Inspiration: 20th Anniversary- Remembering 9/11 (Westport CT)

This terrorist attack was certainly one where everyone likely remembers where they were.

I was facilitating a meeting at a Bank a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. A participant working from home shared that it appeared a plane may have crashed into the World Trade Center.

Having grown up in NYC as well as being married at Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center I assumed, as did many, that it may have been a small plane that had a near miss with the antenna at the top of the building. Once reality struck, however the Wall Street area quickly became a war zone.

Our next steps were uncertain. We feared that we were going to be bombed. We left the uncertainty of a building in an attempt to leave the area. We searched for our colleagues that were at different sites. This picture below is of burnt paper debris that was falling around us on 9/11 as we walked down Wall Street like cattle to the boats to New Jersey. I keep it near my briefcase which is forever marked by the tainted dust of that day.

My colleagues and I just wanted off the island as we all weren’t sure if the terrorism would continue perhaps at the nearby Stock Exchange. The boat runners really did an incredible job with over 500,000 fearful passengers crossing the Hudson to New Jersey. See video article below.

https://youtu.be/18lsxFcDrjo

I pause in any location which has stood up a memorial in loving memory of our friends, families and firefighters who helped save so many from such a memorable tragedy. In this 20th anniversary year I will be posting different locations which have such a memorial so we “never forget” what hate can do.

Below is a stone commemorating the father of my son’s friend who died that day. May he Rest In Peace and may we never forget what hatred can do in his honor and all those who perished on that day and since due to related complications.