On September 11, 2001, at about 9:10 a.m., I was getting off a bus at 54th St. and Lexington Ave. in midtown Manhattan, heading into the offices of Nation’s Restaurant News. I remember looking south as I stepped onto the curb, seeing the thick, black smoke from somewhere downtown and wondering where the fire was. I entered the building at 425 Park Ave., took the elevator up to the sixth floor and walked into what appeared to be a deserted office.
After a bit of head-scratching, I wandered around until I reached the conference room, where I found everyone huddled around the TV, in shock. At that moment I learned of the horror of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Sept. 11 that year was on a Tuesday, a day after NRN’s weekly issue was usually put to bed. This particular week, however, a production problem meant that we were a day late. The editorial team jumped at the opportunity to report on the tragedy and its impact on the foodservice industry.
Partly because of my experience as a reporter for a daily newspaper and partly because I was the only reporter in New York who didn’t cover a segment of the restaurant industry, I was assigned the job of collecting all the reportage from the other New York staffers and our bureau chiefs and crafting a front-page story for the Sept. 17th issue.
That day remains a blur to me. I was continually in contact with writers from around the country as they completed interviews with industry executives. I even made a few calls myself; contract companies such as Aramark, Sodexo and Whitson’s had accounts in the destroyed buildings.
These were difficult interviews to do, and they are ones I don’t do well. When I was a newspaper reporter I dreaded having to cover fires, accidents and other tragedies because it meant that eventually I would have to talk with victims or their families. I always felt terrible having to intrude on their grief, and it is a key reason why I have seldom missed consumer journalism.
But this day seemed different; I think, in part, because we all were victims. For once, I wasn’t an outsider. I and my interviews shared this nightmare.
I finished the article at about 7 p.m. or so and made it home about two hours later. In the weeks that followed there would be plenty of follow-up stories to write, some sad, some heroic and some even a bit funny. I recall, for instance, a conversation I had with some foodservice employees at Con Edison’s offices near the World Trade Center, who told me how they slept in the cafeteria while providing food for rescue and recovery workers. The foodservice manager said his team had pulled out some stacks of bubble wrap to use as makeshift mattresses. The scheme worked fine, he explained, until the weight of their bodies began to pop the air bubbles.
This past weekend I realized that, in the days and weeks following 9/11, I never took time to reflect on what had happened. I rationalized my ”inaction” as, I didn’t know anyone who perished in the attack or its aftermath, so there was nothing personal for me to mourn.
The truth is, I was burying my pain. There was much for me to mourn, but I didn’t want to do it. It took me 10 years to realize that. So I took time Sunday morning to reflect. I mourned the thousands who lost their lives, and I mourned the loss of the lives we Americans had before the events of 9/11. Time heals all wounds, but the scars definitely remain.