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Remembering September 11, 2001

by Marinka Peschmann, Special to Canada Free Press

September 14, 2004

Across the East River I’d sped up the stairs of a five-story building and stood on the rooftop on September 11, 2001 just as the second hijacked plane hit and the towers shortly thereafter fell. The terrorist indiscriminate killing spree killed 2,973 innocent men, women and children from over 60 countries. As the island of Manhattan was sealed off, the only way back in was by foot. Racing back and forth from the rooftop to inside the building, I chased the ever-changing news reports updated by my haunting live view. Bridges, potential targets, were opening and closing at a moment's notice. Taking a chance, I dashed to the Trioborough Bridge. After a reassuring already-present quick law enforcement search, I walked into a city forever changed. Fighter jets roared above, emergency vehicles raced by. A lethal inferno blazed from where the Twin Towers once stood, sending teeming smoke of death into the crystal blue morning sky that hovered as the near weightless breeze barely blew. On the bridge's pedestrian walkway hundreds walked. Whispered prayers multiplied, momentarily interrupting the shocked silence. Strangers helped the fragile across the Trioborough. I knew the gift we all shared. The gift that had been taken for granted--the gift of being able to walk, when you knew so many people would never walk again. The realization that no one is immune from terrorism set in and the realization of the fragility of life that had frequently eluded so many of us was installed by the reality we watched as we walked across the bridge. That within a breath life may be extinguished.

We remember 2,973 people, the firefighters, policemen, and heroes killed on four airplanes, killed in the World Trade Center and killed in the Pentagon. We remember 26 Canadians; Mike Arczynski, Bailey Garnet, Ken Basnicki, Joe Collison, Cindy Connolly, Arron Dack, Christine Egan, Michael Egan, Albert Elmarry, Meredith Ewart, Peter Feidelberg, Alexander Filipov, Stuart Lee, Mark Ludvigsen, Bernard Mascarenhas, Colin McArthur, Mike Pelletier, Donald Robson, Rufino Santos, Vladimir Tomasevic, Chantal Vincelli, and Debbie Williams who lost their lives.

We remember 339 innocents including children and teachers mercilessly put to death in a Russian school gymnasium. We remember 190 people killed after bombs on four commuter trains in Madrid detonated. We remember 202 people slaughtered by two bombs in Bali. We remember Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl murdered in Pakistan, businessman Nick Berg beheaded in Iraq, engineer Paul Johnson beheaded in Saudi Arabia, Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi executed in Iraq, and missionary Martin Burnham slain in the Philippines. We remember six people killed in the first World Trade Center attack, five U.S. servicemen killed at a training camp bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 200 people massacred by a bomb at embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, 17 sailors killed on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, and 19 Servicemen killed in Khobar. We remember the thousands who died by the hands of suicide bombers, tyrants and dictators. We remember the soldiers from around the Globe who died fighting for freedom. We remember the civilians caught in the crossfire.

We remember the families, the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, husbands and wives left to carry on. We remember the survivors, the injured, who escaped death.

On Saturday, September 11, 2004, in New York City at Ground Zero early in the morning it was a different sky, blue but with scattered rain clouds poised, and a different feel than that same day three years earlier. Aside from three people carrying angry signs, the September 11, 2001 victims families came together to remember. Many dropped roses into two fountain pools that before long brimmed full. The crowded streets were calm during the reflective, dignified memorial where the victims’ names were read, and politicians spoke briefly, eloquently. But one couldn't help but remember the landscape that had stood so prominently. The new landscape once shielded and shadowed by the Twin Towers was a constant reminder of all that had been lost, in a world that changed forever.

And from the platform near where the families gathered the lone horn sang out its solemn final note and the bell chimed reverberating through the streets. Once again we all were united.