2001 - More than a Memory

I visited Manhattan for the first time in 2000. I was with a group of collegues on a training mission to Parsippany, NJ (woo hoo!) and we took the train into the city for three whole hours. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and then to Battery Park at night (stupid) hoping in vain for a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. Later we took an $80 cab back to NJ and eventually made our way home to Colorado without a second thought.

In June of 2001, I began my real love affair with the great city of Manhattan. As many tourists do, I hopped on the cheesy red double-decker bus and set out across the city in the blazing summer heat with my husband and our friends, the brothers Tieman.

There was a mirrored walkway that linked the towers. A popular photo opp for tourists, from the top deck of the bus, you could ride under the tunnel, look up and take your photo with the reflection of the towers looming overhead. Yeah, we were those dorks.






I lived in Denver, Colorado back then. Nature's playground. Until I moved to Denver, Atlanta was the largest city I had ever visited, so one might imagine how amazed I was to suddenly find myself in serious daily gridlock, with access to all the arts, entertainment, and scenery I could handle. Still, when the chance came for me to join my husband on the tail end of a business trip to the Big Apple, I jumped.

We stayed at the Belvedere right between the Restaurant and Theatre Districts in midtown Manhattan. We ate a rediculous amount of food, walked about a million miles and saw "Kiss Me Kate," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and "Rent" on Broadway. Back then shows on the Great White Way were actually affordable and I found the people of Manhattan to be very friendly and accommodating. I felt safe.

My next visit to NYC came a year later in late June of 2002. Ground Zero was still a gated-off gaping hole in the ground and the City held a stillness that certainly wasn't there the year before. To call it melancholy is a complete understatement. The energy was gone. The bustle was still there, but it just wasn't the same. Tourists posed for photos with men and women in service uniforms and openly hugged them or shook their hands and thanked them for their service or expressed condolences for the unspeakable tragedy and loss which befell their home and undoubtedly their coworkers and loved-ones.

We happened to be there during the Gay Pride parade that year. The gay and lesbian service men and women all marched together in the parade to waves of cheers and tears. A surreal moment to witness, for sure.

I can't begin to imagine what it was like to experience such a tragedy as a New Yorker. As an American, each morning of September 11 each year I will, like so many others, stop to reflect on where I was, what I was doing. I didn't have children then. We hadn't been in our first house for too long at that point and I was rushing out the door to get to work when I flipped on the television and watched in confusion as smoke poured from the building. Not long after my 45 minute commute to work ended, the first tower had fallen. It was like watching something out of Hollywood. Terrified and grief-stricken, watching New Yorkers flee for their lives and gasp for air. And it was real. There were real people in there.

A sad day of reflection, for sure as I sit at my desk, thinking about what happened on this day eight years ago. I have visited Manhattan frequently since that time - now less as a tourist and more as a fan of the city so many of my friends now call home. I am glad that my first NYC experience was before the fall, but I am sad that so many lives will never be the same in the aftermath. Today when I see images of the twin towers in old movies set in New York there is always a tightening of my hearstrings. Maybe this is how the generation before us feels about the day John F. Kennedy was shot or the way the younger generation will feel about the day Michael Jackson died.

Maybe there is hope for the future.