"A Mural of Hope Against Hopelessness:" A Bloomfield Resident Remembers 9-11

This is my son Gordon, in front of the YMHA in Clifton, where I'd dropped him off for his second day of Kindergarten on the morning of 9/11. I scooted on my way into New York to make some money. Well, that didn't happen...

What happened next occurred in split-seconds. I'm heading east on Rt. 3 towards the Lincoln Tunnel, and from a rise in the road I can see almost the entire 14 miles in front of me turning red with brake lights, as the tunnel is closed to traffic, and the gridlock is rushing its way back to me like a rocket. At exactly the same moment, my wife rings me on the cell, telling me that some unknown thing happened to the World Trade Center, and that I should go back and check on Gordon's school. (The previous year a sniper had attacked a Jewish school in California, so she was understandably freaking out.)

I pulled off an exit a split-second before the gridlock would've stopped me in my tracks, and raced back to Gordon's school. There I found the tears and chaos of the very parents I'd said 'good morning' to not ten minutes prior. I decided not to pull Gordon out of school, not to add to the upset and panic these poor five-year-olds were observing and experiencing. I spent the rest of that strange day as if in a fog; walking through the building, checking the doors and locks, comforting the distraught. Oh, and watching windows and rooftops across the street, checking under cars and dumpsters. I'll admit I was a little off my rocker, because this one not-quite-sane thought kept running through my mind: if this totally unreal thing could actually happen in real life, well then ANYTHING was possible.

I wanted to be vigilant. I wanted to be heroic in spite of the fact that, at that time, I was so off-the-wagon and out-of-shape I couldn't bend down to pick up a nickel off the sidewalk without wheezing. So that's how it began for me; the learning and teaching of my kind of fitness, the kind that doesn't cost a dime (because, of course, the economy collapsed along with the Twin Towers). And that's how it was: when the entire nation was saying 'Never again', so was I. Never out-of-shape, never un-ready again.

The fact is, I was back at work in New York the very next week, trying to carry on as if nothing had happened. I was working at an agency on 28th and Park. Stepped out for some lunch, got to the end of the block, looked up, and what did I see? A couple of flyers taped to a corner phone booth; then a couple more saying 'HAVE YOU SEEN…' and more and more filling my entire field of vision, taped to walls, doors, the sides of buildings, parked cars even. A forest of photocopied faces, a sea of paper and pain wrapping each and every still standing surface, a mural of hope against hopelessness

This was 28th Street and Park, I suddenly remembered.  One block over and down from the great Lexington Avenue Armory, which  days earlier had been set up as the Missing Persons clearinghouse. Seemingly no longer in control of my limbs, I followed the trail of tears, witnessing front steps and window ledges and alleyways turns into shrines, with framed faces, pleas and prayers, encrusted with the melted wax from burning candles. Like the tears streaming wordlessly and uncontrollably down my face.

--Steve Crooks, September 2011