A 9/11 Narrative

A 9/11 Narrative

by:

Brendan Kelly

Contents:

I.  Introduction

II.  What I Wrote

III.  What I Remember

IV.  Of Mystery Planes and Conspiracy Theories

I. Introduction

September 12, 2001 was my thirty-fifth birthday.  I took the day off and went to church.  After that I completed last year’s tax return.   Earlier in the year I filed for an extension because my paperwork was a mess.  I remember thinking that it would have been unfair for Angela to have to figure it out on her own.

Then I wrote down what I witnessed on the day before.  The following account is exactly what I wrote except for spelling and grammatical edits.  I didn’t know it at the time but I was not in danger on that day.  Instead, I was just an eyewitness to New York City on September 11, 2001.  I wrote the journal because I knew the day was horrible and historic.  The written journal ends with Jackie and I walking  to meet up with Mike at Secaucus High School.  The rest of the story is from memory. 
I toyed with the idea of re-writing the story and sanitizing out the rhetorical errors. Mundane details are overly dramatic. The storytelling voice is at times artificial and impersonal. Something inside of me says leave it alone.  I apologize for those errors. 

The narrative that follows is what I wrote up until started walking to Secaucus High School. The rest is written what I remember today.  Of Mystery Planes and Conspiracy Theories is a point that I want to make about conspiracy theories.

II. What I Wrote

The train used to leave South Orange Station at 7:12 A.M.  That is probably the one I caught into the city on September 11, 2011.  I remember putting down my sesame bagel when I heard the news. My commuting sneakers were on the floor by my desk.  It must have been a normal morning.

                Charleen told us that a plane hit the world trade center.  She was wearing headphones and seemed upset.  Charleen was always emotional so we treated it lightly and went to the window to take a look.  I was working on a project in a conference room on the 43^rd floor at Forty Seventh and Park.  There were about eight of us in the room. Our large window faced uptown.  Some of us walked to the other side of the floor.  Buildings on Sixth Avenue obstructed the downtown view but we could see smoke. 
                I asked Christine if she wanted to go up to the dining area on the 50^th  floor to take a look.  "Sure, why not".  The dining area was empty, stripped of tables. There were no events today. A dozen or so  people were already there.  The elevator bell signaled that more were coming.

                From this height we could see the towers shining tall above everything else in the city.  What struck me was the size of the burning hole in the tower on the right,  and the colors: a black hole in a steel building glistening in the sun.   Orange flames ringed the edges of the black hole. The flames looked small in the distance.  Thick black smoke poured into the spotless blue sky. 

                I didn’t think accident or attack.  I thought about the damage.  I couldn’t add it up.  There was too much of the black burned area.  Flames were visible from one side of the building to the other and there was too much smoke.  The building was cooking.  This was serious. There were casualties.

                As a kid someone taught me to say a Hail Mary whenever I heard a siren.  I closed my eyes prayed.  Then I felt awkward.  This was not a curiosity.  I should not be watching this.  Neither should anyone else.  I didn’t know it but I was standing in line for one of the two antique brass telescopes that adorned the dining area.  I could not concentrate to focus the telescope.  I stood back and watched.  Christine was next to me.  I looked at her and saw that she was nervous.  We had been there for maybe two minutes.

                Other people were talking but I didn’t pay attention.  I looked again and took in the wider view. There were tall buildings lining the avenues leading downtown.  New Jersey was on my right with South Mountain making the horizon twelve miles away.  Nestled in the hill I could see the familiar luxury apartment building peeking through the trees. That was the closest landmark visible from Manhattan skyscrapers, less than a mile from my house.  Brooklyn was on the left.  We'd be moving our project from this conference room to Brooklyn soon. 

A plane approaching from Brooklyn looked unusual, not suspicious, but out of place.  I looked for other aircraft, for a news helicopter.  I don’t know if I saw one.  The plane from Brooklyn passed behind the towers as if on route to Newark.  It shined in the sun. It was shorter and squatter than the 757's that I had heard so much about and it was turning.

                "What's that?" someone said.  "It’s a plane" I thought, feeling awkward for being there.  There was other chatter: "Maybe it’s a news plane". That would explain the turning but I never heard of a news plane.  Then somebody said "Maybe its another one".  That wasn't funny.  This was too serious to be joking about. We shouldn’t even be watching.  It was a dreadful comment.  I decided to leave. We had been there less than five minutes.

The plane that I tracked from Brooklyn reappeared then angled inland and disappeared behind the tower on the right.  A second later the left side of the left tower exploded in two fiery plumes. One plume blew out to the left and one towards us.  I heard a muffled crackle.  My eyelids and head dropped with instant recognition of what was going on.  It was time to go.  Raising my head I saw the explosion billowing up the left edge of the shiny building.   I turned, crossed myself, and saw gasps and the look of shock on my colleagues faces.  Shock, it was too soon to call it terror. 

