By Lawrence Henry on 8.19.02 @ 12:03AM
Moving from a town that is building a memorial to eight residents killed on September 11.
Without thinking about it much, I said to my wife the other day,
"I'm glad we were here for September 11." We think of lots of
things now that we're leaving Westfield, New Jersey.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because it was real."
It still is. In an elbow of land between the train station and
the railroad bridge over the traffic circle, right across the
intersection from the World War I plynthe, the town is building a
memorial to the eight Westfielders killed on September 11. In the
memorial, eight gray waist-high obelisks rim a little grassy
section of park and bricked walk. It isn't done yet. It's likely
I'll never see it complete.
On that day, I was having coffee in the local bakery with my
friend Joe Shukis, when Raul, the busboy (who eventually became our
sons' babysitter and dear friend), came over and said, "Did you
hear? An airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center."
And we thought, as everyone first did, of a small single-engine
plane. Indeed, I had taken Bud on a demonstration flight in a
Cessna out of Linden airport only weeks before, north across Staten
Island for the spectacular view of bridges and buildings. We flew
at 800 feet -- the designated altitude, and significantly lower
than the WTC towers -- up the Hudson, and banked and turned around
and headed home.
My last view of the World Trade Center was up close, below the
tops, from an airplane.
Sally was standing on Exchange Place when the first plane hit.
She didn't hear anything. "Suddenly, the air was full of paper,"
she said.
All these stories have been told before, but we experienced them
here, in the neighborhood, connected to New York City by the
umbilicus of the commuter train. Throughout that day, three trains
arrived in Westfield. I can still see the people staggering off,
stumping toward home on numb legs, all expression blasted from
their faces, ties pulled askew, clothing wrinkled.
Remembering that day, for some reason, makes me remember the
2000 elections, which we also marked here, and another moment I
won't forget.
Sally and I had engaged a babysitter and gone out to dinner.
After dinner, we stopped in what was then a cigar bar for coffee
and dessert. The big screen TV was on, and we were the only
patrons. There was supposed to be some sort of announcement from
Florida, so we asked the bartender to turn the TV to CNN.
And Katherine Harris appeared in that now famous press
conference where she certified the election for George W. Bush.
Sally and I laughed and laughed.
"Would you look at that babe?" Sally exclaimed, and she wasn't
making fun, not at all. Instead, she was admiring a nice-looking,
well-educated woman like herself, working for state government
(which Sally had done), sticking out her chin, talking calmly, and
doing the right thing -- just as Sally would have done.
Westfield's votes broke interestingly in that election. Gore
edged Bush, just barely. Bob Franks handily bested Jon Corzine,
this in a town known as "the place where the CEOs live," where
many, many people knew both candidates personally. And conservative
Republican Mike Ferguson won the House seat.
At the time of that election, I was working for the local paper.
That fall, in an editorial, I complimented Westfield on "an
extraordinarily high level of civic virtue." That characteristic
can be interpreted in other ways, as pompousness or pushy ambition,
for example.
But on balmy fall nights after school board meetings, I took a
rosy view, maybe even a naïve one. After watching
Superintendent Bill Foley and School Board Chairman Darielle Walsh
run those meetings, I would drive home through the near-empty town
and think thoughts that self-respecting newspapermen are not
supposed to think. I would think of Bill's and Darielle's beautiful
faces, and I would feel like everything was going to be all
right.
topics:
Trade
