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Library Categories > Environmental Issues > An Ill Wind Blows into a Child's Life

 
Library Item Name:

An Ill Wind Blows into a Child's Life 		   
Summary Statement:

Most Americans remember with clarity where they were when they first heard the news of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Life-defining moments like 9/11 are those rare events that reshape society and culture, forever changing how people take stock of their lives. This holds especially true for those who witnessed the tragedy firsthand.

For me, a rooftop witness to the fire and smoke that poured out of the Twin Towers, the day after 9/11 has lingered in my mind with equal brilliance and anxiety. Confined at home with work closed, my son and I appeared safe in the shutdown city with Navy jets flying over the empty skyline. And why shouldn't I have felt that way? We lived Uptown at 94th Street and Third Avenue on the opposite end of the island, six miles away from the smoldering ruins of the collapsed buildings that made up the World Trade Center complex.

Yet what happened that morning unnerved me. With our 14th floor living room window ajar, I began to smell an acrid, burning smoke that I had never smelled before. I raced around the apartment looking for the source of the fire. I found nothing. Watching my son, Fridrik, play by the open window, wondering where the pungent odor was coming from, I had a delayed reaction. The smoke that I saw drift east to Brooklyn on 9/11, blew north as the wind changed direction the next day. I closed the window. But my gut feeling told me it was too late.
Submission Date:

11/28/2007by: shannonj
Current rating:


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