WEB EXTRA: Remembrances of 9-11 at the WTC
John Carman, a professor in the College of Agriculture, was staying in the Twin Towers Marriott on Sept. 11, 2011. Five minutes after he left the hotel for some meetings, the first plane crashed into the North Tower. This is a modified version of a letter he wrote to his son who was serving an LDS mission
Remembrances of 9 11 at the WTC, 2001
Modified from a letter written by one of the many
thousands of WTC survivors to his son, Oct 9, 2001
On Labor Day, Sep 3, 2001 I flew from Salt Lake City to JFK, to Paris and on to Vienna. There I caught a bus eastward to Nitra, Capital of the old Soviet State of Slovakia. Tuesday through Friday, I attended and spoke at a plant embryology conference. There I met a biologist from Egypt, and with some others we explored Nitra thus avoiding what might have been some dull evenings. Nonetheless, Slovakia had suffered through a 50-year suppressive regime. Its cultural offerings were bleak in contrast to Vienna, with its bustling culture. On Saturday, our group returned to the beautiful city of Vienna, on the Blue Danube, and in the evening, our Muslim friend took us odd-looking scientists to the “Egyptian House” where many Egyptians in Vienna eat, socialize and pray. The food was excellent.
I left my friends Sunday morning, Sep 9, flew to NYC, took a cab to the Twin Towers Marriott, at the World Trade Center, registered for three nights, and went to dinner at the Hotel’s Greenhouse Restaurant. The restaurant jutted inward between the towers from the second floor. It was named because of its glass roof, which perfectly framed the Twin Towers. Due to a thundershower, the evening sky was prematurely dark, and I hadn’t notice the towers. Suddenly lightning near by illuminated these massive structures, which made them appear, through the glass roof of the Greenhouse, to leap skyward. It was unforgettable. During dinner, lightening struck repeatedly. Because of the Greenhouse Restaurant architecture, this Sunday evening thundershower had been transformed into a magnificent light show.
A couple paused to offer grace at a table next to mine. Mixed with business were discussions of youth group camps and other youth activities. At another table, an older couple was seated, and the wife began choking. The husband yelled loudly for help, but at the same time he positioned himself behind his wife. With an aggressive Heimlich thrust, lodged food shot from her throat. I have wondered what kinds of businesses these various guests of the Twin Towers Marriott represented and where they were the following Tuesday morning.
I stopped in NYC to attend meetings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. They required preparation, so I spend most of Monday in my room. I did take a brake to buy shoes across from the old Trinity Church (around the corner from the WTC), and to visit monuments at Battery Park, which highlighted Manhattan Island and the War of 1812.
Monday night, Sep 10 I again ate at the Greenhouse. Some guests at a neighboring table were cruelly insulting their waiter and insisting he meet their irrational demands. The head waiter only marginally succeeded in calming them. Several weeks later, I thought of these and other people I had observed in the Greenhouse Restaurant. I was reading about death and dying, and death was being compared to falling rain. The opinion offered was that neither phenomenon is a respecter of persons. Each afflicts both the kind and the cruel. Had the disruptive guests or the praying or choking couples been safe the following morning, or had they perished?
Waking at 7:00 AM, Sep 11 I put on a new suit and new shoes and left for my 9:00 A.M. meeting. I stopped for breakfast at the Greenhouse, a $14 buffet consisting of two child-sized boxes of Raison Bran, yogurt and orange juice. I asked the waiter if he could bring my bill when he brought my juice. He did so, and I signed and added my room number before eating. The time on the receipt read 8:35 A.M. It took me about 5 min to eat, and then I walked quickly down the stunning spiral staircase of the Twin Towers Marriott to the lobby below and out the door. An empty cab was in front of me. I jumped in, gave the driver the Midtown address, and we pulled onto West Street heading North. Moments later the cab rocked sideways and shook from the compression wave of the first plane exploding inside the North Tower. The cab driver assured me it was just construction, but the workers were staring at the Towers.
