(Editor's note: The following article was written by former Enterprise intern and now resident New Yorker, Gretchen Elsner. Gretchen, the daughter of Bernie and Bev Elsner of Husum, is a graduate of Vasser College in New York, has worked as an intern for Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin and Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio during the impeachment hearings, taught 7th grade language arts in the Gallup New Mexico Public School System, worked as a program administrator for NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York, and is currently attending Cardozo School of Law in New York City.)
By GRETCHEN ELSNER
September 18, 2001, New York City
Last Tuesday morning I emerged from my subway stop at Union Square on 14th Street in lower Manhattan and momentarily thought all was right with the world. Then I looked up.
Awestruck rush-hour commuters clogged the streets to stare at the smoke pouring out of the Twin Towers, though none of us really knew at that time what we were seeing. I continued on to my law school on Fifth Avenue and 12th Street. Classmates, many who have traveled in Israel, heard and saw the planes crash and knew immediately we were under terrorist attack.
Soon after the Pentagon hit, we evacuated the school. A classmate and I headed for our apartments across the East River in Queens, but busses were parked, subway trains halted, tunnels sealed off and most bridges blocked. We felt like mice in a maze. Michele and I planned our route north, avoiding all landmarks because they suddenly seemed explosive, and hoped that the 59th Street Bridge to Queens would be open for pedestrian traffic.
This was not an original plan. Thousands of New Yorkers marched north, many of us trying to make calls on our cell phones. Michele looked over her shoulder and asked if both Twin Towers were still there. I thought this was an absolutely ridiculous question and assured her that both were still there, it was just that the smoke from one obscured the other. Surely one of the two tallest buildings in New York could not just disappear.
But surely it did, which is what my father told me when I called him from Park Avenue in midtown. Those of us on the street without TVs were the last in America to know; in fact we didn't know that the planes overhead were American Air Force fighters protecting us rather than a third attack from which we should take cover.
Michele and I continued through the urban jungle, fleeing with the high-heel-wearing and brief-case-toting office worker refugees. From the 59th Street Bridge we saw large clouds of dark smoke marring the once indomitable Manhattan skyline.
Tuesday Governor Pataki immediately cancelled the day's primary election. Wednesday The New York Times quickly sold out. My school is sufficiently close to ground zero that we missed three days of class. I picked up my New York City guide book and realized that it is now terribly out of date and the next time they print the phone book approximately 5,000 names will be deleted.
Nobody in New York is immune. We all either worked in the World Trade Center, know somebody who worked there, or are comforting somebody who is now missing family. And while there is talk in the nation of retaliation, vengeance and waging war, I have heard no New Yorker embrace these terms. Perhaps those closest to the carnage are most loathe to repeat it.
We vote for a new mayor next week and whoever wins will vow to rebuild in some way. He will talk about healing and renewal and encourage New Yorkers as the rescuers unbury the bodies so we can rebury our dead. Before that happens, I will see many more crushed fire trucks and broken ambulances towed by my window. And I know thousands of hearses will follow.
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