When Would the Shuffling Stop?

By Amanda Egesi

New York Times Front Page Photo

http://www.doobybrain.com/2007/09/11/new-york-times-front-page-september-12-2001/

When Would the Shuffling Stop?

Sarah Biggers walked down her long suburban driveway. When you think of New York, you don’t think about the suburbs. You think about the tall buildings and the busy night life. But most importantly you think about the millions of people hustling through downtown New York City every day. It’s not like that in Cortlandt Manor, New York, is a town with 41,592 people in north Westchester County.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, there stood ten year old Sarah in her driveway with her big brown curly hair, holding a pink lunch box. Patiently, she waited for her bus to pull up in front of her white house with black shutters. Bus 348 showed up to her house at 99 Red Mill Road. She climbed the four steps onto the loud, giggly bus full of elementary kids. The bus made 20 more stops up the big hill. She was only a mile away from her school. At the top of the hill the yellow school bus arrived at the brick building that read: George Washington Elementary School. It was on 3634 Lexington Ave Mohegan Lake, New York.

            She walked into her homeroom where she waited for the teachers to take attendance. One by one hands flew up and children’s voices answered “Here!” as the teacher went through roll call. For most of the morning, Sarah and her classmates were reading before their next activity. The shuffling of shoes started at 9:03 in the morning.  More and more teachers buzzed around the classroom. It was unusual. But Sarah continued reading her book.  The shuffling continued. Sniffles and gasps came from some teachers. Some started crying as they covered their face and mouth. Then the dismissals started. Slowly one by one Sarah’s classmates were being dismissed. The teachers wouldn’t tell the kids what was going on. As the day continued, the class size got smaller and smaller. Sarah’s 4th grade teacher Mrs. Mero went from desk to desk asking kids if their parents worked in the city. “Most of everyone’s parents worked in the city. It was the norm,”Sarah knew.

She heard kids saying, “I don’t know where my parents work” “Ummmm” “I think their home.” Then it was Sarah’s turn. Mrs. Mero crouched down in front of Sarah’s desk with her fiery red hair, stretchy spandexie pants and oversized blue shirt, “Did she know where her parents worked?”

“Yes, I do. Dad works in the city on 37^th street at Razorfish,”Sarah answered.

Mrs. Mero’s face was blank. Her cold white hand touched Sarah’s cheek as she starred into her eyes as hers filled up with tears. Mrs. Mero slowly stood up, fixed her blouse, and patted her eyes dry. She continued the same pattern. She went to each kid, crouched down to their level and put her hand on their shoulder. Her face was pale and expressionless. Every now and then she wiped away the tears slowly falling from her eyes.

A voice came over the load speakers. It was Principal Tracy Norman. First, there was a crackle from the P.A. system turning on. Then, a long pause before he started speaking. His voice was serious, slow, and clam. His stern principal voice informed the school there had been an emergency in the city. Everyone needed to be dismissed early. Please follow instructions from the teachers.

The sound of kids screaming, laughing at jokes, and girls singing hand games on the bus, was now a memory. The bus ride home was as silent as a classroom during a spelling test. Sarah could even hear her own breathing. There were only a few riders on the ride home. They were just as silent as she was. The 20 stops to drop off students were just five. Each stop took five to ten minutes as the driver made sure a parent was there to escort each child home.

At the bottom of the hill on 99 Red Mill Road, the bus pulled up to Sarah’s white house. She could see her mom waiting in the driveway with her arms crossed. Sarah walked off the bus and ran to her mom. “I remember she was shaking, and I didn’t know why,” Sarah recalled. Sarah’s neighbor, Christina Velazquez, had no one to walk her to her house. Christina came over to the Bigger’s home.

Someone was already in their house when they all walked back in. It was Caitlin Biggers, the eldest of the sisters. Sarah looked up to Caitlin. She saw Caitlin sitting on the couch in front of the TV. They looked at each other and together, Sarah, Caitlin, and Christina sat on the big soft gray couch in the living room in silence. They were watching the Twin Towers burn in the city.

This time at home, the shuffling started again, Sarah’s mom Anne Biggers, couldn’t stop moving. She was pacing back and forth, passing the TV each time. She had the phone in one hand and the other was on her hip. “They can’t be gone, they can’t.” Mrs. Biggers always told the girls how great it was to see the New York skyline from where she lived in Staten Island. She could always saw the Twin Towers. They made the skyline.

