My September 11, 2001
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I walked from Grand Central to my office at Two Penn Plaza beneath a perfectly blue sky. I arrived in time for my daily 7:30 meeting with my divisional finance manager. It seemed like an ordinary workday.
Shortly after our meeting, Scott, one of my direct reports, came into my office. His wife had called. She worked at the Wall Street Journal, across the street from the World Trade Center, and told him that paper was flying everywhere. Another manager stopped in and said that on his walk to work he had seen what appeared to be a small plane hit the North Tower.
I passed the news along to my manager, and three of us walked down to the company cafeteria on the twelfth floor. Its south-facing windows gave us an unobstructed view of the World Trade Center, about four miles away. There were no tall buildings blocking our view. The North Tower was smoking heavily. We could see the dark mark where the plane had struck.
Before we had much chance to discuss what we were seeing, another plane suddenly appeared from the west. It turned sharply and disappeared into the far side of the South Tower. There was an immediate flash and explosion. I yelled. It felt as if something had hit me in the chest.
We knew immediately that everything had changed. This wasn’t a small plane that had accidentally hit the North Tower.
I went back to my office and called Bernie. in Nyack. This was before we routinely carried cell phones. I told her to turn on the television. What was happening was easier to see than to explain.
100 People
Sometime later, while I was talking with another manager, we learned that one of the towers had collapsed. Transportation quickly ground to a halt. New Jersey Transit stopped running for a time. One of my employees, I learned later, had bolted for Penn Station and managed to catch one of the last scheduled trains out. Ferries continued running across the Hudson and became another way out of the city.
I moved into crisis-management mode. About 100 employees reported to me in the building, and suddenly I felt responsible for knowing what was happening to them. How would they get home? If they couldn’t get home, did they have somewhere to stay? Was everyone accounted for? Focusing on those questions kept me from thinking too much about the enormous loss of life taking place just a few miles away.
People began finding their own ways out of Manhattan. Some of my colleagues walked home, including people who lived in Brooklyn. Some found rides. One employee walked all the way to the George Washington Bridge to get to New Jersey. Others headed for the ferry to Weehawken.
Gradually, I accounted for almost everyone. One woman remained. She was waiting for a call from her brother, who worked at 7 World Trade Center. She didn’t know whether he was alive. Around three o’clock, she finally heard from him. He was safe, and she had a place to stay.
Only then did I begin my own journey home.
Leaving Manhattan
By afternoon, Metro-North was operating on an emergency basis. I headed toward Grand Central with the same determined, heads-down walk as other Midtown office workers trying to get home.
The people around me were not the ash-covered survivors we would see in photographs from Lower Manhattan. We were Midtown office workers. Physically, our part of the city was largely untouched. Yet normal life had stopped. Many stores had closed. Transportation was uncertain. Everyone seemed intent simply on getting somewhere safe.
I don’t remember much about the train ride. I don’t even remember much about getting home. I know I reached Tarrytown around four o’clock. Mostly, I remember being more exhausted than I thought it was possible to be. The whole journey seemed dreamlike and surreal. I felt as though I were in a trance.
Bernie and I were in the process of moving from Clinton Avenue to Lexow Avenue at the end of the month. Until that morning, the move had seemed terribly important.
Suddenly, it wasn’t.
The Next Morning
I don’t think any of us slept much that night. The next morning, I didn’t know what to do. There was nothing useful I could accomplish at the office. But I didn’t know where else to go or what else to do. So I went to work.
With a shudder, I noticed how many cars remained in the Tarrytown train station parking lot from the night before.
Were those people gone?
Only three people showed up at the office that day. We didn’t do any work. The streets of Midtown were eerily quiet. There were far fewer office workers than usual. In the background lingered the acrid smell of smoke.
And something else had changed. In Manhattan, we normally don’t stare at strangers. We pass one another without acknowledgment, each of us intent on getting somewhere. But now, as I walked to and from the office, I looked into the eyes of the people coming toward me. They looked back.
Again and again our eyes met. These weren’t people I knew. They were ordinary Midtown workers like me. No one needed to say anything. We shared grief. We shared the knowledge of what we had just witnessed and what had been lost. There was also a sense of solidarity, perhaps even a shared purpose: we were here, and somehow we were going to keep going.
The walkers’ stare continued in the days and weeks that followed.The streets gradually became busier. People returned to their offices. Stores reopened. The routines of Manhattan slowly resumed. But for a long time, the stare remained.
We had been strangers before September 11.
Now we looked one another in the eye.
About the author
Mike Hays has lived in the Nyacks for 38 years. After a career as an executive at McGraw-Hill Education in New York City, he now focuses on researching, writing, and interpreting local history.
He serves as Treasurer and past President of the Historical Society of the Nyacks. He is also a Trustee of the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center and Historian for the Village of Upper Nyack. In these roles, he works with community partners to preserve historic resources and expand public understanding of the area’s past.
Since 2017, he has written the popular Nyack People & Places column for Nyack News & Views. The series chronicles the history, architecture, and personalities of the lower Hudson Valley.
Hays has also developed museum exhibitions, written interpretive materials, and led well-attended walking tours that bring Nyack’s history to life.
He is married to Bernie Richey. He enjoys cycling, history walks, and winters in Florida. You can follow him on Instagram at @UpperNyackMike.