I jerked to look through the back window and saw the flame-filled gash in the tower. It appeared to span three floors. My immediate thought: 200-300 people instantly vaporized. I yelled to the driver to stop. He did so briefly, but traffic forced us on. The radio announcer said it was a plane. Being in a cab, I hadn’t seen a plane, only its results, the leaping yellow flames and a gaping hole extending inward to at least the center of the building at about the 80th floor and breaking out the West side. Later it was reported that one of the engines passed through the building and landed on the Marriott roof. These were huge buildings, 110 stories high and 210 feet square. Before reaching Midtown, we heard about the second plane. It was now clearly a terrorist attack, not an accident. As yet, we didn’t know commercial jets were involved or that their impacts would collapse the buildings. It was later reported that falling debris had killed an employee in the Greenhouse Restaurant and others in front of the Marriott. I had been at both locations only moments before.
Stunned, like everyone else, I kept my 9:00 meeting. But shortly thereafter, a colleague from Logan, Utah called to see if I was ok. I asked him to call my wife. She knew I was in NYC but hadn’t realized I was anywhere near the WTC. I talked to her shortly thereafter and told her I was going back to the hotel to get my luggage. Of course I couldn’t do that. But people were stunned, I was stunned; but some, like the rescuers and Mayor Rudy Giuliani were thinking clearly. What impressive leadership roles they played that day. Just then, a staff member entered our room and told us the towers had collapsed.
Some of the attorneys and staff in the law offices had friends and family working in the Towers, but they had no way of communicating with them. Land lines were jammed, and cell phones only worked infrequently. My sons had gotten through to me briefly by cell, but without the relay hubs from the Towers, most calls were quickly dropped if they got through at all. In the office, a person commented they could see buildings through the smoke, which hadn’t been visible from those high rise windows in Midtown since before the Towers were built.
The office staff invited me to stay, but I decided to look for a former student of mine who was an attorney working near Time Square. People on the
street were frenzied trying to get off the Island. For fear of further attacks, authorities had shut down the subways and trains. Everyone with cars had left. By this time, most tall buildings in Manhattan had been evacuated, and the streets were full of people. My friend’s building, the Pan-Am, had also been vacated, and he was nowhere to be seen.
In NYC, pedestrians stay on sidewalks. But on Sep 11, from mid morning through the afternoon, the streets were full of people. Room was made only for an occasional police car or ambulance. On a not-so-crowded side street, near time square, a car raced down the street, its horn blaring. It started a panic, and several hundred people started running at me. Instinctively, I knocked over a stack of empty pop bottle racks in front of the advancing crowd and ran into an alley to take cover. Fortunately, the crowd stopped running before they arrived at the tipped-over racks.
My behavior had been a classic survival instinct, and moments later I felt waves of guilt. On the Titanic, people had time to think (nearly three hours). Hence, most survivors were women and children. In contrast, survivors of the British ocean liner Lusitania, which tipped to one side violently after being torpedoed in 1915 and immediately began to sink (completely submerged within 15 min), were mostly young, healthy and strong men and women who, in the panic of the moment, had fought their way onto the few successfully launched lifeboats. No one knew what peril, if any, the racing car near Time Square was fleeing from, but periodically during the day, low flying military planes triggered, among the masses of people below, short-lived panics.
I had the clothes I was wearing, a cell phone that wasn’t working (and the battery was going dead), a notepad and a wallet. Even with a wallet, it was unsettling to be 2300 miles from home and no place to go. My belongings and unfinished manuscript (proceedings of the paper I presented in Nitra) were in my hotel room, and I wouldn’t be getting them. Half of the Marriott collapsed the morning of 9 11, and it finished collapsing suddenly the following morning with other nearby buildings. I never finished the Nitra manuscript.
After the speeding car incident, I looked for a hotel for the night, but the ones I checked were full. Knowing of a Midtown Marriott, I asked for directions and found it. It too had been evacuated, but people with room keys (plastic cards with the hotel image on them) were allowed back in. For paid-up guests, it was a welcomed refuge from the confusion on the streets. I showed them my key card (a Marriott Hotel sandwiched between Twin Towers), and they whisked me in. Though rooms were not available, the staff was setting up roll-away beds in a large ballroom for those, like me, who had safely found their way from the Twin Towers Marriott to the Midtown Marque. A 12 foot square TV was tuned to CNN in the ballroom, which detailed events in NYC, DC and Pennsylvania. A large buffet was set with fruits, vegetables, and sweet rolls, but there were few partakers. People were glued to the news.