Now, as she walked in front of the TV, all she could see was her beautiful skyline was the “1,362-foot-tall south tower and 1,368-foot-tall north tower were gone. The buildings were designed to with stand resistance to the gravity loads and lateral forces caused by high winds and earthquakes,” She was clutching the phone in her hand and prayed her husband Rob Biggers was alive and safe.

Dad, Rob Biggers was only 20 blocks away from the Twin Towers on September 11 when the plane hit He worked at Razorfish as a delivery principal and client partner. Razorfish was just outside of Time Square on 1440 Broadway and West 40^th. Rob watched from his window at work as the second tower fell. Before he fled his building, he picked up his landline office phone and called Anne.

“Anne, where are the girls?”

“They are home. Honey are you safe, where are you,?” Anne frantically asked.

“I’m safe. We are all evacuating the building. I’m walking up town to meet Rick and Padaric. See you soon. Tell the girls everything is okay,” said Rob.

He packed his work items onto a small rolling cart and fled the city along with thousands of others New Yorkers. Rob took the Metro-north into work every day. But that morning he couldn’t take it back home. He walked from the city to safety. Leaving his building he was welcomed with dust that stuck to everything and everyone around him. After walking 40 long blocks up town to 550 Madison Ave and East 55^th, he met up with his best friends Rick Sheridan and Padraic Smith. Still dragging his rolling car, they made it to the parking garage where Rick’s black Toyota Camry was.

The towers burned for 56 minutes and 102 minutes, then fell in 12 minutes. Rob Biggers was not one of them. After sitting in two hours of bumper to bumper traffic on Hutchinson Parkway Rob finally pulled up to the long driveway on 99 Red Mill Road. Starring at his white house with black shutters he recalls it as, “A peaceful moment.”

Some New Yorkers returned home in the dark that night. Some didn’t make it out of their work building after the attack. Sarah remembers hearing her father’s voice, which was soothing to her. Peering down the staircase she saw him, covered in soot. His black suit jacket was damp. His rolling cart with work papers were coated with white stuff that looked like snow. Anne jumped in his arms. Sarah and Caitlin ran down the stairs. “He looked shocked, tired, and blank,” Sarah recalled. They all sat there watching the news. Anne kept repeating the same phrase: my skyline is gone, my skyline is gone. The Biggers sat there together in silence. Quietly reflecting on how appreciative they were to be tucked away in the suburbs distant from all the hustle and bustle.

Looking outside down the long drive away on 99 Red Mill Road, there was nothing. Everyone was peacefully in their homes with their loved ones. But others living in “the city that never sleeps” were not so lucky. 

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[1] Sarah Biggers, Easton Mass. October 11,2013.

[2] Ibid

[3] Sarah Biggers, Easton Mass. October 11,2013.

[4] Anne Biggers, New York.  October 11,2013.

[5] Rob  Biggers,. New York. October 11,2013.

[6] Anne Biggers, New York. October 11,2013.

[7] Rob Biggers, New York. October 11,2013.

[8] Ibid

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[i] “When The Towers Fell” Scientific American, Oct 9,2001 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-the-twin-towers-fell

[ii] The Encyclopedia of 9/11”

A Passing Moment at a 6 Year Old's Birthday Party

By Leland Greeley

Alina Shklyarenko turned 6 on Sept. 11, 2001. At the time, she lived in Odessa, Ukraine. Odessa lies in the most southern region of Ukraine that opens up to the Black sea.

Odessa, a “port city” as Alina recalled, holds just over a million people at the moment. As Odessa’s official website states, “Odessa economics is dominated by the establishments dealing with the sea business” and has “the largest city port in Ukraine.”

Ukraine is sandwiched between Russia on its eastern border and Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland on its western border. Belarus sits on top of Ukraine. The country is “slightly smaller than the size of Texas” as The World Factbook coins it.

Alina was excited that day. It was her birthday. When she woke up, she checked under her pillow. On special days like a birthday, Alina’s parents always put something under it, similar to the American “tooth fairy” tradition. On this day, Alina awoke to find a Barbie-like doll waiting for her. Upon finding her gift, she jumped out of bed and began to run around her room as she remembered doing so many times in the apartment she grew up in.

