to not look at the Twin Towers the way they were that horrific day. The innocent people jumping out of smashed windows, facing certain death, escaping the intense heat and flames, who, only hours earlier, had left their homes, lives and families and gone to work as if it were to be just another “normal” day. The first responders bravely running into the Towers to try and save lives. The airliners hijacked – used as weapons in NY, PA and DC. So many lives ruined, needlessly.
Since that day, I, along with millions of others, have been angry. When I was driving up the NJ TPK and looked right, the Towers no longer existed. A large part of my life was destroyed. NYC, where I grew up, would never be the same. Of course I wanted Bin Laden and all his Al Qaeda lunatics identified, caught and punished. But, I was also angry at everything that happened post 9/11.
Year after frustrating year – the world’s most powerful country not being able to find Bin Laden. The bickering of why, how and what to rebuilt in the shadow of the Tower’s destruction. The strategic failures in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. The lack of will power to control the Taliban and Iran. The thousands of our service members who continue to suffer and be killed, not in retaliation of 9/11, but in the name of instilling Democracy among peoples who despise us and our cherished freedom’s.
I spent a lot of my life in the Towers. I went to school there, worked there, shopped down on the lower levels for flowers for my wife. I commuted on the PATH train from NJ into the train station there. For a couple of years, I parked down in the underground garage. CNN, when they first started, had a studio you could look into on the first floor, across from the elevators. I would stand in the grand lobby, marveling at the architecture, while waiting to board the elevator up to the 106th floor of the North Tower, to Windows On The World.
A man called Stan Katz, a family friend, ran a large and successful messenger service in the city. He used to invite “us” to “Windows” for lunch. That was before business people said let’s “do” lunch – back then we were still “having” it. Katz was a first class guy and kept his own wines at Windows. When you stepped off the elevator into the Windows “world”, you were transported somewhere else – 107 floors on the top of greatest city in the world. We would sit at a large round table, by the window, glasses filled with some fancy expensive French wine from Katz’s “collection” while we were served thick medium rare steak and scalloped potatoes.
I used to make believe my wife could see me as I went to the side of restaurant facing NJ and waved. She worked right across the river and her office window looked right out to the Hudson, the Towers and all of downtown NYC. Clinton had given us economic prosperity and life was pretty good back then. I would be at that restaurant on the top of the world many times, entertaining clients, celebrating promotions, breaking bread with businessmen from the world of logistics and commerce.
That’s what I want to remember.
PS/http://www.unpublishedarticles.com/stories/windowsontheworld.html + http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-08-28-wtc-windows_x.htm + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_on_the_World
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