NEW YORK-Paper floating "eerily" by his Wall Street office window and the acrid smell of burning rubble are just some of the memories that stand out for Cliff Rosenthal 10 years after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the result in the Big Apple from that day is far from what the terrorists' goal of a pervasive fear that they may someday strike again, emphasized the president of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions. Instead, a feeling of closeness among many of the city's residents can be felt today, which is why Rosenthal knows he'll never live anywhere else.
"You saw all the stories about people who said they could no longer live in New York. I am not a native New Yorker, but I had a totally different reaction after 9/11," recalled Rosenthal. " I felt I was truly a New Yorker for the first time and that I would live the rest of my life here in this city. There was a sense of solidarity-a sense that we were a people unto ourselves."
Rosenthal remembers that morning, starting with his office building being immersed in a cloud of smoke. "I left the office at 5 p.m., hoping that the presumably toxic dust had settled. I walked past abandoned food vendor carts, past Beekman Downtown Hospital, and as I was approaching the Brooklyn Bridge, I heard yet another deep, rumbling boom, as another building came down." That building was 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed at 5:20 in the afternoon as the result of damage from the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers.
"With thousands of others, I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge-an almost Biblical procession fleeing a destroyed city. We passed people outside the Brooklyn Marriott [hotel] appealing for blood donations-donations that tragically were never needed."
It was a week later when Rosenthal returned to his office, and parts of lower Manhattan were still cordoned off by police. "We heard the deep rumbles of generators providing emergency power to high-rise offices. For weeks we emerged from the subway to the sickening, acrid smell of the smoldering rubble. For weeks we walked past the poignant, desperate posters with pictures of missing loved ones. And to this day, you can see the plaques and memorials of the firefighters from the station near our office, and near our homes, who tragically gave their lives."
What also occurred among New Yorkers, observed Rosenthal, is a lack of understanding for how so many people across the U.S., especially in areas far away from potential terrorist targets, became fearful of terrorist attacks on their towns. "I guess in New York we had become toughened to living in a city in which there is a great deal of potential danger," he said.
