Looking Back and Looking Ahead

If you're a Civic Center local, you can probably remember the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.

I can't begin to imagine the chaos around City Hall that day. All I can really remember is my own fear for my father surge through my chest, a litany cycling through my head while they held us at school: Please, let Daddy have been far away from the World Trade Center. Sometimes that fear still pulls at my chest and brings tears to my eyes.

And today, those tears spilled out at the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, where I went with my journalism class. I didn't lose anyone in the attacks, but I still cried for the 2,751 people who died and for the families of the approximately 20,000 remains found in the rescue effort, according to statistics compiled by Tribute WTC.

What I saw on a film in one of the galleries impacted me the most during the visit. I can still hear the gravelly voice of an aging firefighter talking about the rescue effort, and the search for the body of his son. I can still hear him counting himself more fortunate than the others because he found his son's body in one piece.

"We were finding boots with feet inside. We were finding pants and jackets with body parts inside," Manny Papir, former Mayor Giuliani's deputy chief of staff, said.

Papir aided in the evacuation process on Sept. 11. During the evacuation it seemed as though he had lost all senses except for sight and it was only days later that he could distinguish smells again, he said.

Our tour guide, John Henderson, had also been in the area that day. He told us that he and his wife wore surgical masks while walking through the debris. They walked across the Brooklyn bridge and refused to turn back, he said.

"We're not looking back. There's nothing behind us that we need to see," Henderson said he told his wife.

Yet Henderson, who also works in NYU Graduate Enrollment Services, has come back to lead WTC Tribute tours around the site and through the galleries. As the tour neared its end, Henderson stressed to us that everyone can help in some small way. We can look forward to the World Trade Center Memorial and the Freedom Tower. We can spare a minute to remember those brave enough to try saving others even when all hope seemed lost.

"Are you guys ready? Let's roll," Tom Beamer, credited with leading a passenger takeover of hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93, said on Sept. 11, 2001.