Tag Archives: 9-11

On 25th Anniversary of 9/11, Some Reflecting

by Woody

In remembrance of today’s 25th anniversary of 9/11, here is my column that originally ran in 2015 following a road trip up and down the Eastern Seaboard…

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The Smiling Pool from a series of children’s books by Thornton Burgess is aptly named because its curved shape, when viewed from atop an overlooking hill – as Burgess did often during his boyhood in East Sandwich, Massachusetts – resembles a smile.

Indeed, it remains a happy place to sojourn as I learned during my recent tour of his home-turned-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 and situated on the footprints where the Twin Towers once 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 heartrending because nearly 3,000 lives disappeared in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and Feb. 26, 1993. The victims’ names are inscribed on bronze panels on the parapets surrounding the pools. Visitors’ eyes, in turn, often become miniature reflecting pools overflowing with tears.

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

I remember very little from those 2002 NBA Finals I covered, other than the Los Angeles Lakers played the New Jersey Nets. But the sight of the steep-sided square hole in the ground remains unforgettable. It looked like a gargantuan grave.

Inside the completed 9/11 Memorial Museum the somberness is even more overwhelming than at the twin reflecting pools. Boxes of tissues are placed liberally throughout and empty quickly. My wife teared up within the first two minutes of entering the exhibition; I did so even sooner.

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 punched me in the soul. 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 was not 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.

My trip of the Eastern Seaboard had earlier taken 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 revise and edit and polish – are as potent and poignant as any left behind by the above literary masters.

After telling my son, whom I was visiting, to “do good” and have “a good time” and that I “absolutely love” him, I hugged him goodbye while blinking repeatedly to keep my twin reflecting pools from overflowing, and boarded a jetliner so similar –and so polar – to the one Brian Sweeney took.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

9/11: Yesterday, a Lifetime Ago

by Woody

Where were you when you learned the world stopped spinning twenty years ago today? If you are older than 25, I’m certain you remember as clearly as if September 11, 2001 happened yesterday.

For my wife and me, it was a typical weekday morning rush helping our daughter and son get ready for school and ourselves off to work. In the midst of our familiar routine the phone rang. My brother-in-law was at the other end: “Turn on the TV.”

“What channel?” my wife asked.

“Any channel,” he said gravely.

The surreal images were beyond imagination: One of New York City’s iconic Twin Towers was billowing black smoke after being hit by a jetliner; then a second plane, seemingly flying in slow motion, slammed into the bookend skyscraper; thereafter the North and South Towers both collapsed, also as if in slow motion.

In all, four hijacked passenger jets were turned into terrorist missiles with the other two crashing into the Pentagon, and – as a result of heroic passengers putting up a fight with their lives – a field in Pennsylvania en route to its target in Washington D.C.

Today, we pay remembrance to the nearly 3,000 lives lost in the horrific attacks. The truth, of course, is that the loved ones and friends and co-workers of those victims have remembered them every single day for the past two decades.

Nine months after the infamous event, I was in New York City covering the NBA Finals of which I remember nothing specific. But I cannot forget my visit to Ground Zero, which by then was a deep, steep-walled, square hole that looked like a giant grave being dug.

I have toured Gettysburg’s battlefields and cemeteries; visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall with more than 58,000 names etched into the black mirror-like marble; and seen the USS Arizona Memorial that marks the resting place of 1,102 sailors. The sight of a canyon-sized hole at Ground Zero squeezed my heart ever as tightly.

The devastation that had been cleared away was numbing: 200,000 tons of twisted steel wreckage, 600,000 square feet of shattered glass, 425 cubic yards of concrete, and even 40,000 doorknobs that had all come crashing down from 110 stories high, entombing more than 2,600 innocent victims.

Left behind were shattered hopes, wrecked lives and broken hearts – and also, at a nearby makeshift memorial site, countless notes and cards. One hand-written message I saw read: “You will always be remembered as heroes” in honor of the 344 FDNY firefighters and 71 police officers who lost their lives after courageously rushing into the burning buildings trying to save the lives of others.

Another note, this one from a young schoolchild who wrote in her best printing: “Dear Firemen, THANK YOU for everything you did for our country. Love, Jodi.”

Similarly there was a picture of seven firemen in uniform, young and handsome and in the prime of their lives, with these words: “Thank You, Seven In Heaven, Ladder 101 FDNY.”

And this: “To Daddy, We love you, miss you and you’ll always be in out hearts. Love, Gyasi and Craig.” My heart aches for them growing up without their Daddy and all the milestones – graduations, weddings, perhaps the birth of his grandchildren – he missed.

At Ground Zero that day, I also met a woman whose husband died in one of the Towers. Cradling an infant baby, she tearfully shared this: “Her father never met her.”

That baby girl is now 19 going on 20, and to her 9-11-2001 does not seem like yesterday. It was her lifetime ago.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com