NYC Day 4: Remembering 9/11

It was nearly midnight when we got to bed last night, but we were up by 7 to head to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. We have not been impressed with NY’s structures to care for people in wheelchairs. The people are great, but structures are lacking. Not only has clearing curb ramps of snow been low priority, but we have encountered many elevators out of order or inaccessible. This morning we went to the subway station that had an elevator only to find that the entry on our side of the street did not. Elevator was only on the other side of the street—with a half marathon between us and there.

The police couldn’t let us across. Meanwhile another guy in a motorized wheelchair arrived with the same need. He was a pastor trying to get to his church to preach. The police said we might be able to cross at Broadway, a block up, so we all (including the pastor) headed that way. There the police brought us back to where we originally were and eased Mom with Bob and the pastor across through “traffic” like police cars might divide the stream of traffic around an accident on the freeway. Jack got this video.

We met them below in the subway station, no problem. But when we emerged at our destination at the World Trade Center the elevator was broken. A sign said we should re-board and get off a couple exits back. Not very practical. In fact, headed for the museum was mostly ramp. Then we got to about 20 steps down. Mom held the rail and my arm and eased herself down while Ben and Bob carried the wheelchair down. After that, no problem except that we took a taxi back rather than try to get her up those stairs.

The World Trade Center Museum is awesome and emotionally exhausting. Of course, every visitor old enough to remember is reliving their experience of that day. The atmosphere is quiet and subdued except the audios of current news accounts, phone messages left by passengers on flight 93, 91 calls, recorded memories, etc. If you are only planning to visit the outdoor memorial, you don’t need as much time, but the museum requires a minimum of the full day. You could spent several and not see everything.

Our day included meeting a man who told us his story. I’m not sure his official position at the museum, but he was the one who showed Mom (with Bob and me) to the elevator while the rest took the stairs. He told us he was there that day. That his daughter worked on one of the floors that took the direct hit. But he came down early and talked her and another relative who worked in the tower into going to breakfast with him.  They were on their way back when the first plane hit. He was a former marine who served multiple stints in Africa fighting Idi Amin. He said he’s not proud of it, but his first instinct was to get out of there. They were gone before the towers came down. Now he is a retired systems analyst who cares for family members of the 9/11 victims when they visit. He met one young man who was 19. He had never met his father. Our new friend took the young man to the family room where he bawled for half an hour. Our friend was wandering spiritually before 9/11, but the experience brought him unequivocally back to faith.

He took us all into the auditorium wheelchair entrance where we sat through both movies (one events of the day, the other political response with interviews of Bush, Blair and the Pakistani president). When we came out, he said no one was in the family room and offered to let us see it. That was a very intimate look at drawings by children (at this point many grandchildren learning family history), pictures, personal messages plastering all the walls. Before he left us, I asked to pray for him. I feel like God saved his life for a purpose and has placed him where he is to minister to people.

Base of pillars of the South Tower

The rebuilt World Trade Center seen through two irders of the old in the stair well at the entrance.

A ladder truck crush in the collapse. Miraculously, at least some of the firemen from this truck survived.

The museum is a very personal experience, and we didn’t try to stay together the whole time. There are huge pieces of twisted metal, a flag, a set of stair down which many of the survivors escaped, the foundations of pillars, huge photos, video clips, posters of the missing from the days immediately after, memorial art displays, and so much more. The wall of the Foundation Hall is the slurry wall that kept the Hudson River out of the foundations from the time of the construction of the buildings.

The tree on the left is called theSurvivor Tree. It was found buried in five feet of ash
a month after the collapse, yet it survived and thrives.

This experience is not for every American child like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are. It's too intense. It requires a certain level of maturity and emotional stamina. But it is definitely a powerful piece of our nation's history.

When I showered back at the hotel to get ready for tonight’s concert, I felt like I was washing off the layers of dust from the collapse.