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September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Akashic Books

Chapter One

It is the last one he will experience for a while.

Because at that exact hour, in lower Manhattan, his oldest brother, Jim, is getting hit by an airplane: American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. A few minutes later, as Potorti stands in his backyard drinking a cup of coffee, the phone rings. His mom says, "I'm very concerned about the kamikaze attack." Kamikaze attack? "On the World Trade Center." The World Trade Center? And then, to drive the point home, "Your brother works there."

His wife turns on the television and he sees the images - the burning tower, the second plane, and the fireball - that will come to run like a film loop in his head. His brother works on the 95th floor of the North Tower. He knows its 110 stories tall. And as he estimates the point of impact by counting down floors from the top, he realizes that the gaping hole and billowing smoke are coming from exactly where his brother should have been sitting, and his stomach turns. Is he there at this hour? Is he on a stairwell, screaming in the middle of chaotic evacuation? Potorti continues to watch - and as he sees the first, and then the second tower collapse, he wonders: Am I watching my brother die, right now, on live television?

* * *

In New York City, the skies are postcard blue: It is an absolutely gorgeous day. Rita Lasar, a widow in her seventies, rises in the rent-controlled Lower East Side high-rise she shared with her late husband, Ted, and pops a cigarette into her mouth. They raised two sons here, running a small electronics business around the corner, and one winter day Ted sat down on the recliner chair that still sits in her living room, and didn't get up. But she still lives here, and has a life befitting a woman of her stature, a life of plays and museums and books and old friends.

As is her fashion, she starts her day at the kitchen table in her nightgown, with a cup of coffee - the strong kind, from San Francisco - and listens to WBAI-FM, the listener-supported Pacifica Network radio station. That's when she hears it: A plane has hit the World Trade Center, only two miles from where she's sitting. She rushes into her den, flips on the ancient portable TV, and sees black smoke pouring out of the North Tower. Still wearing her slippers, she hustles down the hallway to her Friend's apartment at the other end of the building, the one with a southwest view encompassing the Twin Towers.

Together they step out onto the balcony, where the TV image she's just seen is playing out in real time against the crystal blue sky. They arrive just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower. At that moment, she realizes that whatever is happening is not an accident.

And at that same moment, she realizes that her kid brother, Abe, is working in one of those burning buildings.

* * *

A world away in the North Bronx, Colleen Kelly has the distinct feeling it's going to be a great day. Kindergarten started the week before, and her daughter cried every morning on her way to school. But on September 11, her daughter isn't crying. And for this mother of three young kids, that's a victory worth savoring. A nurse practitioner, she lives with her social-worker husband, Dan Jones, and their two boys in a former residence for Catholic priests, a gabled three-story house that stands like a relic amid the brick apartment buildings that surround it.

Kelly works at a high school health clinic about two blocks from where she drops off her daughter. She's on the phone with Sister Suzanne, a nurse in East Harlem, when the nun says, "Did you hear about the plane hitting the World Trade Center?" The clock on Kelly's desk reads 9:23 a.m. She turns on the radio - where the news is still frantic and confusing - and asks her co-workers if they know that something serious is going on downtown. She gets a sick feeling in her stomach, the same feeling she gets whenever she flies, because she's deathly afraid of getting on airplanes.

Kelly spends the morning fielding calls from her mother and two sisters, who are concerned about her brother Billy. She reassures them that Billy works at Park Avenue and 59th Street - miles away from the chaos. She returns to her radio to hear a live report from a Brooklyn rooftop: The reporter starts screaming in mid-sentence that one of the towers is collapsing. Kelly is overwhelmed with compassion for the people there. Her high school, an enormous urban institution with 4,200 students, begins to make plans for counseling kids who might be touched in some way by the loss of life downtown. At 11:15 a.m., Kelly's phone rings. It's her sister Mimi, and she's got bad news: Billy was at the World Trade Center for a breakfast conference. Kelly starts screaming, "No!" She screams it over and over again. The nightmare she's been listening to has just become her own.

* * *

In Hartville, Missouri, September 11 is shaping up to be a carefree day for Ryan Amundson. A University of Missouri grad with a degree in sociology, he woke up early - which was not typical for the 24-year-old - to start his first day as a substitute teacher at his old school, a gig he's taken while waiting for his Peace Corps nomination to go through. He's living with his parents, and his mom is kidding around, snapping his photo like it's little Ryan's first day of school.

