Real Madrid beat AS Roma, 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
* Dynamo Kyiv and Borussia Dortmund of Germany played to a draw, 2-2 at Olimpiyskiy Natsionalnyi Sportovyi Kompleks in Kyiv, Ukraine.
* Lokomotiv Moscow and Anderlecht of Belgium played to a draw, 1-1 at the Central Dynamo Stadium of Moscow.
* And Galatasaray beat SS Lazio of Rome, 1-0 at Al Sami Yen Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey.
By September 11, 2022, we can determine that there are already two famous people who were born on September 11, 2001: Nicholas Robertson, a left wing for the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs; and actress Mackenzie Aladjem.
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