Alina is the only child in the Shklyarenko family. In Odessa, she had a “big room” all to herself in their apartment with the exception of Kesha, her pet bird. Right outside Alina’s room was a balcony. While her view wasn’t spectacular, Alina remembers the balcony fondly. She sometimes “messed around with people walking below by pouring water on them” similar to the American water balloon prank.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Alina ran into her parents’ room and jumped on their bed. It was time to start the birthday preparations.

Alina’s family liked to have two birthday celebrations. One was intended for the adults where close family and friends come over to drink and eat all day. The other occasion was for the “kids”, similar to a typical American kid’s birthday party. The party for the adults happened on Sept. 11, 2001, since it was a weekday. The kids’ party was planned for the weekend.

Party preparation began for the women of the Shklyarenko family. In Ukraine, it was considered the women’s job.

But Alina didn’t care; she liked helping her mom get ready for the celebration.

Throughout the day, the Shklyarenko’s received “birthday calls”, as friends of the family wished them well.

The party for the adults revolves around the meal. When family and friends come over, the Shklyarenko’s fill their table end to end with food. It “shows off how good our cooking is” as Alina recalled. Everything comes out at the same time, except for desert which is saved for the end like Americans do.

Alina and her mother focused continuously on preparing the food for the celebration. Alina remembered having “Seledka pod Shubay”, a Ukrainian dish that’s loosely translated in English as “fish in a fur coat”; or a salad with pickled herring. While Alina loves the food her family makes, she always stays away from that particular dish.

During this preparation, the Shklyarenko’s didn’t check the news or turn the television on. If they had at 3:46 in the afternoon that day, since Ukraine is 7 hours ahead of U.S. time, they would have heard that a plane just crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

But they didn’t turn on the news; it was Alina’s birthday.

The Shklyarenko’s learned of the terrorist attacks in the US when family and friends arrived for the festivities.

“Vi slishali shto proizoshlo v Amerike?” “Did you hear what happened in America?”, they were asked.

The Shklyarenko’s turned on the television. Alina remembers “everyone watched intently.”

For Alina, her family and their friends, it was “crazy to see…..a ‘world power’ getting attacked.”

They watched the television for ten minutes. Alina’s mother shut it off. This was Alina’s day; not to be spoiled by an event so distant.

The party continued as they ate and drank throughout the night. When the party came to an end, Alina helped her mom clean up. The World Trade Center never crossed their minds.

The terrorist attacks in America were merely a “passing moment” at that time.

It was not until 3 years later when Alina moved to Brookline, Mass. that she realized her birthdate was so significant.

“No one cared about the actual date of my birthday in Ukraine, but people noticed in America.”

In Ukraine, Sept. 11 was Alina’s day, her birthday.

In the United States, it is now a day she must recognize along with other Americans. But it’s still Alina Shklyarenko’s birthday.

                                                                              - 

End Notes

Interview with Alina Shklyarenko

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/up.html (The World Factbook, used for information on Ukraine)

http://www.odessa.ua/en/history/ (Odessa’s official webpage used for information on Odessa)

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/ (Used to determine when towers would been hit in Ukrainian time)

By Aimee Chiavaroli 
September 11 from a Rooftop  

Photo by Dearphotograph.com

Twenty four year old Michael, asleep on the futon; in his Lower East Side apartment felt the ground shake.  One of his four roommates, Scott, walked into the three room apartment past Michael’s bedroom to wake his girlfriend, Jessica. Then, he tried to wake Michael, but Michael had three bottles of Bud Light and four shots of Jose Cuervo, one of which the bartender poured down his throat at Coyote Ugly, last night. Michael heard Scott say one of the Twin Towers was on fire and to go to the roof. He heard next, the second World Trade Center Tower is on fire. Go to the roof. In sweatpants, Michael headed to the door and took the old red elevator to the 16^th floor. The elevator had no windows. He couldn’t see outside. It was rickety. There was a peek hole to see if anyone was waiting on a floor. No one was waiting. The elevator didn’t stop until the 16^th floor.