                "Another one hit, it’s an attack!" I was telling this to the people coming off the elevator as I was getting back on it.  I made a quick stop on 43 to tell the team what happened and that I was leaving.  Angela tells me I left her a voicemail.  "I'm leaving work right now because I just saw a plane attack the Word Trade Center, I'm safe, but I'm leaving now, I don’t know how I'm getting home" I left my bagel and sneakers behind and headed to the 2^nd floor lobby.

                The fire command station was active so I stood near them.  They knew. They knew that I knew,  but they said they didn’t know what was going on.  People were coming up the escalator from the street, oblivious, while others went down in tears.  Marisol came up the escalator.  She hadn't heard. She fumbled for her cell phone and rushed away.  I needed to tell Amy or Gregg (colleagues) that I'm leaving. I decided to try the eighth floor. 

                Eight is a trading floor with televisions. The pentagon was hit.  Now I felt a tinge of terror.  Some people didn’t. They asked things like  "will the morning meeting be canceled?", and "will the market open?".   Our British ex-pat colleagues seemed to know.  We Americans didn’t catch on as fast. 

"I'm taking off".  Back down to the lobby I went, and again hesitated.   I saw Tina huddled over a TV at the command station. She worked for me so I told her I'm taking off and to do the same if she wanted.

                Aashish came up the escalator, he had only heard vaguely, but he didn’t know.  I told him, but he didn’t seem to listen.  He was excited because this was his last day at the bank, he took a new job.  "Good for you", I said "lets keep in touch", and "I have to go".

                It was around 9:45.  I decided to head for the ferry.  I thought it was on Forty Second  or maybe Thirty Ninth.  Either way I had to go through Times Square.  Times Square seemed like less of a target than the Empire State Building so I decided to walk west on Fortieth.  Others were headed my way.  Nobody's cell phone worked but somehow they were getting information.  They said "There are eight more planes unaccounted for" and "all bridges and tunnels are closed".

                The Lincoln Tunnel was indeed closed. I crossed the entrance with a stranger.  It was decision time.  I could bum a ride. We were right up front.  When they open the tunnel it will be a clear ride.  "You're crazy" the stranger said, "They're not opening the tunnel" so we continued towards the ferry. 

                I'm not good at estimating crowds.  The line was four or five people abreast, and about three blocks long. In places it was 10 people abreast.   There were still no working cell phones but plenty of information:  "The first tower is down", "they're both down".  We couldn’t tell because we were on the ground and there was too much smoke. Someone yelled "The ferry is free!" as a fighter jet flew overhead.

                “That's Jackie!, what  miracle!”. I said goodbye to the stranger who accompanied me across town and caught up with Jax.   “Did you call Mike?”  “Did you call Mom?”  “Lines are jammed.”  “Well let's just get on that boat.”  Our timing was good because the crowd was swelling fast.  We were still a block from the terminal.  Buses were leaving people at the terminal entrance a block in front of us.   It was obvious to me that they were not going to walk three blocks backwards to get in the back of the line. Some loudmouths were making trouble about it.  One elderly gentleman in a crisp blue suit and carrying a  leather briefcase slipped into the line in front of us. He looked debonair like a millionaire executive.  I hoped the loudmouths wouldn’t say anything.   I didn't say anything.  Rich or poor he looked like an older man and for that he deserved respect and his spot in line. 

                We were through the terminal. “We won’t make this one, maybe the next, definitely the one after”. I remember saying "Look Jackie, we go to the top deck, and if anything hits the boat we swim, I'm serious we swim".  It was a relief to be on the boat.  I nervously watched a speedboat as it raced up the Hudson.  There was only smoke to be seen downtown so we talked about what we knew while being ferried over to Weehawken.

                Weehawken, New Jersey sits atop a cliff which overlooks the Hudson River.  There is a parking lot at the ferry terminal and there were buses.  Nobody knew when the buses were coming or where they were going when they arrived.  I couldn’t even find the street that leads down from the top of the cliff.  The lines for the buses were long.  The bright sun was uncomfortable.  I was thirsty and we needed a phone.  The buses didn’t look like a good idea.  So we went to the steel zig-zag stairs that scaled the cliff.  There was no elevator. 

                If each zig-zag combination was one story then it was 10 maybe 20 stories high.  It was unreal. We were climbing steel stairs up a cliff in Weehawken, New Jersey while lower Manhattan burned behind us and fighter jets occasionally roared overhead.  We passed some people who were tired. Some people passed us.  I wished I had my sneakers.  I checked Jackie's feet, ‘no heels, she'll be o.k.’    