Strangers were talking to each other, but the talk included fears of further attacks. Imaginations were running wild, and I wanted to leave. However, in the Midtown Marriott, I met a man who had been only blocks from the falling towers. He was dust covered, with cuts on his arms and face from falling glass. He had filmed the Twin Towers collapsing and had downloaded the video to his laptop. People had gathered around to watch. This man, like so many others that day, had seen horrible tragedies first hand and had assisted some to safety. After talking with him for a couple of hours, I again tried calling my former graduate student and finally got through. He gave me instructions for getting to Princeton, NJ, which was just 75 min away by train, and I was out the door. Trains had started operating again around 3:30 P.M.
Broadway, near Time Square, was still full of people, all wanting the same thing, to get out. I ran to Penn Station. As I entered, I heard “Last Call for Trenton via Princeton, Track #4.” I jumped the pay gate, ran to the train, but it was full. I could see that the crowd was thin at the end of the train, so I sprinted to the last car and jumped on. Several seats were left. No one bothered to buy tickets, and no one checked.
A young Korean woman on the seat next to me was crying, and I talked to her, thinking that talking might help. She had been in NYC to decide on a law school to attend. We talked for 45 min just sharing feelings and thoughts. People talked to strangers that day like they were family.
I soon arrived in Princeton NJ, a center of science and culture, where Albert Einstein had reflected 50 years earlier that pursuing art and science can be a refuge from painful personal emotions. Throughout the world, events of this day had produced painful emotions. I called my friend from the station and was soon in the comfort of his home, with him, his good wife, and their beautiful children all fussing over me. I stayed with them two nights, mostly watching CNN, like others throughout the world. The next morning, we went to a department store so I could buy some clothes, a suitcase, a razor, etc. My friend must have told the clerk where I had been, because everything I was buying was suddenly on sale, 10-50% off, and an additional 10% was taken off because I applied for a credit card. The bill was half of what I expected.
After shopping, we ate sandwiches at a delicatessen and had ice cream in the courtyard. The early afternoon sun was bright and warm, the birds were singing, a weeping willow was gently swaying in the breeze, and I realized how happy I was to be alive. I enjoyed that ice cream.
It didn’t appear planes would be flying anytime soon. So Wednesday afternoon I called and reserved a rental car. I had a flight booked for Thursday afternoon, but Thursday morning all flights again were cancelled. I wasn’t anxious to fly anyway, so I picked up the rental car and drove to Lancaster, PA. There I spent three wonderful hours with a dear sister and her husband. She bought me a CD of patriotic songs, which I played while crossing the country. After a late lunch, I drove to Pittsburg where I spent the night.
The next day I crossed West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and stayed in Des Moines. Throughout the country, American Flags were proudly displayed in farmer’s fields, on passing cars, at truck stops and gas stations. Everywhere I stopped, people were talking. At several stops, I shared some of my experiences, and people gathered to hear of personal accounts they hadn’t heard on TV. The next day, I drove across Iowa and Nebraska and on to Rawlins, WY. Sunday I drove to Lyman, WY and stopped for church. I thought I might see friends from Lyman, but they had attended a morning service. I was asked to speak to the congregation that afternoon, and I consented.
In my talk, I attempted to clarify the tragedy at the WTC by relating an exampl
e from Princeton, NJ. It is a wrenching example, which relentlessly played itself out repeatedly in every bedroom community of NYC. In the school attended by my friend’s 4th grader, 17 children lost a parent (still missing as of Thursday morning). Five had lost both parents. They simply did not come home from work Tuesday night. For 10 years now, New York, its adjoining communities, and our nation as a whole have felt these losses. That Sunday afternoon, feeling more committed to being a kind and productive person, I drove the remaining 88 miles to Ogden, UT. I dropped the car off at the Ogden-Hinckley airport, and my wife and daughter picked me up. It was a happy reunion.