Kindness parts a veil of despair
Reporter recalls New Yorkers showing support, resilience
Kindness is the last word most people would use to describe the people of New York City, a place that seems to revel in its reputation for fastpaced rudeness, sharp elbows and gruff remarks.
It is a city of immigrants who adapt quickly to the well-deserved New Yorker stereotype. I know, I was raised in Brooklyn across the river from Manhattan, which was always “The City” when I was growing up.
But kindness is the word that best describes my memories of reporting on the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 2,750 people when hijackers crashed passenger airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Everyone from rescue workers to cab drivers, Red Cross volunteers, police officers, firefighters, employees from the New York-New Jersey Port Authority and electricians working on restoring power and communications to Wall Street in southern Manhattan graciously took time to share their stories.
It was the week after the attacks and the city was still reeling and on edge. The death toll was still a big question mark. The bridges and tunnels that connect the city boroughs and New Jersey were open — only to be closed
at a moment’s notice, usually because of suspected terrorist activity. Phone service, landline and cellular, was sketchy.
I was working with the late Journal photographer Richard Pipes, and we were frustrated. We had spent the day in a futile attempt to contact U.S. Forest Service firefighters from the Southwest who were providing logistical support to the first responders and volunteers working at Ground Zero.
Our attempts to walk to Battery Park where they were headquartered were blocked by an ever-expanding crime scene perimeter as the FBI and New York Police officers looked for pieces of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers. We weren’t sure what stories we were going to be able to tell or what stories we should pursue.
Pipes and I were staying at a hotel on Times Square and as we sat in the lobby talking over story ideas, a young bellhop named Jerry approached us. He apologized for interrupting and then asked if we had seen the fire station a few blocks away.
Jerry told us he walked past the station every day and people were dropping off flowers.
“You should check it out,” he said.
Pipes and I took his advice and walked over to the fire station.
The streets were quiet — hardly any traffic but people were out walking in the beautiful fall weather.
The station wasn’t far and we saw there were walls of flowers piled waist-high on either side of the driveway leading to the doors. Pipes began taking photographs and I talked to the firefighters who explained that people in the neighborhood felt they needed to show their support and began dropping off flowers and food the night of the attack the way people do when a friend has lost a loved one.
One of the firemen said it was happening all over New York City.
As we talked, a group of young people walked up to the fire station doors and began singing. People walking down the street stopped. My interview stopped.
They were students from New York’s famous Juilliard School which has supplied New York with singers, musicians, dancers, actors, filmmakers and writers for decades.
They began with the civil rights spiritual “We Shall Overcome.” They sang a few more songs to a growing but silent audience. Their voices were so pure, clear and full of hope and love that you knew somehow some way things were going to work out. New York would bury its dead with honor and fill the hole in the skyline. It would not be easy, but it would be done.
Tears flowed. The firefighters thanked them.
I talked with the singers and then they left to go on to another fire station to repeat their mission —– to heal the city with the gift of their voices.
Walking back to the hotel Pipes and I knew we had the start of a story.
Things like this were happening all over the city.
People gathered on the West Side Highway to cheer truck drivers heading to lower Manhattan to haul away the debris being cleared by long lines of firefighters, police and trade union members in bucket lines that snaked over rubble at the World Trade Center site.
The media called it “Ground Zero.” The people working the bucket lines called it “The Pile.” When the workers left the site to go rest, New Yorkers lined the way cheering them.
Pipes and I didn’t try to say things were wonderful. People were counting the bodies recovered. The collapse of the Towers filled lower Manhattan with a caustic dust that to this day claims the lives of people who worked in it.
But despite the veil of despair hanging over the city, average New Yorkers looked to do what they could.
And that is the memory I choose to hold onto.