62 days from Ground ZeroBy Timothy O'Connor The Times Herald-Record toconnor@th-record.com  At
8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center
in Lower Manhattan. Before long, it became clear they also attacked
Rena Marie Circle in Blooming Grove, Beverly Drive in Warwick, Wallkill
Avenue in Pine Bush - cul de sacs, old farmhouses, townhouses across
the mid-Hudson also were hit.Casualty figures fluctuated in the days and weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the early hours, as many as 10,000 were feared lost. The actual figure may wind up being closer to 3,000. The numbers don't begin to tell the story. The numbers don't quantify the level of hurt, the depth of grief, the amount of sorrow. The numbers don't say how everything's different now. Before Sept. 11, J.Lo, Britney and Condit dominated headlines and airwaves. Athletes and rappers were heroes. Afghanistan may as well have been Jupiter. Cops and firefighters jumped to mind only when a crime was committed or a fire needed to be put out. Before these last two months, anthrax was just the name of an old heavy-metal band. Delivering mail was part of an ordinary job, not an act of bravery on the ever-shifting frontlines of a new war. The flag was a prop to sell cars on George Washington's birthday. Funerals had coffins. The first day On the first day, there was shock. The collapse of the burning Twin Towers seemed to play on a loop on the TV. It looked liked a scene out of a movie. Government offices closed. Flags were lowered to half-staff. Stewart Airport shut down and became a staging area for emergency medical teams. Survivors, some still with the dust of Lower Manhattan on them, staggered off commuter trains in Harriman, Wallkill and Port Jervis. "It was like midnight," Maria Cocozza said as she stepped off a Metro-North commuter train in Port Jervis. She works for an insurance company on Wall Street a few blocks from the WTC. "I saw firemen, just all gray," she said. "The only thing that was not gray was the slits of their eyes." She started to cry. Her husband, Guy, cloaked his arms around her as he led her to the car and home to Dingmans Ferry. Families throughout the mid-Hudson started their silent vigils for those who did not come home. The waiting Major league baseball canceled its games. The National Football League canceled the weekend schedule. People lined up to donate blood for the expected influx of injured. The hospitals were quiet. The wounded never came. Everything that mattered before, it seemed, was all of a sudden on hold. On Beverly Drive in Warwick, the Fodor family waited for word on FDNY Lt. Michael Fodor. Seven of his neighbors were among the New York City firefighters searching the debris for the lost. The flaming towers of the first day gave way to burning candles in the days after the attack. Candles lined Route 211 in Wallkill that first weekend after the Tuesday attack. At Washingtonville High School, the village held its first candlelight vigil for the missing. No one dared use the word dead yet. Hope was the word most heard. Five firefighters from the surrounding district had not come home. Families throughout the region clung to the glimmers of light that came from the story of New York City firefighters Rich Picciotto, Jay Jonas and Bill Butler. The three Orange County men were pulled from the rubble four hours after the collapse. Some, though, knew as soon as the towers went down their loved ones were not coming home. "I knew," Liz Hamilton said of her husband Robert, a New York City firefighter from Blooming Grove. "I just hoped they would find his body." The good-byes The first memorial service for a mid-Hudson neighbor lost in the attack came one week after the planes struck the towers. Doreen Cortez of the Town of Newburgh held a memorial service for her brother Michael Trinidad, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee. Trinidad had called his former wife minutes before the north tower collapsed to say good-bye to his two children. He was 33. It would be the first of many services where mourners gathered around a photograph rather than a casket. Soon, it seemed, every day there was a memorial service. Soon, it seemed, as the names of the missing became known, everyone knew someone who was among the missing or had lost someone. Flags flew from cars, front porches and store fronts. Flags were spray-painted on walls. And they were tattooed on skin. All the while, President George W. Bush promised military action against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 massacre. The war On Sunday, Oct. 7, U.S. fighter jets and bombers attacked Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, the protectors of the suspected mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden. There was little joy or fist-pumping. A grim, dangerous task had been undertaken. The country braced itself for the possibility of more American dead. The next American casualty did not come from an attack in Afghanistan. A tabloid newspaper editor in Boca Raton, Fla., died from inhalation anthrax, which he apparently contracted from a tainted letter. Cases mounted. New York. Washington. None claimed responsibility. Authorities could not rule out domestic terrorism. The Orange County Hazmat team raced from one call to the other throughout the county checking on white powder and suspicious letters. The white space suits became a common sight. The new 'normal' The funerals continue. The anthrax scares still rage. The bombing in Afghanistan goes on round-the-clock on some nights. The scars have not healed. The wounds are still so fresh that the scars have not even formed yet. Does anybody remember Sept. 10? © 2001 Orange County Publications, a division of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., all rights reserved. |