It’s hard to imagine it’s been five years since I sat in my sophomore biology class, watching the towers fall, wondering where my sister was, if she was already in the city at that time, wondering how many people were still in the towers. It’s sad, but when I watched the first tower collapse, the only thought I had was, “There’s no Twin Towers anymore. What will we call them?” When the second tower collapsed, I was given my answer – we were to call the Twin Towers history.
I visited the World Trade Center site for the first time in four years this summer. I live in New York, I worked in Manhattan every day this summer and I never ventured farther than Vesey Street. I decided, for whatever reason, to venture downtown this summer. I held my breath as I walked up Broadway and turned right on Fulton. Here in the middle of the city still stood this gaping hole. People from all walks of life were there, as it has become one of the “hottest” tourist spots in New York. People were taking pictures next to the World Trade Center sign, in front of the construction, in front of cop cars. I walked up to the chain-link fence, said a prayer and just looked around. How far we’ve come in only a few short years. People still walk by the site every day on their way to work and people still use trains beneath the site to get home. The last time I had been to the site was a few months after the attacks in 2002. It was sobering to still see it here.
I walked around the site and up Liberty Street, where I passed Ladder 10, Company 10. It is the firehouse that is literally adjacent to the site, that was responsible for the World Trade Center, that lost five members that day. The garage door was open, since it was a warm day, and there was a small crowd taking pictures with the truck and of the memorial outside the house. I stopped in and talked to two of the guys, who couldn’t have been nicer. A few days later, I was privileged enough to sit down with some members of the house, have a beer and hear their stories. Of all the firefighters I’ve ever encountered, I have never felt as touched as I did that day, to sit down with these men who rarely ever share their story with the public. Even if it was between a beer and a cheap joke, I sat down with a piece of history.
“We’re just guys, you know?” said one of them. “We have people bringing us cakes and food, thanking us still for 9/11. We couldn’t forget if we tried. You walk outside our building and it’s there.” Perhaps one of the most touching stories was of a “brother,” as they called each other, who took the shift of another on the morning of Sept. 11. He never made it out.
After I said goodbye, I walked back up to Vesey Street, and I looked at another family taking a picture together around the infamous sign. I wondered if they had any concept of the fact that they were smiling and holding each other in such close proximity to a place where thousands of people lost their lives. I have to wonder if those who come to visit the WTC site actually realize the magnitude of the devastation that New York felt that day. It’s hard, when you see people smiling in pictures and paying tour guides, to believe that they understand what they are witnessing when they are there. I was angered, at first, at the thought that so many people take for granted the lives that were lost that day on that very spot, forgetting that most of those who died that day were simply going to work. But I was soothed at the idea that at least people were remembering. People that came to see the site, whether to pay respects or just to say they were there, were forced to remember the towers and those who died, and saw the unnatural space among the other skyscrapers.
Perhaps it seems cruel, but as a New Yorker, I never want people to disregard the horrors of that day, and I know I am not the only one. I am not the only New Yorker who never wants the world to forget what was lost that day and the impact it had not only on New York but around the world. Sept. 11 is a heritage most New Yorkers now claim, one most others can not understand. But it is a heritage that I feel should be shared and mutually respected by all.
The World Trade Center site is something I recommend every person seeing at least once in their life. Not to take pictures, not to mingle with the firefighters, not to buy memorabilia or have the ability to say you were there, but to experience the sense of loss, and more so, the sense of unity it brings to most New Yorkers – the sense of loss and unity it should bring to our entire nation. While the World Trade Center is New York’s cross to bear, it should be the nation that helps us support it.
Stefanie Williams is a junior english literature major. She can be reached at swills25@umd.edu.
