I arrived at the dealership promptly at 7:30, and by 7:50 was on my way into Manhattan to my office on 48th Street in Times Square.
on September 11th.ĭavid Harris followed me to the dealership in Union City and had agreed to drive me to work after leaving the car. I made an appointment to return the car to the dealership at 7:30 a.m.
The mechanic had clumsily spilled oil around the engine, which caused a grayish-white smoke to emanate from under the hood. On September 6th, the previous Thursday, I had taken my car to the Chrysler dealership in Union City, New Jersey, for an oil change. September 11th had already begun in a very unusual way for me. As we as a nation reflect on the first anniversary of these tragic events, I wanted to share my recollections of the days surrounding what has been, and what will surely continue to be, one of the most profoundly defining moments of my life. Shortly after the terrorist attacks, I began to reduce my recollection of these events to paper-a process that continued for many months. Neither they nor I could ever have anticipated the enormity of the tragedy that was about to occur. For me, the September 11th tragedy was all the more devastating, not only because the events literally unfolded before my eyes, but because the victims in the World Trade Center were my peers, many of whom had followed career paths not dissimilar to my own, and all of whom had arrived – exactly as I had – early in the morning of September 11th to get a head start on the day’s activities. While these events were indeed tragic, the catastrophe of September 11th represents a new “day of infamy” that will unite the members of my generation – and indeed every person on earth – as we will remember September 11th every day of our lives. Indeed, the most traumatic national events that I could recall prior to September 11, 2001, were the tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986 and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Prior to September 11, 2001, my generation had been fortunate enough to escape the unspeakable tragedies such as Pearl Harbor or the assassination of President Kennedy that defined the generations of my predecessors.
0 kommentar(er)
