[VAXman(Admin)]

I was in NYC one week to the day of the 9/11 attacks for a Flower Kings concert at the Bottom Line in the shadows of the WTC. It was The Rainmaker tour and where I first heard "The Last Minute on Earth". The song always makes me think of the WTC.

I too had been in WTC on many occasions. I was doing a security audit for Chase Manhattan Bank for awhile and would take the Path Train to the WTC stop and also for Cantor Fitzgerald -- a securities company -- in the WTC itself. People that had never been to the WTC have a problem grasping the size if what fell there that day.

I was in Anaheim, CA for a computer user group meeting 9/11. I remember it vividly. I awoke early still being on east coast time and a ventured downstairs in the Marriott to the Starbucks for a cup of coffee. People were standing about with vacant expressions staring at the TV sets in the Starbucks tuned to the news. A fellow member of the user group saw me and said "Hey, you live in the NY area, don't you? A plane just flew into the World Trade Center." I had assumed a small plan as I thought no commercial pilot could commit such an egregious piloting error. I got closer to the TV set and heard the announcement that a Jet hit the WTC. Again, I assumed it was, perhaps, a small corporate Jet. Then, as I was watching, the second jet was approaching and hit the tower. This was no small corporate jet. Within seconds, my cell phone rang. It was my wife asking me if I had the TV set turned on. I told here were I was and that I had seen the footage on the news.

An engineer who was to be presenting at that meeting later that week was a victim on one of the jets that hit the WTC. The organizers of the user group cancelled all sessions for the remainder of the week. Disney Land was closed as well for fear of the safety of people there. I contacted my brother-in-law who was working as a travel agent at the time. He was able to procure a car for me to drive home as the NY area airports were closed for an additional week beyond the opening of other airports. A friend who works for one of my clients in Rockville MD and I drove home from Anaheim -- 3 very long gruelling days of driving (a total of 3016 miles). We were all very happy to be home with our families.

I went to Liberty Park the following day to see the aftermath. It was extremely overcast day. Here is a picture of me there. There are still military helicopters in the air. The WTC stood in the area near my left sholder. I chose the "Misplaced Childhood" shirt -- our innocence forever lost to this event.

My father-in-law lives in Wood Ridge, NJ. I still can't drive there without thinking how odd the NYC skyline looks without the WTC. I'm then reminded of all of the innocent life lost there and the lives that have been affected by it. t's all very depressing.