Hello my friends.
Five years ago I was conducting a 9 AM closing at our satellite office (actually we just rented the use of a conference room at another law firm). I had been listening to a book on tape on my drive over and when I arrived at the office all of the personnel were in a back room.
Assuming they were in a staff meeting I quietly went to the back conference room and set up for the closing... I found it odd that everyone was late... and they all arrived, both lawyers, the title closer, the buyers and sellers at exactly the same time, around 9:30... they all wandered in looking a little shell shocked and I made some bad joke about buying a new house was supposed to be a happy occasion when one of them looked at me oddly and said "You don't know, do you?"
"Know what?"
And he went on to explain about the 2 planes hitting the WTC.... all the blood must have drained out of my face because he suddenly reached out to steady me....
all I could think of was that my brother was there....I had no idea what floor he was on but he was there and he was one of those early birds who would get into the office before 7...
everyone decided that since we were all there they would go ahead and close the loan... but one of the attorney's whose sister worked at the towers and I spent a good deal of time trying to call people to ascertain the safetly of our loved ones.
I manged to get Vixdad on his office phone he worked down at 8th Avenue and 14th street at the time and had a window that looked out directly on the unfolding events much to his horror He could clearly see the people jumping to escape the flames... we had only been there 12 days earlier with his cousins and great aunt who were visiting from England.. unfortunately we were not able to go up to the observation deck as they had had a bomb scare and had closed everything down.....
I finally was able to discover that my brother had never made it to the WTC that day... he had to go to his midtown office first to pick up some paperwork and then had been delayed by a phone call, the first plane hit before he was able to set out and he was stopped just as he was running out the door by a secretary who called him back to tell him what had happend.
The next day we found out that my cousin John who lives in Virginia, had a ticket for the flight that crashed into the Pentagon. The business meeting he was flying to was cancelled the night of the 10th.
My family was very lucky. My town however now has several streets named after some of the 15 residents we lost, amongst them two brothers, both in their 20's, one a fireman the other a cop...
One of the Vixter's classmates lost her grandfather, Fire Chief Raymond Downey, to whom the street on which I live and the Post Office are now dedicated.
Neither Vixdad nor I watched any television for the next week, nor did we read the papers... Vixdad had a hard enough time with everything he had witnessed first hand and didn't need to watch the news reports.
About 2 weeks later I had to go into NYC to conduct a closing....when I walked into Penn Station the walls were plastered with pictures smiling people, young parents with children, wedding pictures, grandparents, graduation pictures... the faces of all those lost and the the desperate pleas of their loved ones... "if you have any information please call....."
I stood there staring , the tears rolling down my face
the stupidity and cruelty of it all.....
