As Americans stop to remember the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania that took place 14 years ago, the WEEKLY STANDARD shares some remembrances and stories from our writers:
Matt Labash: “South Toward Hell: The sad streets of New York.”
IT DOESN’T SEEM RIGHT, really–romanticizing catastrophe instead of just confronting its grim particulars head-on. Still, they cut quite a swath at Sir Harry’s Bar in the Waldorf-Astoria, these brave men with forearm tattoos and walrus mustaches–firefighting volunteers who have swooped in from places like Danbury and Pittsburgh to shore up New York’s own decimated ranks. The hotel has graciously provided free accommodations. So after a 12-hour shift sifting through World Trade Center rubble, firemen stagger into the bar like flame-retardant cowboys, still wearing their charbroiled gear. As they fill the room, I turn to a well-heeled patron, trying to summon an appropriate reference from a Peckinpah movie. “They look like somebody,” I say, struggling. “Like goddamned heroes,” he replies, as the fireman douse their dust-infested insides with complimentary rounds.
Jonathan V. Last: “A Site to Remember: No design debate. No media noise. Just quiet visitors honoring Flight 93. Lots of them.”
Soon after, the county set up a temporary memorial a quarter-mile from the crash site: a 60-foot-long stretch of chain-link fence, two flagpoles (for the American and Pennsylvania flags) and a small stone placard with the names of the dead. As visitors began coming, they left things behind: flags, helmets, firemen’s jackets, baseball caps, flowers, messages. And as the crowds grew, Shanksville residents who stopped by the memorial noticed that visitors didn’t know what they were looking at.
So one Sunday in January 2002, Donna Glessner stood up in church and announced that she was going to start a group to care for the memorial and its visitors. Seventeen people came forward, becoming the first Goodwill Ambassadors. Today there are 40, and they watch over the memorial during daylight hours, seven days a week. They range in age from 20 to 79. Many are husband-and-wife teams working their shifts in pairs.
They answer questions about the memorial, about Flight 93, about where to get a meal and how to find the highway again. They also act as groundskeepers: “We try to be good caretakers, to never let a flag touch the ground,” says Mary Alice Mankamyer. “You always keep a shovel and salt in your trunk; in the summer we bring water for the visitors.”
So one Sunday in January 2002, Donna Glessner stood up in church and announced that she was going to start a group to care for the memorial and its visitors. Seventeen people came forward, becoming the first Goodwill Ambassadors. Today there are 40, and they watch over the memorial during daylight hours, seven days a week. They range in age from 20 to 79. Many are husband-and-wife teams working their shifts in pairs.
They answer questions about the memorial, about Flight 93, about where to get a meal and how to find the highway again. They also act as groundskeepers: “We try to be good caretakers, to never let a flag touch the ground,” says Mary Alice Mankamyer. “You always keep a shovel and salt in your trunk; in the summer we bring water for the visitors.”
Matthew Continetti: “September 11, 2001.”
For me, that terrible morning began with a phone call. A friend suggested I cancel an interview downtown. Why? Put on the news. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
I turned on my small television, thinking that this had happened before, in 1945, when a B-25 had flown mistakenly into the Empire State Building.
Except nothing like this had happened before. I was still watching the screen when the second tower exploded in flame. This was neither an accident nor a stunt. It was real, and it was taking place a few miles from where I stood, and there were a bunch of teenagers around me who in a few short minutes were going to be confused and frightened. My window faced north, toward the Bronx, but many of the rooms on our floor looked south. There would be no escaping the view.
I propped my door open so that students could reach me easily. I walked to the end of the hall on the west side of the building, where a window opened on downtown, and saw with my own eyes the smoke billowing from the wounds in the distant towers. It was there that I watched, within the hour, as the snake-like clouds of ash seemed to wrap themselves around the two buildings and pull them to the earth. One couldn’t help feeling small and powerless—as though world history were suddenly an enormous wave swallowing one whole.
I turned on my small television, thinking that this had happened before, in 1945, when a B-25 had flown mistakenly into the Empire State Building.
Except nothing like this had happened before. I was still watching the screen when the second tower exploded in flame. This was neither an accident nor a stunt. It was real, and it was taking place a few miles from where I stood, and there were a bunch of teenagers around me who in a few short minutes were going to be confused and frightened. My window faced north, toward the Bronx, but many of the rooms on our floor looked south. There would be no escaping the view.
I propped my door open so that students could reach me easily. I walked to the end of the hall on the west side of the building, where a window opened on downtown, and saw with my own eyes the smoke billowing from the wounds in the distant towers. It was there that I watched, within the hour, as the snake-like clouds of ash seemed to wrap themselves around the two buildings and pull them to the earth. One couldn’t help feeling small and powerless—as though world history were suddenly an enormous wave swallowing one whole.
Matt Labash: “A Year of Firsts and Lasts: Edlene LaFrance remembers her husband, murdered by Mohamed Atta.”
I met Edlene LaFrance on the worst day of her life. Or maybe it was the second worst, or the fifth, there are so many to choose from now. Two days after the Twin Towers fell, her 43-year-old husband, Alan, lay buried at the bottom of one of them. Though the city was awash in acts of unparalleled selflessness, I’d spent that morning thinking selfishly, walking the ash-caked streets of lower Manhattan, trolling for battle-scarred humanity to fill my notebooks before deadline.
On a bum tip, I rushed to the Chelsea Piers, where ambulances full of recovered wounded were rumored to be arriving. When I got there, a bystander scoffed at my naivete. “There aren’t any more wounded,” he said, letting the thought finish itself. Another reporter suggested the action had moved cross-town to the National Guard Armory on Lexington, and indeed it had. The street outside the building looked like a third-world bazaar. Except instead of merchants peddling trinkets, family members were holding “Missing” posters, begging for whereabouts and clues, as if their loved ones had gone down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes, then had forgotten the way home.
The media were supposedly barred, but I slipped inside the building. In all the chaos, it was about as difficult as crashing Penn Station. Hundreds of family members sat in rows, their bodies racked with tension and slicked with sweat in the un-air-conditioned hall. Amidst this grimness, I scouted for the most approachable faces, which belonged to Edlene, her son Jody, and his wife, Camille.
I asked if I could follow their family through this process, and they graciously assented. Edlene clutched a photo of her husband in his white wedding tuxedo. Their 21st anniversary was in two weeks, and on the morning of September 11, for some reason, she’d come close to giving him his biggest present early–a new wedding ring.
On a bum tip, I rushed to the Chelsea Piers, where ambulances full of recovered wounded were rumored to be arriving. When I got there, a bystander scoffed at my naivete. “There aren’t any more wounded,” he said, letting the thought finish itself. Another reporter suggested the action had moved cross-town to the National Guard Armory on Lexington, and indeed it had. The street outside the building looked like a third-world bazaar. Except instead of merchants peddling trinkets, family members were holding “Missing” posters, begging for whereabouts and clues, as if their loved ones had gone down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes, then had forgotten the way home.
The media were supposedly barred, but I slipped inside the building. In all the chaos, it was about as difficult as crashing Penn Station. Hundreds of family members sat in rows, their bodies racked with tension and slicked with sweat in the un-air-conditioned hall. Amidst this grimness, I scouted for the most approachable faces, which belonged to Edlene, her son Jody, and his wife, Camille.
I asked if I could follow their family through this process, and they graciously assented. Edlene clutched a photo of her husband in his white wedding tuxedo. Their 21st anniversary was in two weeks, and on the morning of September 11, for some reason, she’d come close to giving him his biggest present early–a new wedding ring.
