I volunteered at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11. My friend and I drove down to New York and served meals to firemen in a food tent near the still smoking, devastated site.
One day, a policeman who had come through the tent a few times asked us if we wanted to see Ground Zero for ourselves---and at a time when virtually no one had access to the site beyond the country’s politicians and tireless public safety teams.
I remember that when he asked us we immediately put down whatever we were doing and followed him without saying much, but we knew we were being given unique access to something both tragic and historic--something few people would ever see and something we would never forget. We were aware that the scene would be etched into our dreams for the rest of our lives, and become a part of our own story.
And I think we both wondered as we walked why he had chosen us. This policeman, who was now our guide, was solemn and dutiful---not at all using the moment he was leading us to for any other reason than to share it with us. It was clear that he wanted us to see it, wanted these two meal makers from the food tent to bear witness to something that he faced everyday.
He led us up a street and through a police barricade and told us not to take any pictures and then we walked into Ground Zero--- us two young mothers from Massachusetts who hadn't been doing anything special on September 10th.
To describe what we saw inside will always be impossible.
It's everything you saw on TV, but it was the feeling inside the site that I remember most. Not the twisted steel and the abandoned plates of eggs on a restaurant table---but the feeling. There was this heavy silence, but it wasn't---at least to me---the silence of death but the silence of reverence.
It was reverence.
Even today---all these years later---that reverence is what I carry as the remnants from that day.
It's a reverence for those who died, those who searched and rescued, those whose lives were touched so intimately by that tragedy.
And I will remember how small I felt standing amongst the piles of steel and dust and leaving with my head bowed but with an incredible feeling of hope...that one day this hell would lead us to a world that has no rubble...
The cop told us that since the site was essentially a burial ground, it would be out of line to snap photos. That didn’t seem too strange for me because I travel a lot and most churches don’t allow pictures inside. To this day, I don’t know why the cop brought us inside. I think he really just wanted to share it with us and he could. As far as him pointing anything out—-he walked us into the site, which really felt like indoors because of all the rubble—and then he walked away after telling us not to walk around or snap photos. He left us in front of what used to be a restaurant near or beside one of the WTC, but the front facade was missing. Within the restaurant, the tables still had plates and coffee cups on them. It was dark, but one lone cooler full of Coke’s and water was still working and casting an eerie glow. The restaurant had obviously been abandoned after one of the planes crashed. We just stood there for about ten minutes watching the little figures of firefighters climbing piles of rubble off in the distance. You could see their fire hats bobbing up and down. After a time, the policeman came back and led us out.
From where we stood, the piles weren’t giant because the space was so immense. It was truly vast, so everything seemed smaller in this huge space. The first pile of rubble was like a football field away from us but it looked more like two.
At the time, I didn’t suspect our own government, but looking back now how weird it was that they had built actual grandstands for dignitaries to visit and view the ruins. In hindsight, how absolutely disgusting. Like, “Look! Come and see what we did!” It reeks of narcissism, to put it mildly. This poor policeman who brought us to the site...he’d lost friends. And meanwhile, the perpetrators were building grandstands to show the world their handiwork.
Maybe he needed your comfort at that exact moment and so he saw two mothers who cared and who better to ask to walk with him. He probably couldn't tell you that but maybe it was his way of reaching out in that moment.😥
Agreed
Thank you for sharing.
That is kind of wild how the cooler full of Cokes still was working.
We got married a year after 9/11 (November) and we delayed our honeymoon to spend Christmas with my husband's family in Ireland. We came back through NY and spent New Years. We went down to Ground Zero which by that point was a gigantic hole in the ground. I had been to NY before and been in the towers. I have pictures from that trip and it is weird to see the towers in them from different vantage points across the city. But I could see them in the foot prints. Eerie.
We had lunch at a little Cafe a couple of blocks away and talked with the owner. He shared getting people inside and in the back of the restaurant right before they fell. He said outside the windows looked like a blizzard. I remember seeing pictures of a similar business and boulders were flying by like you were tossing a rolled up piece of paper.
But what I do remember is the St.Paul's Chapel and how it was untouched. There were pictures attached to the fence. Memorials of those that had died. They were faded from the weather and being outside.
And that is holy ground. Interesting little piece regarding that church. It survived a massive fire in 1776. God does indeed work in mysterious ways ..
https://www.guideposts.org/inspiration/miracles/gods-grace/9-11-miracle-the-little-chapel-that-survived