            Michael was on the roof with his four housemates. All he heard were sirens and saw both towers on fire. One was smoking badly and he saw flames. Are they going to be able to put that out? How did this happen? Is it going to fall down? They sat and watched the towers burn. Was it a bomb or gas explosion? Was this another terrorist attack like the one in 1993 on the World Trade Center?

            When Michael returned to his first floor apartment, he turned on his 12-by-12 inch TV. He put on Channel 4. In the minutes before the report, the station was airing a McDonald’s breakfast commercial. Then Katie Couric and Matt Lauer reported that a plane hit the Towers. A witness, Jennifer Obersteen, was telling them on air what she saw. The Towers, live, was on the screen. Obersteen told them she saw smoke and fire. She thought a bomb caused the explosion.

Other networks broke in. At ABC News, Don Dahler, a National Correspondent, was five blocks north of the World Trade Center and heard a loud shriek from what could’ve been a jet or airplane.

            CNN told viewers there was an unconfirmed report that a plane hit one of the Towers. Sean Murtagh, a CNN producer, witnessed the attack, and told viewers the plane looked like a two engine, large passenger commercial jet. It was teetering back and forth, wing tip to wing tip.

Michael tried to call his parents on his cellphone to let them know he was OK. He couldn’t get through. He called his girlfriend, Colleen, who lived in Harlem. She was safe.

             He went back on the roof. The first Tower fell and smoke rose up. He couldn’t see the whole Tower, but he could see the impact sites. Then the second Tower fell.  It just didn’t make any sense. I could watch it on TV like a thousand times but it’s not the same as watching it live, he would later realize.

            The subway system was shut down and there were no buses. 1^st Avenue runs north towards Harlem and was opened for ambulances. 2^nd Avenue goes south towards the Towers. Fire truck, after fire truck sped by approximately 60 miles per hour: as fast as Michael had seen in Manhattan.

            People wandered out in the street dazed and coated in dust. Some had more dust than others. Those were the ones who walked up 2^nd Avenue, away from the towers.  They were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge or the 59^th Street Bridge to get to Queens.

            About thirty minutes after the Towers fell, the five housemates left the apartment. They stopped at Gulf Station at 2^nd Avenue and 1^st Street so Michael could call his parents from a payphone. He couldn’t reach them. He called one of the only other numbers he could think of — his college roommate, Ted. Michael asked him to leave a message for his parents, tell them I’m OK.

            They then went to their usual place, Little Poland on 2^nd Avenue and ordered a combination of the special: two eggs with toast including bacon or sausage, and coffee or orange juice for around five dollars. It was comfort food.

            As they left Little Poland, they saw a friend from the neighborhood. He told them a blood donation center was set up at Bellevue Hospital on 26^th and 1^st Avenue. The line, they discovered was so long, they were turned away. But not many people were coming in. There was no one to give blood to.

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The next day Michael went to the 6^th train subway station to go to work. At the police station there, missing person’s pictures covered the walls.

            In the Seagram Building on E. 53^rd Street, where Michael was a waiter at the French restaurant, Brasserie, there was a bomb threat. People evacuated the Seagram and buildings around it. They had to walk on the grassy median because the street ran north and south. Michael didn’t go to work for three or four days, after.  

            Following the attacks, the one thing that continued to linger in the city, was the smell.

Every day you could smell it. It was the worst burnt charred rubber smell you could ever smell in your life.

Sources

I interviewed my cousin, Michael Chiavaroli, through Skype on September 24, 2013. He lived in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOQB5Xq4NIM

This is a Youtube clip of the Today Show on the morning of September 11, 2001. It shows what was on Channel 4 right before the news of the Towers broke out. It features Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. They were on the phone with a woman named Jennifer Obersteen who was near the Towers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBc1F4LLcOo

This is a Youtube video of the Towers being shown on ABC. Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer didn’t claim that the cause was a plane, or that it was deliberate. They called Don Dahler who thought a plane attacked the Towers, but it wasn’t confirmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfYQAPhjwzA

This is a Youtube video of CNN on the morning of September 11, 2001. The two anchors call Sean Murtagh, a CNN producer on the scene. He thought the cause looked and sounded like a plane.

The Shuttle That Never Landed

By April Renzella

            It was supposed to be a day of excitement and new beginnings but just moments after taking flight, NASA’s space shuttle Challenger had blown up, just 73 seconds after launching, before the world’s eyes.

