9/11

9/11

The date is September 11, 2001. It’s 9:30 p.m. and I have just left a dinner at the American Club in Hong Kong. I was the honored guest of the Alumni Association of Concordia Lutheran School, Kowloon. It has been a wonderful evening of memories, laughter and hope.

A car and driver had been sent to pick me up and return me to my hotel. The driver is obviously agitated, paying very close attention to the car radio. My Cantonese is surely not what it used to be, so I don’t catch all of what he and the radio are announcing. But I do get the message than at airplane has hit a building in New York. I do understand enough Cantonese to know that the driver keeps repeating, “This is terrible, terrible!”

I rush to my hotel room. Worldwide CNN is there live to air the tragedy. Like millions all over the world I watch in horror as the second plane hits, the twin towers collapse. Throughout the night I watch in sadness, horror and anger.

In light of the indescribably terrible consequences so many experienced, because of this tragedy, my messed up plans, cancelled flights and delayed trip home, of course, amount to nothing. Further, in view of all the sadness so many endured because of this tragedy, my own memories of the World Trade Center amount to nothing.
Yet for each one of us, our memories are personal. And mine of the World Trade Center are all wonderful. I loved the bar at the top at the Windows of the World restaurant. It was a “must stop visit” with any relatives and friends who came to see us in New York. There was a the private club on that same floor at which Jane and I (and a host of private donors) arranged for an appreciation luncheon for all Lutheran School principals of the metro New York area. For all those urban principals this was their first experience in the marvelous exclusive setting. It was on the 98th floor of the other tower where I had conducted workshops for the staff of an international bank. It was in the basement where we always found parking to explore so much of what those towers offered.

Now all that made up the physical components of that center has been pulverized, melted, or carted to a dump on Staten Island. As I write this more 8 years since that fateful day, the whole world continues to weep, to cope and dares to hope.