Reflecting at 9/11 Pools

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

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At Adventure’s End, Some Reflecting

This is the fifth and final column in a series about my recent travels to the Eastern Seaboard to visit my son – and visit much more.

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The Smiling Pool, from the children’s books by Thornton Burgess, is aptly named because viewed from atop an overlooking hill – as Burgess did often during his boyhood in East Sandwich, Massachusetts – its curved shape resembles a smile. Indeed, it remains a happy place to sojourn.

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One of the twin reflecting pools outside the 9/11 Memorial Museum

My emotions were completely polar at the next pool of water I visited. Actually, pools plural: the twin reflecting pools at the National September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan. The Crying Pools seems apropos.

Each reflecting pool is nearly an acre square situated on the footprints where the Twin Towers majestically stood. Water pours over all four edges of each pool at a rate of 3,000 gallons per minute, forming waterfall curtains, before disappearing down a small square abyss at the bottom.

The symbolism of the flow rate is heart numbing because nearly 3,000 lives disappeared in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and Feb. 26, 1993. These victims’ names are inscribed on bronze panels on the parapets surrounding the pools. The result is to turn many eyes into miniature reflecting pools overflowing with tears.

This was my first return to the site since Tuesday, June 11, 2002 – nine months to the day after the World Trade Center became Ground Zero. I know this because I still have my “WTC:00 Viewing Platform – 2:00-2:30 pm” ticket.

I remember very little from those NBA Finals I covered, other than the Lakers played the Nets, but the sight of the steep-sided square hole in the ground remains unforgettable. It looked like a gargantuan grave.

Inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum the somberness is even more overwhelming than at the twin reflecting pools. Boxes of tissues are placed liberally throughout yet short lines still form. My wife teared up within the first two minutes of entering the exhibition. She had lasted longer than I.

To tour the museum once is a must, I believe; I believe also I could not bear to do so again.

To describe the experience would require a dozen columns. Instead, I will share a single image that most profoundly affected me. It is the transcript of a phone call from Brian Sweeney, a 38-year-old passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 175, to his wife. Julie wasn’t home, so he left his last words on their answering machine:

“Jules, this is Brian. Listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good. Go have a good time. Same to my parents and everybody. And I just totally love you and I’ll see you when you get there. Bye, babe. I’ll try to call you.”

At 9:03 a.m. the plane crashed into the South Tower.

As I wrote in this series previously, this trip took on an “author” theme with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thornton W. Burgess playing roles.

However, I believe Brian Sweeney’s words – composed with no time for writer’s block, no chance to edit and polish them – are as potent and poignant as any left behind by the above masters.

A statue of JFK walking barefoot in the sand

A statue of JFK walking barefoot in the sand

After telling my son to do good, have a good time and that I absolutely love him, I hugged him goodbye while battling to keep my twin reflecting pools of green from overflowing, my heart buoyed in knowing he has settled into New York City quickly, made friends, likes his new job and is enjoying this exciting chapter in his life.

On the plane home, a quote from one more author – J.F.K. wrote the 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Profiles in Courage” – came back to mind. I had seen it earlier in our trip at the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum in Cape Cod:

“I always go to Hyannisport to be revived, to know again the power of the sea and the Master who rules over it and us.”

This is how I always feel returning to Ventura.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

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