                We reached the top. We're in Weehawken. Now what?  Nobody knows anything. Nobody's cell phone works.  We look out over the cliff to Manhattan.  I had seen enough. ‘Could the towers really be down?’  The smoke was drifting south.  The air was cleared at an elevation that I thought would show them.  Maybe they were gone.

                A crossing guard told us that buses run on the next  avenue. We walked the block.  A store with a Sacred Heart Devotion in the window caught my attention.  I wanted to buy a Rosary but it wasn't that kind of store. It was a fortune teller.  A woman let us use the phone in her house. It was a 'land line'. That distinction had never before mattered. 

                I called my mother-in-law.  "Mom it's Bren, I'm with Jackie, Mike's wife, we're out of the city and we're safe.  We’re in Weehawken New Jersey, tell everyone we're safe, please call my mom tell her we're safe".  I didn’t call Mom because her brain injury worried me. How would she handle this? She had to know Jackie and I are safe, but I didn’t know if a message on her answering machine was appropriate.

We stopped one bus, but we could not figure out where it was going.  We knew that Mike teaches in Secaucus. We could walk along route 3.  It’s only a few miles. We could see route 3 in the distance.  We walked and talked:

"what will the war be like"  

"it’s a perfect day"  

"the world will never be the same"

"it’s too bright out here"

"I wish I had my sneakers"

               

III. What I Remember

I didn’t need to keep a journal.  I’ll never forget.

Jackie and I stood on the high ground of Weehawken and looked west towards Route 3 and Secaucus where Mike teaches.  We walked down through the narrow streets of Weehawken and passed a man who was walking up the hill.  Ironically, he too was going home after the attack, only home for him was towards New York.  We walked across large a vacant lot with uneven ground and strewn with debris of recent demolition work.  After walking for a mile or so we reached the Home Depot on Route 3.  An employee offered to drive us from there to Secaucus High School.

Secaucus High School was in lockdown mode.  Jackie and I entered the building and proceeded to the administrative offices which were buzzing with activity.  Concerned parents were in the room and the staff moved around us with purpose. 

We asked to see Michael Kelly. Mike joined us but only briefly. He explained that he was in lockdown mode and that he could not leave because many of these kids had parents who worked in the city.   Mike gave us his car keys and assured us that there were plenty of people from whom he could get a lift at the end of the day.

From Secaucus we drove Mike’s car to my home in South Orange. We rode Route 3 west.  The eastbound lanes of Route 3 were jammed to a full stop.  I saw the column of smoke through the rear view mirror.   The radio stations could not seem to make sense of the events.

We arrived at my home in South Orange. I was home but Jackie was not.  I felt terrible because she now had to drive back up to River Edge alone.  After a break I said goodbye to Jax,  my 9/11 buddy.

The next step was to collect my kids.  Monica was only a few blocks away at Columbia High School.  Bren was at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City and the rest were a few blocks away at Our Lady of Sorrows grammar school. 

I walked over to Columbia H.S.  The Vice Principal told me that Monica was supposed to be in the room for “students who had not heard from their parents”.  She was not there.  Monica was never where she was supposed to be so therefore I knew that she was o.k.

 I drove over to Our Lady of Sorrows.  Madeleine was 11 years old and would probably know what’s going on.  James 9, and Andrew 7 might not.  Andrew came out to the minivan first.  His siblings called him Franklin the Turtle because of the way he looked with his oversized backpack. He jumped into the van delighted at the unexplained early dismissal.  James came out next, difficult to read as always.  Maybe he knew maybe he didn’t.  Then came Mads.  She knew.

It was heartbreaking to choose some words. I think I said:

“Some bad guys stole airplanes and blew up the twin towers, a lot of people died”

Then we went home and waited for Mom, Monica and Brendan.  Angela got home and took over tracking down Monica and Brendan who was stuck in Jersey City directly across the Hudson from Lower Manhattan.  I walked over to Our Lady of Sorrows church where I sat stunned and tried to pray. Monica came home that afternoon.  Brendan got a ride from another parent and arrived home after dark. 

I went back to work on Friday the 14^th.  The train tunnels into Manhattan were not running. Ferries and buses were the only public transit options.  I rode the ferry from Hoboken. From that Friday until deep into the wintertime we glided daily past the smoking remnants of Ground Zero.  Day after day we stood silently and leaned over frosty ferryboat railings to get a glimpse of the progress.

 I worked downtown in December.  Even as an indoor office worker I breathed the acrid smoke of chemicals, dead terrorists, burned up people, planes and buildings.  I own a souvenir from Gettysburg, a small jar of soil from that hallowed ground.  I could have filled gallon jugs of ash from the streets of lower Manhattan.  It is unnecessary.  I will never forget.