He's teaching his first class - which as a substitute teacher is more like steering Jell-O - and when he walks down the hall to make some copies, he notices that television sets are on in every classroom. He asks himself if this is what kids do in school all day, and when he jokes with the school superintendent, he picks up on a pervasively somber mood. As he walks back to his classroom, he encounters teachers congregating in the hall, who tell him that both towers of the World Trade Center have been hit by airplanes, as well as the Pentagon, where his older brother, Craig, works.

Standing in front of a television, he takes in the images of smoke and flame in Washington. It's such a small hole, he decides, in such a huge building, one with thousands of workers. What are the odds that Craig could have been in the line of fire? He calls his dad at work and learns that nobody's heard anything. They're beside themselves with worry, but they think Craig is probably fine.

Ryan tries to pick up the hopeful vibe. But as far as the carnage he's witnessed on television, he concludes that this is the beginning of World War III. And he's horrified.

* * *

It's 9:30 a.m. in Washington, DC, and Eva Rupp, a program analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, can't get on the Internet. She picks up the phone, and that's not working either. She looks up from her desk and notices that, oddly, no one seems to be around. An emotional co-worker comes down the hall with the news that a plane has accidentally hit one of the Towers in New York. Rupp wonders how in the world a pilot could make a mistake like that, until others come with the news that it wasn't a mistake.

Everyone gets scared - after all, they work in a thirteen-story, well-marked federal building in Washington - but it isn't until ten minutes later, when they hear that the Pentagon has been hit, that they really panic. Still, no one's supposed to leave the building until the order comes to evacuate. Five minutes later, Rupp takes off, deciding it isn't worth waiting on protocol, not when it feels like the country is being attacked.

She tries to call her mom in Stockton, California, but all the phones are dead. There are helicopters over the city as she makes her way home to downtown Washington, and she hears rumors that twenty-two other planes are unaccounted for. F-16 fighter jets scream over the city and she thinks they're going to intercept them. She wonders: Who's next? Why has this started? Is this ever going to end?

By noon, she gets through to her mom and learns the bad news: Her stepsister, Deora Bodley, might have been on United Flight 93, which crashed at 10:10 a.m. near Shanksville.

The F-16s she heard had been headed for Pennsylvania.

* * *

In the Oakland, California duplex shared by Barry Amundson, Craig's brother, and partner Kelly Campbell, September 11 has yet to begin, leaving them to enjoy their first good night of sleep in days. They were in Chicago the past weekend for Campbell's brother's wedding, and after celebrating, flying home, and heading into work on Monday morning, they hadn't had so much as a minute to catch their breaths.

The phone rings at 7:15 a.m., and Craig's mom is crying: Planes are flying into buildings and one of them has hit the Pentagon. Campbell hands the phone to Amundson, pulls their little TV out of the corner, and plugs it in. They watch as the North Tower collapses. The coverage switches to the Pentagon, and numbness sets in as Barry tries to connect what he's seeing on the tiny screen with real life. They see where the damage is, and after visiting Craig's office the year before, they know it's on the other side of the building. But his office had moved since then - where would he have been sitting?

Barry and Kelly call in to work - a San Francisco ad agency and an environmental nonprofit - to tell them they won't be in till afternoon, till they get word that Craig is all right. He called his family after the World Trade Center was hit, but he hasn't called since.

They learn a lot of people are staying home from work that day. Nobody wants to take the BART trains, which go under San Francisco Bay. And all those helicopters flying over the city are making people nervous.

* * *

In White Plains, New York, a suburb just north of the city, Phyllis Rodriguez is taking advantage of the splendid weather to initiate a new exercise regime. An artist and teacher of homebound children, she imagined her walk would get her home by 9 a.m., but when she arrives at 9:20, the doorman tells her that one of the Twin Towers is on fire. Rodriguez runs up the stairs to her fourth-floor apartment, turns on the TV, and hits the button on her answering machine, where messages are waiting. There's one from her son, Greg, who works on the South Tower's 103rd floor. "There's been a disaster at the Trade Center, but I'm okay," he reports. "Call Elizabeth" - his wife.

As Rodriguez listens to the message with one eye on the television, she sees a replay of the second plane hitting the South Tower. She calls everyone in the family, and they all ask her the same question: Where was Greg when he made the phone call?

"He must have called from outside the building," Rodriguez replies. "Who would have called from a burning building?"

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows by David Potorti Excerpted by permission.
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