We Are All New Yorkers Now

Ten years ago , 7 days after the catastrophe we now call 9/11 I wrote this essay. It was accepted by my fellow members of the editorial board of New Jersey Lawyer, the New Jersey State Bar Association's weekly newspaper. I am gratified that there is a somber and fitting memorial where the towers stood.  And I am grateful for the sacrifice of those who tried to save others.

New Jersey Lawyer Weekly

September 24, 2001

10 NJL 1814

Editorial

We Are All New Yorkers Now

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and America combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

- Abraham Lincoln (1838)

At these points now do we expect the approach of danger: when a tourist visa is granted, when a man named Mohammed boards a plane, when a flight takes off from Newark bound for San Francisco, when we enter the elevator and push the button for the 44th floor, when your train stops in the tunnel, when the cell phone rings.

On The Day After, New Yorkers woke to a silent city. Dawn normally brings traffic helicopters and the background hum from the highways. On The Day After, New York was patrolled by military helicopters. An aircraft carrier was posted off the white sand beaches of Jones Beach State Park. “Tasked to provide air defense for New York”, said the NORAD commander. Air Defense? For New York? At the gateways to New York Harbor - the Throgs Neck, George Washington, and Verrazano bridges Coast Guard cutters on picket duty barred civilian traffic. No fuel, no stone, no freight, no fishermen’s skiffs could pass. No cars entered Manhattan. Traffic at mid-day was lighter than Sunday morning 7 AM.

The glistening symbol of the City is gone. A thick plume of smoke rose for days, marking the spot where thousands of the fallen towers’ workers were buried. With each wind shift another boro felt the sting of the acrid smoke. A day of mourning stretched into weeks still without end. The burials that may never come still lie dreadfully before us.

First came the offers of blood for the wounded - who never got to the hospital. Then came the firefighters, EMT’s, and construction workers from Ohio, from Tennessee, from New Jersey and Massachusetts to clear the rubble and honor the dead. Soon we saw flags fluttering from car antennas and hung from balconies and fences.

They came because New Yorkers were killed by planes filled with hostages bound from Boston for LA, because the captors incinerated other Americans along with their unmourned selves as American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. They came for those who struggled with the attackers and crashed in a field in Somerset, Pennsylvania. They came because the distinction between combatants and non-combatants has been erased. We are all New Yorkers now because we are all Americans, and because we are all combatants now - and do not know the face of the enemy.

Twin Tapers - the 9/11 memorial lights

via cellphone, 9/11/2010

As we do each year we went down to Battery Park city to see the World Trade Center memorial lights.  This year for the first time there was a public action that was beneath the dignity the day demands.  That was, of course, the protests against erection of a mosque a few blocks away.   Sad.

Tonight's stroll reminded me of this piece I wrote in March 2002 - six months after the catastrophe, when the lights first appeared.


Twin Tapers


Two weeks ago, on a clear night, at 7:00 PM sharp, as I drove home on the George Washington Bridge, two columns, like giant flashlight beams, stood out against the almost blue sky of the city after dusk, at the spot where the WTC  stood.  For now they shine nightly.  Visible for 20 miles, they evoke an ineffable sadness.  They recall but cannot restore the skyline.  They highlight the towers’ absence, and those lost.


The two columns stand apart, quite like the towers.  But they are evanescent, not steel, and the City turns them off at 11:00 PM, or when the FAA flight controllers call to douse them.   Dozens of powerful lamps are needed to create these light shafts that now pierce the city night.   The beams change.  Faint at dusk, they sharpen as the sky darkens, and blur when the city’s competing lights illuminate the night when clouds are low, and the air is thick.  In their light low clouds glow.


As a child my favorite place in church was the votive candle rack.  Perched on a wrought iron frame in ranks like the seats in a stadium, yellow flames flickered in red glass.  Lighting a candle made a prayer special.  The call lasted as long as the candle burned.  These new twin tapers are our votive candles.  Their evanescence captures the loss so palpably that it is both disquieting and reassuring.  Turning a corner in the city, glimpsing the lights, we welcome the new landmark.  They anchor us, as the towers once did, showing us where we stand, like a lighthouse beacon aids the mariner.  The lights remind us that but for chance, there were we.   Ethereal, they express our fragility, our vulnerability.  They assure us that we do remember, that we have neither forgotten, nor forgiven.

The two lights quickly became part of our landscape.  Yet the City says they are a temporary memorial, to be turned off April 13.  But there is little precedent for turning off the lights in New York.  They temporarily lighted the bridges for the New York World Fair 40 years ago but the necklaces of light burn every night on every suspension bridge in the city.  After the Chrysler building got its art deco zig-zag lights, many other towers were illuminated.  First the commercial cathedrals of the Woolworth,  New York Life, and the Empire State buildings, then the Riverside Church campanile, and a dozen other lofty towers were bathed in spotlights every night. These new lights have earned their keep, and will become, I hope, part of the permanent 9/11 memorial, an aid to recall all we lost.

- George  Conk  March 25, 2002