Reflections From the WTC: A Letter to September 11, 2051

My hope is to be alive for the 50th Anniversary of September 11, 2001, but if not, below is some of what I want people to remember.  Maybe it currently serves a purpose too.

Driving down to the search and rescue, I had never seen the streets of New York City so deserted.  We never called it Ground Zero nor 9/11, but called it The Pile and September 11. It was easy to find going down FDR Drive.  All you had to do was follow the smoke.

I parked my car in front of Mike Bloomberg's campaign headquarters, where the NYPD said the military was, and was immediately loaded up in the back of a deuce and a half, where we were dropped off in front of The Pile.  My brigade S1, Col. Mike Finn, who later died of a rapid cancer, was in the same truck.

Many of us could not tell where The Pile was because the smoke was so thick.  For days we dug.  On Thursday, September 13, the area I was standing on, which had been the North Tower, was so hot that the soles of my army boots began to melt.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like in the Towers.

The things we saw and found, much of that is censored and understandably so.  Maybe someday more of it will be released, and only as appropriate.  Some never should be. I still can’t decide what to do about the people who fell out of the buildings. One half says do not show it, and the other half says it should be shown every day to remind us of the demonic ideology we are against and have still not fully understood in 2026.

That Friday, September 14, it rained, and it seemed the World Trade Center was crying.  The guy I spent most of the day digging with, a Civil Affairs NCO who was also with the National Park Service, was later killed in Iraq.  The next day, believing perhaps that the rain had given people trapped below some water and safety from the fire, we dug very late into the night.

The scariest time to be at The Pile was at nighttime. It took on a haunting quality, with almost a movie-set atmosphere, and, somehow, if possible, the smell was even stronger.  Several times I was lowered nearly 10 feet into The Pile, and my biggest fear of being down there was not of another building falling on me, but turning around and finding a dead victim.

We shouted for the victims below to hear us but got no response; begging them to please make a sound.  It reminded me of that scene in Titanic where Officer Lowe takes the lifeboat back but finds no one.

A lot of the B.S. of everyday life was gone, at least during that first week.  The Pile looked like Dresden or Hiroshima, or like scenes from The Day After, but it did not seem insurmountable.  We honestly thought we would be Superman and find people.

Sometimes we actually talked while digging.  One iron worker said, “I voted for Gore but thank God Bush is President.”  Friendships were instantly made.  The words most often said at goodbyes were “Stay Safe, God Bless you.”  It was hell on earth, showing the worst of humanity, but we also saw the best of humanity.

One lady, a city employee, literally gave me her midtown apartment one night so I would not have to sleep at Chelsea Piers a third night in a row.  A liberal gay man who found out I was a Christian Conservative said to me, “It doesn’t matter.  You mess with our city, you mess with all of us.”  A priest from St. Bartholomew's gave me communion on the streets.

My last night there, I woke up that Sunday morning on the deck of a yacht in Battery Park City.  The first thing I saw was the Statue of Liberty with a beautiful reddish sky appearing over her.  Maybe she gave me hope, and I walked over with anticipation that Sunday, September 16, would be just as productive as our furious efforts the day before.  It wasn’t to be.

Whereas the night before there were hundreds of us scouring The Pile, this Sunday morning there were but a few.  What stood out even more was that my arms stopped working.  My body felt fine, but I couldn’t lift my arms more than a few inches.  The strangest thing also happened where I could literally see myself from the air, 20-30 feet away.  This continued for several minutes.  I sat down, and a firefighter told me that we would not find anyone alive and that it was ok to go home. 

The streets were lined with people cheering us as we came out of The Pile. There was also the occasional person who asked us to find a loved one. 

Churches were packed that first Sunday. Some shared the truth that Jesus is the answer to the spiritual battle we were, and remain, in. Many pastors did not, and people ended up leaving without answers as to why.  

For a week or so, radios played nothing but patriotic or soft songs (We Are The World, There You’ll Be).  It felt inappropriate hearing club songs back on the radio.  

Nearly everyone wanted the NY Yankees to win the World Series that Fall. They didn’t, but regardless, they fought hard in the greatest World Series ever and gave the city a boost.

We loved Rudy Giuliani, and it was he who guided the soul of a nation. The unified feeling kept strong till about New Year's 2001, when he left the Mayor’s office, and to a lesser extent the one-year anniversary.   Never did we think we would have an Islamic Socialist Mayor presiding over the 25th anniversary, especially because Rudy told us in the end we “will come out of this stronger and better.”

There was something deeply appropriate about Rudy holding his farewell address at a church, St. Paul’s Chapel across the street from the World Trade Center; Washington, D.C.’s church, which miraculously survived 9/11 without a single window pane broken.

There is so much to be written that it would fill books.  

Please remember September 11, 2001. Please remember there was also an attack on the Pentagon and on Flight 93, as well as on February 26, 1993.  Please remember her, the World Trade Center; a place of commerce, beauty, and freedom.  The Islamists tried to turn it into hell, but the World Trade Center was where many people went to Heaven

The World Trade Center represented the best of humanity in peace and in war. From 1973-2001, it was not about events or structures but people; friendships were made there, people fell in love there, people died there. 

We remember...forever.  

Larry Provost worked the search and rescue with the U.S. Army at the World Trade Center. He later served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Views expressed are his and not those of any government agency.

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