IV. Of Mystery Planes and Conspiracy Theories

When I considered sharing this story I made sure to check my recollection against the confirmed timetable.  During this process I discovered a discrepancy.  The story that I recall involves the second plane approaching from Brooklyn.  After approaching the tower from my left it passed out of my view behind the towers then reappeared on the other side and angled in for the attack. That is what I recorded above. That is what is seared into my memory forever.

The problem is that there is overwhelming, indisputable evidence that the plane that hit the second tower, UA175, approached from Newark NJ, which was on my right and not from Brooklyn which was on my left.   Intrigued by this discrepancy I turned to the internet.

Obviously there was a gap between my memory and the facts.  It was not the first time  that my memory conflicted with the facts.  Gaps between memories and facts are common.  As an accountant I learned that gaps between facts and other facts are common.  It happens all the time, but because of the significance of the day this particular gap was upsetting and needed to be explained.  The trouble with conspiracy theories is that some people are willing fill these gaps with anything, no matter how outrageous, as long as they can hold onto their own favored interpretation of the original facts and memories.

The worldwide web of whacky conspiracy theories says that my mystery plane was operated by the CIA, or even that it was Air Force One and that reports of mystery planes are evidence that the government had a hand in the attacks.  A plethora of pictures portray planes patrolling the burning towers.  Select eyewitnesses say things seemingly supportive of these sinister secrets.  These websites do not boast of their research rigor, rather, they render strands of random information and imagination into a menu of misinformation for men and women looking to mend gaps in their memories.  I say beware, the internet is a buffet of bullshit and one should be careful before believing.

 From my position on the 50th floor at 47^th and Park Avenue I had a perfect panoramic downtown view.  Looking clockwise from the left to right I could see Queens, Brooklyn, and Lower Manhattan with towers burning and the Atlantic Ocean behind them in the distance. Continuing clockwise were the New York Harbor and New Jersey with the familiar South Mountain marking the horizon on my right. 

There is no doubt in my mind that a plane moved across my field of vision from left to right and that I lost sight of it behind the towers. There is equally no doubt in my mind that the plane that hit the tower approached from my right.  Like most eyewitnesses I simply took in these two facts and unconsciously filled in the gap.  I assumed that the plane from the right which was “angling” for the attack was the same plane I was tracking from the left.   In making this assumption I unwittingly fixed the distance between myself and the plane on the left and placed it over Brooklyn.  In reality neither myself nor anyone else with an untrained eye could stand at the top of a building, look at the shape of a distant airplane for a few seconds and say with confidence whether it was over Queens, Brooklyn or even the Atlantic Ocean.  Much less could somebody in my position fix the direction with any more precision than “left to right” or assume an angle as inland or out to sea. 

Manhattan is situated in the middle of three of the nation’s busiest airports.  From where I stood  LaGuardia was to my left at roughly to nine o’clock.  JFK was at eleven but at a greater distance and Newark was at two or three o' clock.

 Conspiracy theorists will not allow for normal air traffic between the time when the first tower and second towers were hit.  They will not allow for this even though the FAA didn’t close the airspace until well after the second attack.  

Conspiracy theorists show pictures of planes that look like commercial airliners and claim that they are not commercial airliners because commercial pilots would never risk approaching the burning towers.  By saying such things they make the same mistake that I made in fixing distances and placing the airplanes where they assume a pilot would judge to be dangerously close to the towers.

 I admit that I was upset, and frankly… frightened, that my recollection of the events did not match the official fact pattern.  Like millions of people I turned to the internet to fill in the gaps.  But here’s how I differ from the conspiremongers:  I am willing to admit that maybe I got it wrong.  I ask myself what is more plausible: A) that I misinterpreted what I saw for a few seconds seconds at a distance of a few miles, or B) I didn’t misinterpret what I saw and therefore the CIA planned and orchestrated 9/11,  murdered thousands of people, and kept it secret for all of these years.

Some people don’t doubt that the CIA would do such a thing.  These are the most intractable of conspiremongers.  These are the people who accept the lack of evidence as the strongest evidence of all.  They will say things like “Of course there is no evidence because it was a CIA secret” and “Do you really think they will come out and admit it?”

I don’t to assign too much blame to the conspiremongers.  These attacks inflicted psychological trauma on a national scale. To put it in comparative terms, I was eight or nine years old when I saw the movie Jaws.  To this day I cannot enjoy floating in the ocean.  If my feet are not touching the sandy bottom I experience anxiety.  Last week I went to a meeting on the upper floor of my office building.  The meeting took place in a conference room with large picture windows.  I saw no beauty in the sweeping panoramic view, instead as I took in the familiar distant horizons I felt my heart rate rapidly increase.