September 11, 2001
by Fred Schaeffer, SFO

As the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 is coming around in a few days, I need to think back, and reflect what I was doing on that date. I wasn't watching television, because I was a monk (at that time located in South Venice, FL) and we didn't have television that was connected to a television network. But I heard about it when we went to Holy Mass that day, or the next, best as I recall. And, of course, we then took to the Internet and looked it up.

When I realized what had happened, a rogue attack where two American commercial jets had been slammed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan (New York City), and that there were many dead and wounded; that another jet slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania, all on the same day, it was obvious we had been attacked by an enemy on our own soil. As a Veteran (U.S. Army), I know I had very conflicting thoughts. I wished the people who caused these heinous crimes dead, but as a monk I know that was the wrong thought. Still I wasn't able to justify that my thought was so wrong. It took time to get over it, and I'm still not quite there.

And now, this week, when there are several documentaries of those event, these feelings come back and they sadden me. I pray for those who have lost their lives, and for the relatives and friends of the dead and wounded who had to struggle with their own emotions over the years. One can somewhat justify military deaths in a battle situation, but civilian casualties as a result of terrorism, that's a whole other thing.

I lived and worked in New York from 1954 to mid-1984, when I moved to Florida. The two towers of the World Trade Center were completed in 1981, and I have visited the lobby and have gone to an office there once or twice although I no longer recall which floor and in which of the two buildings in question. I do remember trying to look up from the street floor and wondering if it was really wise to build anything that high. At the time, probably 1982-3, it never dawned on me to wonder whatever would happen in case of a high-rise fire, but I know that has been a worry of the New York Fire Department for a long time.

For many years (while the WTC was still under construction, beginning in 1975), I worked on the 48th floor of the "One Chase Manhattan Plaza" a 60-story building, one corner of which was on Nassau and Liberty Sts. If one walked west on Liberty, about a quarter of a mile, one would reach the South Tower. One block north of Liberty Street was Cortlandt Street, once known as a district where there were many radio and electronics parts stores (in which I was interested in the late 1960's and early 1970's) but the development of the WTC undid the part of Cortlandt Street all the way to the Hudson River, and the parts stores sort of disappeared. So it was an area I was very familiar with, and many a lunch hour I would walk there and back to the office. Actually in 1969 I took a job uptown. Those were the days I still liked working and living in New York, but when I left for good in 1984, I was happy to leave that big city with the noise, tons of people, and constant smell of airplane fuel.

Without the World Trade Center, New York will never be the same again.

Fred Schaeffer, SFO
9/6/2011