IT STARTED as my job. Then it became a mission. Then, it evolved into an awesome responsibility, and a privilege.
For nearly four years, I have talked to, cried with and laughed among the victims of 9/11. I’ve bonded with bereft mothers. Grieved with new widows. Attended countless memorials for people I did not know. All the while, I harbored a terrible secret: I was the lucky one. I was not one of them.
It was not until yesterday that I was ever asked to talk about what I experienced on 9/11. And if anyone had wanted to know, I would have refused to say.
For I watched the World Trade Center burn and fall from the relative safety of my Brooklyn rooftop.
I did not lose anyone close to me. Only in the silence, I prayed: Please let my preschool-age daughter live to see another morning. Then I went to work.
Strangely, those at StoryCorps – now collecting stories of people affected by 9/11 – believed this tale deserved to be preserved, even if I didn’t agree.
So yesterday, I walked down into the new PATH station at the hole in the earth known as Ground Zero, and entered a booth that opened this week, where workers are recording oral histories of those who survived 9/11.
I warned my interviewer, Emily Feit, I’d have nothing useful to offer. She just nodded. And in 40 minutes, she proved me wrong.
In the cozy, dark booth, with “facilitator” Laura Spero manning the controls, Feit asked me a small series of questions. Stuff like, “Where were you?”
Normally, I’m accustomed to doing the interviews.. But before I realized it, I found myself talking a blue streak.
I wanted Emily to know Star Ortiz, the gorgeous, young mother whose husband, Paul, disappeared in the trade center, leaving her alone with a 9-month old daughter. For days, I hunted for Paul in the wreckage. And for a while, I truly believed that Paul could be found. But he was gone. He was 21.
And then Paul’s widow did something amazing. After all she did for me, all the stories she gave me, all the intrusions I made in her life – she thanked me.
Sometimes, you see, people just need to talk.
You walk out of the booth with a CD recording of the interview. These will be gathered and put in a digital archive in the Library of Congress.
Trade Center rebuilders should trash plans to build an International Freedom Center – destined to blame the 9/11 victims for the attacks – and keep the StoryCorps project as its permanent memorial.
Let the victims of 9/11 speak for themselves.