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September 11th, 2001 started out as a beautiful day as you heard many times before. I was working in midtown on that day, having a cup of coffee when my phone rang. It was my mom. She asked if I was ok and if I heard what was happening. Confused, I said that I was ok and asked what was going on. My mom said a small plane crashed into one of the twin towers. I was on the 15th floor of 1290 6th Avenue and we had some TV monitors near the elevator banks. So I ran to the monitors and watched CNN reporting the story. The first scene broadcasted was the tower with a gaping hole and smoke and fire pouring out. I knew then that it was not a small plane.   By that time a small crowd gathered behind me watching the broadcast. As we were watching the first tower burn, none of us thought this was anything but a tragic accident. As we continued to watch the report, we saw a ball of fire emerge from the bottom of the screen. It was the second jet hitting the other tower.   We all then knew this was no accident. I went to alert my boss and he contacted the CEO who then held an emergency meeting.   I tried calling my wife Mary but all phones were down. We watched the towers collapse on TV but this was happening less than 4 miles south of where I was. We were hearing of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Another that crashed in Pennsylvania. We also heard rumors of others heading for midtown and other parts of Manhattan. There were bomb threats reported at several schools. It was crazy not knowing what was going on.   My wife Mary was working in Holy Cross School that day, where all my boys were. I finally got through to her in the afternoon. The secretary made an announcement over the schools PA system saying that I was on the phone. My son Matt’s teacher said that when he heard the PA announcement, he saw Matt take a deep breath in relief.   I finally left the building and saw the smoke rising above downtown Manhattan. It was a surreal scene. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people all leaving, calmly walking out of the city. We walked toward the Queensborough Bridge since all mass transit was shutdown. What amazed me was what I experienced walking across that bridge back into Queens with thousands of other New Yorkers. The center lanes of the bridge were still filled with vehicles leaving Manhattan. The outer sides of the bridge contained thousands of pedestrians evacuating the city. I saw UPS and other commercial trucks, moving vans, pickup trucks and other vehicles all pulling people into their vehicles to get them out of harms way as quickly as possible. Everyone was helping everyone else. As we neared mid-span of the bridge, we all heard a very loud and very low aircraft speeding passed. Everyone in sight, including myself thought the worst. I never saw thousands of people scream and hit the deck and a moment’s notice when that happened. Crazy things started going through my head like, which side will I be closer to if the bridge goes down? Can I swim to the Queens side or back to the Manhattan side? Or will we make it at all? I then realized that a women walking next to me dug her fingernails into my arm. As the moment passed, I was happy to report that the aircraft was one of our fighters!   When I finally arrived home, I never received a greeting from my wife and kids like I did on that day. We just all hugged each other and cried.   I then heard their story. My wife volunteered at my kid’s Elementary school and was with them on 9/11/2001. My oldest son Matt was in 8th grade at the time. His classroom (which was my classroom 26 years earlier) had a perfect view of the Twin Towers. All the kids were watching the smoke billow from the first tower when one kid yelled, “there’s another one coming! It’s going to hit!” All the kids saw the fireball of the second plane hitting the other tower. They all screamed! The kid that yelled “it’s going to hit”, eventually became an NYC Fire Fighter.   The worst part of that day was not knowing where anyone was or how anyone was doing. Your thoughts basically took over and you feared the worst.   Mary’s mom and brother happened to be in Las Vegas on 9/11. They left the day before and were stranded there for the better part of that week. They too could not get in touch with any of us. I could only imagine what they were going through.   A bit later that afternoon, I took a walk with Matt to the overpass of the Long Island Expressway which was 2 blocks from our house in Maspeth. We walked up the overpass and saw the large plume of smoke rising above downtown Manhattan. I took some pictures from there. The Long Island Expressway which was usually packed at that time of day was eerily empty with only emergency vehicles heading toward the city. Emergency crews from Long Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine and Massachusetts were all pouring into the city. On the way back home, Matt and I stopped at our Church and said a few prayers.   Fighter jets were now flying above our home regularly. Police and Military now carried automatic weapons. It was a new age.   On Wednesday morning, September 12th, 2001, I called my friend Rod’s home to see if he was ok. His wife answered and she seemed calm. I asked if he was home and she told me she hadn’t heard from him since Tuesday morning, when he called her from the 97th floor of 2 World Trade Center. He told her to take care of herself, his daughter and soon to be born son. She told me that she could not get a straight answer from his company and asked that I call as well. I called the hotline number and asked about the status of my friend. They told me that he was accounted for. Not knowing what that meant, I asked was he ok, or in a hospital or what?? They told me that either he or someone called in for him to report that he was ok. When I mentioned I just spoke to his wife and she had not heard from him since the previous morning, they passed me to a supervisor. I again explained the situation and they finally told me they would have to list him as missing. I called his wife back and told her what I learned. I got the impression that she did not expect to hear anything different. She was however with family so she would be taken care of.   Rod’s son, Rodney Patrick, was born on September 19th, 2001, just 8 days after the attack. We attended the simultaneous Baptism of Rodney Patrick and memorial service for his father on October 27th, 2001. It was a very somber yet hopeful moment.   On Thursday September 13th, I had to go to Ground Zero as it was now called, to pay respects to my friend and other co-workers who were lost that day. As I came up from the subway, nothing looked familiar. I used to work a block from the World Trade Center for several years. I passed my old building, 1 Chase Plaza, and noticed the entire building was still coated in a gray ash. All the streets, sidewalks, trees, buildings, just everything in sight were all still covered in gray ash. I was walking in it. My shoes were covered in it. I thought and realized what it was I was walking in. Everything in those buildings was pulverized. I then saw the skeletal remains of what was left of the two towers.   The days and weeks following the attacks were all but normal. We could smell the burning Trade Center at our home for a couple of months. It was a unique odor which I have not experienced since. You could see the smoke over our home for several weeks.   Mary and our three boys, Matt, Greg and Tim and I, visited our local Firehouse, Squad 288 and Hazmat 1. They had a memorial of flowers, pictures and the names of Firefighters lost on that day. Our Firehouse in Maspeth, NY had the largest loss of any NYFD Squad. A total of 19 Maspeth Firefighters died on September 11th, 2001.   Maspeth is kind of an industrial town in NY. A lot of factories and city agencies call it home. Maspeth houses the garages of the Sanitation Dept., Police Dept. and Fire Dept. The kids and I went to the Fire Dept. lot where they brought a good number of crushed emergency vehicles, still covered in the dust of the World Trade Center. One truck still had a glove of a firefighter on its back step.   As everyone now knows, the days, weeks, months and years after September 11th, 2001 are nothing like the days before. We are in a different world. Many more have since died to preserve our freedom, the freedom of the United States of America. We are still being threatened 10 years later. All wars before this one had a definitive end. I wonder if we’ll ever see the end of this new type of war. I pray to God we will!

Updated Sep 10, 2011, 1:26 AM

The U.S. is not what it used to be by a long shot! We used to have the tallest buildings, longest bridges, best technology, strongest economy, best quality vehicles, the best of everything! What happened??? Now we send our jobs "off shore", we buy garbage from China, we don't manufacture anything, we send billions of $$$ to country's that want us dead, we give a free ride to millions of illegals, and yet US citizens are hurting big time. We got CHANGE alright! Economy is in the crapper again and no one is doing anything about it!! TIME WE ALL DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS BS ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!!!

Updated Aug 10, 2011, 5:15 PM