SABMA 9-11 Memorial Edition

We all watched as they slowly rose within twelve years and were obliterated in less than two hours... It was a splendid but lazy NYC Election Day morn, with the most magnificent weather in months. On that infamous 9-11 forenoon three years ago, four jetliners hijacked by Islamic jihadists slammed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, massacring 3,052 innocent people in this WW III *sequel.

At 8:46 A.M. here in Queens, I was still having my wake-up coffee while IM'ing with my first partner from my college days of three decades ago. Although Floyd lives down coast in Delaware, he mentioned that he was watching live coverage of a plane crash which had just hit the North Tower of the WTC. We initially thought it was a small Cessna or private plane which strayed. So I quickly signed off and went into John's room where he was calling me in while waiting for TV talk show superstar Oprah Winfrey to appear. All stations were being interrupted with live, calm coverage of the blazing fireball...

Seventeen minutes later at 9:03 A.M., my present partner and I watched as the South Tower was still being targeted by an incoming jet in what seemed like slow motion... Our family and close friends worked in these towers. Often, our routine business and daily commute still took us through them, that morning being a rare exception. Twenty five years earlier our Tribeca high rise apt. and recreational haunts were just a few blocks from there. My NYC street ministry ("Street life memories...") began and was once served under their shadows...

The impact of that second jetliner knocked us to our knees, loudly sickened and in shock. Fortunately, we didn't have breakfast yet. Being well informed, I immediately knew and angrily exclaimed that this was Osama Bin Laden. As we watched this close horror develop, I dressed; grabbed my ribbon stole, ritual, holy oils and clergy hard hat and rushed towards the door. Priests and disaster counselors were obviously needed there.

Our express "E" line subway would have taken me directly to the WTC site in less than a half hour. However, a serious mental health crises unfolded near by which prevented my departure. I was begged to delay my emergency response which I did. Reasoning that adequate clergy were already responding and that I was also needed where I was, I first contended with that sudden urgency before setting off. Providentially, that surely saved my life because the South Tower collapsed just minutes later at 9:59 A.M. and the North Tower half an hour later at 10:29 A.M. We're convinced that I would have been under one by then.**

The highways, bridges, tunnels and tubes into Manhattan were closed almost immediately which barred any possible entry into Gotham except via foot. That day everyone around us seemed to be shell shocked and impacted from the percussion. Our actions were robotic but purposeful. The only predominant sounds I recall that day were the reassuring punctuations of the patrolling F-16 fighter planes guarding us overhead.

It wasn't until rescue efforts had already became a recovery operation that I eventually ministered to the walking wounded at Ground Hero -- as my partner John first renamed it -- and at St. Paul's Chapel. Jet fuel was still flaring up; the acrid and over powering stench was still smoldering; deep ashen cremains were everywhere while body parts were being hoisted from pits by reverent bucket brigades. All we clergy could do then was bless these 1st Class relics while praying and weeping with our heroes. Chaplains then escorted them in procession to their transport. Our eyes were caked with dried tears of gray mud.*** Ears and hands became more instrumental than any words we could possible muster. Sharing the unabashed grief and rage of uniformed service men was one of the most effusive experiences I ever encountered. But priests are ordained to console, spiritually support and also be vented towards in whatever manner that may take. I "defused and debriefed" with my peers much later and in private so my PTSD was minimal. As horrific as it was, my strength and abreaction was given from God in "strangers" on side streets as usual and within those emotional and unified prayers while huddled around bits of human tissue. That was a healing catharsis for me. However, this isn't my story since I don't really have one that fateful day.

... Meanwhile, across the East River in NYC, a brother ORC archpriest was also putting himself into high gear. This is his first hand story, "The Sentinels", as he immediately responded to the various Sept. 11th emergency scenes -- his full account of that event and the aftermath being in two parts.

A much edited version was first published in the New Perspectives quarterly journal of the ORCC. However, I am republishing it "raw" -- unabridged and unedited as Father Roger first wrote and intended it soon after 9-11. (Copyright 2001)

* Our national sacrifices in WW III began eight years earlier on Feb. 26, 1993 when the WTC was first bombed here in NYC. Last Wednesday our American KIA roster in Iraq tolled 1,000 troops in our response against international Islamist imperialism. They started it here . We will finish it there.

** Unbeknownst to us, our mutual friend and associate, Father Mychal Judge, O.F.M., the WTC "Victim No. One", was already felled in action, not that it would have dissuaded any of us. His stronger FDNY chaplain's helmet made him better visible, but still vulnerable.

*** Weeks later, while descending "The Pile" on Oct. 4th, my blind right eye failed to notice a loaded NYPD van approaching from that side. It rolled over my right foot and threw me to the ground. The horrified Catholic cops were aghast that a priest was hit. Like a Feast Day sign from St. Francis of Assisi, a large cadaver dog ran up and sniffed my face. I began to pet it before his police handler warned me not to interfere with its scent. Anyway, I stood and brushed myself off while declining their unnecessary offers of medical attention. It was while later limping home via the tubes that I noticed my toes were broken. Although they later healed, I was apprehensive to return to duty there anymore since I didn't divulge my blindness to anyone lest I be denied entry to that core site or any future one. My reckless fault: not theirs.

THE CROSS IN THE RUBBLE (Atop this page) : Discovered two days after 9-11, the 20-foot steel I-beam cross found in the World Trade Center wreckage was a potent symbol of hope for rescue workers dragging bodies and human remains from the rubble. Priests said Holy Mass in its shadow. American Atheists, a group that claims to represent the interests of America’s “nonbelievers” has charged that incorporating the WTC Cross into a taxpayer-funded September 11 memorial at Ground Zero “would violate the separation of Church and State….” Last year's commemoration ceremony there focused on the children who lost loved ones; this year's ceremony will focus on parents and/or grandparents.