            Ann Tortorella watched in disbelief at the hospital’s television set. She heard screaming through the speakers, silence from the announcers, and what she saw was a cloud of smoke consuming the shuttle until there was nothing more to see.

            No matter where she ventured, everyone inside of Melrose-Wakefield hospital was talking about the tragedy that took place at 11:39:13  Eastern Standard time that day.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

            Flash back  two days earlier, Ann was with her husband Paul at his mother’s house. It was January 26, 1986, Super Bowl Sunday, and the New England Patriots were about to get crushed by the Chicago Bears, 46-10.

            While watching the game, Ann’s mother-in-law started to get chest pains and was rushed to Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. She had a heart attack and needed triple bypass surgery, leaving her in the hospital for several days.

            So while Ann and Paul went back and forth to the hospital to visit his mother, Ann kept up with what was going on with the Challenger.

            “I remember how exciting it was,” she would say later. “There was a lot of interest in New England.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………

            Interest in New England was sparked by one of the members of the flight crew, Christa McAuliffe. Born in Boston on September 2, 1948, Christa was a Framingham State College alum and a high school teacher in Concord, New Hampshire. She was a local, normal woman with an interest in space.

            Her dream was to ride in a space shuttle. This was about to come to fruition when she won the National Aeronautics and Space Administration contest. Out of 11,000 people, Christa was chosen for the mission. Vice President George H.W. Bush announced her name at the White House stating that she would be the “first private citizen passenger in the history of space flight.”

            After receiving the news she traveled to Houston to the Johnson Space Center in September 1985 to participate in training.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

            In the days leading up to the launch, which was rescheduled several times, Ann, as well as the country, was waiting to see the first civilian, a woman from New England, blast off into space.

            Christa was now a household name. Newspaper articles, interviews, and appearances all focused on the teacher and her soon to be first time in space.

            Ann was sitting in the hospital, watching the pre-flight interviews with the flight crew. All of the stations were broadcasting the “pre-show” and all were broadcasting the flight that would take place just shortly after 11:30 am on January 28.

            Ann and the country watched in anticipation as the countdown began at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

            “10…9…8…7…6…we have main engine start…4…3…2…1, and lift off. Lift off!”

            The crowd cheered.

            And at a velocity of 2,900 feet per second, the Challenger exploded.

            The sky lit up white with clouds. Sounds of people crying could be heard in the crowd.

            “Flight controlers here looking very carefully here at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………..........

Photo from USA Today: www.usatoday.com

            Ann watched as the shuttle blew up, killing all of its passengers. She walked down the hospital corridor and all that was heard were people’s reactions to the explosion. She entered the elevator to get food. The Challenger was being spoken about. She went into the cafeteria. People were eating, buzzing about what the nation had just witnessed.

            No one knew what had happened. Not even NASA.

            “All day long they just kept playing the same thing,” she said. “It was all you watched for days after.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………

            That night President Reagan addressed the union in a speech about the disaster.

            “Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts to a terrible accident on the ground. But we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight. We’ve never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle, but they, the Challenger 7, were aware of the dangers and overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly.”

            President Reagan then listed off the names of the astronauts that America was mourning that night.

            “Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnick, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………

            It would be months until NASA figured out that the explosion was caused by a 39 cent faulty o-ring.  

……………………………………………………………………………………………...

            The families of the astronauts founded the Challenger Center for Space Science Education program. This program makes it possible for students to experience simulated space missions in memory of the Challenger 7.

            In addition, NASA takes a day every year to pause and reflect upon the last crew to aboard Challenger as well as other crews who have been lost pursing a mission in space during NASA Day of Remembrance, on January 28, the day the Challenger exploded.

End Notes

"Christa McAuliffe Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.

Howell, Elizabeth. "Challenger: Shuttle Disaster That Changed NASA." Space.com. N.p., 16 Oct. 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.

Pierson, Don. "The Chicago Bears Win the 1986 Super Bowl." Chicagotribune.com. N.p., 26 Jan. 1986. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.

Yagoda, Ben. "Fact-Checking "In Cold Blood": What the New Yorkers Fact Checker Missed." Slate Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013.

YouTube Videos Used

Challenger: President Reagan’s Challenger Disaster Speech

CNN: Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

Interviewee

Ann Tortorella