For Rutgers Today's executive editor, life after 9/11 comes with obligations
Greg Trevor is a former senior information officer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He worked in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
When the moment finally came – after nearly 10 years of waiting – I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t move.
I was falling asleep on the night of May 1, 2011, when my wife, Allison, walked into our bedroom, tapped me on the shoulder and said: “The president is about to go on TV. They got bin Laden and he’s dead.”
“Thank God,” I replied. I tried to get out of bed but couldn’t. The death of bin Laden brought back so many painful memories from surviving the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
I remembered standing behind my desk on the 68th floor of Tower One when I was knocked nearly to the floor by the impact of the first plane slamming into the building. As we fled the tower, my coworkers and I were trapped in a smoky stairwell a few floors from freedom. We escaped the building 11 minutes before it collapsed.
I felt relief that the world was rid of bin Laden – but rage that it took so long to bring him to justice.
Allison went back downstairs and turned up the sound, so I could hear how President Obama’s team had finally finished the job that his predecessor had left undone.
When the president praised the courage of the Navy SEALs who captured and killed bin Laden, I thought about my equally courageous coworkers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – both police and civilians – who had sacrificed their lives on 9/11 to save countless others.
I also recalled a moment on that same bed, a few nights after the September 11 attacks, when I struggled to explain to our 5-year-old son, Gabe, why an evil man named bin Laden had killed so many of Daddy’s friends.
“The important thing is, Mommy and Daddy are safe, and you and your brother are safe,” I told Gabe. “Do you feel safe?” He nodded. Then I asked: “Do you feel scared?” He nodded again.
“That’s OK,” I said. “I feel scared, too. We can be scared together.”
As the world marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11, millions are no doubt revisiting the emotions they felt in the moments that followed the terrorist attacks.
For our family, these feelings are never far away.
I’m still in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. A bright blue sky can still trigger flashbacks.
Even now I wonder: Why did I survive when nearly 3,000 innocent people lost their lives that day?
I think about the elderly Ecuadoran women I met at the wedding of her daughter, a family friend, a few weeks after 9/11. She burst into tears when we were introduced. Then she hugged me as tightly as I’ve ever been hugged, saying over and over in Spanish: “Vida nueva” – “new life.”
If I was, in fact, given a new life, it comes with at least two obligations.
First, to serve as a witness to the events of September 11, no matter how painful that might be – to remind anyone willing to listen that the hundreds of uniformed personnel and civilians who sacrificed their lives did not die in vain. The heroes who ran into the towers, and the heroes who remained in the towers to help others escape, contributed to the successful evacuation of an estimated 25,000 people from the Trade Center complex.
Second, to live up to their memory by trying to be the best husband, father, friend, and coworker that I can be.
As a reminder, I keep three items in my Rutgers office – a memorial flag that flew at the World Trade Center site after the attacks, a Port Authority Police patch and a photo of Police Captain Kathy Mazza. Kathy, the first woman commandant of the Port Authority Police Academy, and one of the finest people I’ve ever known, led a group of officers into Tower One a few minutes after the first attack. Most of them, including Kathy, did not survive. She was the first female Port Authority Police officer killed in the line of duty.
I am grateful to all of the heroes of September 11 for every moment – both good and bad – that I have experienced over the past decade.
I cherish every second I get to spend with Allison; watching our boys grow up to be wonderful human beings; having the privilege of coaching dozens of outstanding young men and women in baseball, softball, and basketball.
I was both honored and humbled to be part of the official delegation that rode the first Port Authority Trans-Hudson train back to the World Trade Center site in November 2003, more than two years after the attacks. The resumption of PATH service to Lower Manhattan – and the reopening of the Trade Center site to the public – remains a major milestone in the healing of the region.
We rode that day from Jersey City to Lower Manhattan on the same PATH train that was the last to carry people to safety from the World Trade Center on 9/11. As the train rumbled through the rebuilt tunnel under the Hudson River, I felt honored to be a small part of this triumph, and humbled to stand beside people from across the region who had worked so hard to restore a vital service that the terrorists had tried to take away.
Our lives are a mosaic of moments like these. Some are significant; most are relatively trivial. But every moment is precious.
If there is one lesson to be learned from the events of Sept. 11, it is that each day we spend on this planet is a gift; every breath is a blessing.
It’s up to each of us to show that we are worthy of this gift.