On a idle Tuesday morning 13 years ago, workers filed into their office building like the days and weeks before. Firefighters and police officers donned their uniforms to serve the public of their city. Airline passengers boarded aircraft to either head back home or go away on vacation and business.
But on that working Tuesday morning, all those everyday people collided violently high above the streets of New York City, in the bustle of the Pentagon in the otherwise quiet city of Arlington, Va., and in rural Pennsylvania.
Altering the course of history, a group of passengers overpowered highjackers and sent their plane crashing into a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville, Pa., before it could reach its destination somewhere in Washington, D.C. — perhaps the U.S. Capitol, perhaps the White House. With no survivors, we can only speculate.
Among all those people who went to work that morning were a man and woman who worked in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Who exactly they were will likely never be known, but it is believed they worked for either a French bank, a risk management company or a futures investment firm in the rented the floors just above the point where American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building and killed hundreds in an instant. Wiping out the stairwells and elevators, the impact left hundreds more people trapped.
Did this man and woman know each other before that morning? Were they strangers who found themselves trapped in the same corner of a burning building with no hope of rescue? They were among dozens who smashed out windows to get fresh air as smoke and fire filled the offices behind them.
The South Tower was struck 17 minutes after the North Tower. Some with cell phones likely knew the burning buildings were targets of a terrorist attack, but many on the north side of the North Tower were likely unaware.
All the speculation is irrelevant. Shortly before the South Tower then North Tower collapsed from the damage, this man and woman fell from the 92nd floor.
In their final 8.54 seconds between window sill and the earth, a photograph captured the unidentifiable man and woman falling to their death — holding hands.
The true terror of that morning is to contemplate what we would think about in our final 8.54 seconds knowing our death is inevitable and inescapable.
That is my indelible memory of that morning. Most of us have an image of the attack or the aftermath that will remain deeply ingrained for the rest of our lives. Like other national tragedies, nearly all of us remember where we were or what we were doing when we heard the news and will be able in the decades hence to recall that precise moment verbatim.
The debates about retaliation, war, politics and all that followed can wait until Sept. 12 — Sept. 11 belongs to 2,240 New York City civilians, 23 police officers, 343 firefighters, 125 Pentagon workers and 246 airline passengers — everyday people just like us — who never saw another tomorrow.
