Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource September 11 Digital Archive Stories Description An account of the resource This collection is the bulk of the archive, representing the reactions and experiences of thousands of individuals beginning in 2002. 911DA Story 911DA Story: Story Tell us about what you did, saw, or heard on September 11th. Feel free to write as much or as little as you like. Tell us your story: Ever since I had moved with my family to Central New Jersey in 1993, I commuted from my home to my law office in lower Manhattan. The last leg of my daily commute was a 22-minute ride on the Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) train line. The last stop on that trip was the underground station deep beneath the World Trade Center. On the morning of 9/10/01, I had to stop off at my office on Wall Street to pick up some papers enroute to a court appearance. At exactly 8:46 a.m. on 9/10/01 I was exiting the PATH train and heading up the escalator to the underground WTC Concourse level. When I left my office on the afternoon of 9/10 I had already loaded into my briefcase the papers I would need to cover court conferences scheduled to be held on 9/11 in a lower Manhattan courthouse. The significance of those minutes of preparation will remain with me forever. Knowing I could proceed directly to Court and avoid the need to stop by my office on the morning of 9/11, I left home bit later than I had the day before. At about 8:50 a.m. I was in the midst of my daily PATH ride. One of the mundane activities PATH commuters engage in every morning is glancing eastward toward the lower Manhattan skyline, visible in the not too distant horizon as the train approached and passed beyond the Journal Square station in Jersey City, NJ. We had just been told we were being re-routed to the midtown PATH terminal station near 33rd Street and Broadway due to a "police action" ongoing at the World Trade Center. I glanced up at the white towers of the WTC and saw a large, dark gray cloud of smoke billowing out of the south tower, 2 WTC. Ironically, my law office had been located on the 26th floor of 2 WTC about two years earlier! At that point, I had no idea of the enormity of the events about to transpire. I continued on to Manhattan believing my court appearances about 6 or 7 blocks northwest of the Trade Center would not be affected by a "fire" that far away. Shortly after arriving and exiting onto the midtown streets, I began to learn what was happening. I observed a stream men and women in business suits, briefcases and shoulder bags swaying at their sides, all striding North from lower Manhattan. An attorney I had met in Court the week before happened to be a member of that scurrying army. He saw me moving southward and stopped long enough to tell me the buildings in lower Manhattan were being evacuated. Having realized my only option was to return home to New Jersey, I began to make my way westward towards Pennsylvania Station, intending to catch the next outbound New Jersey Transit train. It was a futile attempt. By that time, all bridges and tunnels leading in and out of Manhattan had been shut down under a security protocol apparently in place for emergency situations. I joined the thousands of other commuters scattered around the Penn Station area, assuming a similar scene was being acted out in the vicinity of Grand Central Station, the other main commuter terminal in midtown Manhattan. At that point I happened to look southward to where earlier that morning stood the twin towers and realized they no longer stood out in the lower Manhattan skyline. I shortly learned from a nearby car radio that the World Trade Center--and the concourse beneath it that I had been using on a daily basis-was no longer there. Eventually, the trains began to run and I joined thousands of shocked and angry commuters in a trip home that I will never forget. The westbound trains exit the tunnel under the Hudson River and enter into the daylight of Central New Jersey. They then turn to the South, heading to Newark Penn Station, the main terminal for westbound Amtrak and commuter trains. While heading South from the tunnel exit on the daily commute home, one usually turns his or her eyes eastward, grateful to see the fading Manhattan skyline in the distance. It always signaled the end of another workday and the beginning of the unwinding that would occur during the long ride home. This time the view was anything by soothing. An unfathomable, smoldering cloud of dust and smoke dominated the airspace over lower Manhattan. The sense of leaving work and the City behind was replaced by the realization that my daily trips to and from Manhattan would forever be over-shadowed by the memory of the sites and emotions experienced on that day. I still find myself glancing wistfully and sadly on my daily commutes at the eternally altered lower Manhattan skyline, knowing that the events of 9/11/01 will forever be a part of who I am and how I live the rest of my life. I'll re-live those walks through the lower concourse, of the stores I shopped in and the countless people I saw there each day, not knowing who amongst them I would never see again. At some point there will be new buildings standing where the Trade Center once stood. But the shadows of what had been there will always be reflected in my mind's eye as I pass through on my daily commutes into and out of a City forever changed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource story6981.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. story Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-09-13 IP Address The IP address of the device used to submit the item. 67.80.181.44