Not an Ordinary Day

Campus walkTwelve years ago, around 8:45 am, I entered the subway station on Broadway and 86th Street. A busy day lay ahead of me: an orientation meeting of the New York State Bar, followed by callback interviews for a summer job, then maybe class if I could make it back uptown in time. But when I emerged from the subway, the world had changed. As I started walking east on 23rd Street I was startled to find clusters of people standing still on the sidewalk, all facing the same direction, many with their mouths wide open. I turned to see what they were seeing, and gasped when I saw the two World Trade Center towers, a ring of smoke around them.

The aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks has given us lawyers a lot to chew on: two wars of debatable legality, Guantanamo Bay, and the precarious balance between civil rights and national security, to name just a few things. But today is for remembering. My thoughts are with those who died, those who were left behind, and those who so bravely stepped up on that day.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Bruce Boyden

    I was working in DC at the time, and managed to make it all the way into work not noticing anything strange and still thinking only that a “small plane” had hit one of the WTC towers (which was the initial report — although I do recall thinking just before I turned off the TV that it was an awful lot of smoke for a Cessna). I arrived probably right around 10 a.m. I couldn’t understand why all my co-workers were freaking out and my relatives were all trying to reach me. In the days before smartphones, only a few people (not me) had Blackberries, and the cell phone networks were quickly overloaded — which meant that not only I, but everyone on the subway with me, probably had no idea what was going on.

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