I remember the blue skies and the silence, except for the occasional military jet patrolling the area. At the time, I lived within the landing pattern of EWR, JFK, LGA, HPN, and SWF, and at any given moment, there were usually several commercial jets circling the airports waiting to land. But then the skies shut down, and there was silence — blue skies and dead, eery, silence.
I also recall seeing what I later found out was AA Flight 11 flying low down the Hudson River Valley, low even for a jet landing at nearby SWF or HPN, the two closest airports to my house. A few minutes later, FR Breaking News reported the first crash into the WTC North Tower.
My (late) father lost a friend on that horrible day. My father was a constructive executive who had renovated the offices of a very prestigious Wall Street law firm and got to know the buildings operations manager. On 9/11 the man John Ernst Eichler had been in the Windows On The World Restaurant having a meeting with his broker about setting up a scholarship for inner city kids. When the plane hit both men were trapped and perished. My youngest brother was a sous chef in NYC at the time and was teaching a class of developmentally challenged adults the basics of banquet preparation as part of a program run by The Port Authority and the New York State Dept. of Education. Many of his students later were given jobs working in The Sky Box Cafe in the South Tower. The woman who ran the program and was the manager liked my brother and offered him the job of managing the cafe but he had a better paying job at the time. On 9/11 at least 12 of his students were all killed when the plane hit the Tower. My brother says sometimes at night, in his dreams he see’s their faces, they call to him for help but he can’t do anything for them.
My other younger brother was in down town Jersey City at the building department that morning around 9am when someone ran into the building and yelled “The Trade Centers on fire!’’. He ran out of the building and looked east just as the second plane hit and watched the whole thing go down. He even saw people jumping. He said “It looked like wax dripping from a candle’’. He too suffers nightmares sometimes because of what he saw.And to round out this quartet of 9/11 horror 9/11 is my oldest brothers birthday.