On this beautiful warm and sunny September morning the day moved along as usual. I heard children laughing on their way to school on the street 16 floors below my apartment. I was privileged to own in one of Brooklyn's landmarked buildings with amazing views of airports and bridges and blue skies and the Manhattan skyline. As I dressed and prepared for my workday suddenly someone came knocking at my door and I opened it to the Super who literally ran past me and out to my terrace high above the streets, people and traffic, shouting Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden. A name I never heard of before.

I did not see the 1st plane hit by then, but soon thereafter, standing on my terrazo-tiled balcony overlooking a beautiful sky of white puffy clounds on this perfect day, I watched as the entire horror unfolded. I didn't see a 2nd plane from my angle. Though viewing from the downtown Brooklyn side, about 2 miles from Ground Zero I had a front row seat to the tragedy unfolding at the World Trade Center, knowing a friend of mine worked on the top floor of Tower One. Each of the twin towers had 110 floors, and proudly bragged 97 passenger elevators, and 21,800 windows each, and was famous for it's size and grandeau. I expected there was some explosion and prayed he and others from the upper floors would soon be rescued from the rooftop by helicopters as I waited for his safety and others to unfold in a rescue. Shocked instead when suddenly, and so quickly, the first Tower, soon followed by the second, collapsed upon itself in a humongous cloud of billowing smoke. The buildings fell, each floor collapsing on the one beneath in an orderly fashion, so quickly it was bizarre, leaving nothing but dense smoke in their wakes. It was surreel as it reminded me of the planned demolitions one would see now and again in various parts of Manhattan where I worked. Yet my mind could not comprehend this scene.

After a sleepless night of listening to news, the next morning I rode my bike across the Brooklyn Bridge down to Ground Zero. Traffic was blocked from all directions as I snaked my way through the maize of destruction. Tape and construction horses surrounded the mayhem. Police were everywhere along with some fire engines still standing, yet I was able to ride around the taped off smoldering and destroyed streets piled high with steel and debris. For that brief while I sat on my bike at Ground Zero horrified at a scene right out of Planet of the Apes knowing there were bodily remains in the heavy ash and clutter which was as far as I could see from my viewpoint. Soon a policeman came and kindly asked me to leave. They had the entire area of blocks taped off. Heat from the remaining fires and dust still settling, the odors were suffocating. I could only assume I was inhaling a cocktail of melted steel, glass, debris and bodies, which continued to simmer for many days afterwards. I headed home while pumping my bike struggling to comprehend this morning's atrocity.

To escape the undescribable odor permeating my apartment, I headed out the next day to visit my parents 45 miles east on Long Island, yet the smell followed me most of the way as I drove on the LIE, (Long Island Expressway), and so continued for days afterwards. Though not as potent, I couldn't get the odor or the thought of what created it, out of my nostrils. The knowledge that I was inhaling thousands of humans in their final resting place...this pit of Hell.

May we Never Forget. R.I.P. dear ones...