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THREAD: Over today, tomorrow, & Saturday, I'm tracing how the September 11th attacks unfolded 19 years ago Friday—stories I captured in my book THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY: AN ORAL HISTORY OF 9/11, with the voices of 480 Americans who lived that tragic day. https://bookshop.org/books/the-only-plane-in-the-sky-an-oral-history-of-9-11/9781501182211
Monday, September 10th, 2001, began in New York with the rededication of a Bronx firehouse, home to Engine 73 and Ladder 42. Mayor Giuliani, Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, and Chief of the Department Pete Ganci listened as FDNY Chaplain Mychal Judge offered a homily.
Mychal Judge's prayer that morning remains one of the most moving passages I've ever read, all the more so because he had less than 24 hours to live. The next morning, he would be the only priest to walk into the burning Twin Towers.
Mychal Judge, Chaplain, FDNY: "Good days. And bad days. Up days. Down days. Sad days. Happy days. But never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do. You show up. You put one foot in front of another ....
… You get on the rig and you go out and you do the job. Which is a mystery. And a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig. No matter how big the call. No matter how small. You have no idea what God is calling you to—but he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us."
That "big call," as it turned out, would come the next morning. Mychal Judge was killed in the first collapse; his death certificate would be "#1" from 9/11. As FDNY firefighter Craig Monahan said: "It was as if he took the lead—all those angels, right through heaven's gates."
Mid-afternoon, on Monday, September 10th, Monica O’Leary was laid off—she thought she was least lucky employee at Cantor Fitzgerald in the North Tower.
Monica O'Leary: "When I got laid off, I was on the 105th floor. I was upset. I was crying. I went around and started kissing everybody good-bye. They were all great. This guy, Joe Sacerdote, stood up in the back row, and he yelled, “It’s their loss, Monica!”
Across the country, Monday the 10th was a regular workday, the beginning of fall, the first full week after Labor Day—and for many communities, the first days of school, as work and school rumbled back to life after the quiet summer doldrums of August....
Reporters and news broadcasters filed back into their offices, as did government officials and business professionals, bringing cities back to life after the quiet days of August. Many anticipated a slow start to the season....
. @TomBrokaw, Anchor, @NBCNews: "I’d been off most of the summer. A friend called up to ask how it was to be back. I said, 'I’m doing fine, but there’s no news. It’s hard to get cranked back up.' It looked like it was not going to be not a terribly stimulating autumn."
Mary Matalin, aide to Vice President Dick Cheney: "There was a sense of, 'Okay, now back to business.' We had economic issues at the time. We were on the front end of a recession."
Lyzbeth Glick, wife of Jeremy Glick, passenger, United Airlines Flight 93: "Sept. 10, Jeremy helped me pack up the car—he was going to California on business and was booked on a flight that night. I was going up to my parents’ house in the Catskill Mountains while he was away....
... He headed to Newark for a meeting. He called me at around five o’clock & said there had been a fire in Newark. He didn’t feel like arriving in California at two in the morning. He decided to go home, get a good night’s sleep, and catch the first flight out Tuesday morning."
Jeremy’s last-minute decision to take United Airlines Flight 93 is one of those tiny, stomach-churning turns of fate that decided so much about how 9/11 unfolded. I explored the role of luck and fate in this @TheAtlantic essay: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/september-11-blind-luck-decided-who-lived-or-died/597688/
The beautiful, crisp blue skies that dominated the skies of the northeastern United States on September 11th—a unique and memorable metrological phenomenon known as “Severe Clear”—were the result of major storm front that passed through on the evening of the 10th....
Two artists, Monika Bravo and Vanessa Lawrence, part of a studio residency program, watched the storm arrive and pass over New York from the 91st floor of the North Tower—the last night it would exist in the world.
Monika Bravo: "I started filming. The storm was coming from New Jersey south, through the Verrazano Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty. You see one drop hitting the window, then in a second all these water drops hitting the window. The storm is there. It’s with you."
Vanessa Lawrence: "Watching it coming, coming, coming, coming, and then—nothing. We were in this thick cloud and the rain."
Monika Bravo: "The video is the witness of the last people standing, the last night before these towers cease to exist and everything and everybody that was inside. You see people in the South Tower coming in, working. You see people alive. You can see boats going."
After filming for hours, Monika Bravo headed home. Since it was still raining, she left her computer locked in a file cabinet in the North Tower: "I remember thinking, 'Is this going to be safe?' And then, 'This is the World Trade Center. Nothing can happen to this building.'"
