For those of us old enough, we remember “where I was the morning of 9/11?”
On the Q train crossing the Manhattan Bridge when some high school students pointed out the window and said, “Look, the World Trade Center is on fire.” Still on the train, the conductor announced over the speakers. We were directed to 42nd Street due to a downtown emergency. At Times Square, everything was eerily normal as I changed to the 1 train uptown. At 96th Street, another announcement: “the whole NYC Subway system is being shut down”???
Up the street into a beautiful fall morning, I started to walk to work up at 120th Street. I asked someone why the subway had stopped running. She screamed at me, “Don’t you know, they’re bombing the World Trade Center.” I received calls about families evacuating on foot from Rockefeller Center over the Queensboro Bridge and from downtown Brooklyn.
From my office, Sally, my colleague, and I listened to the radio. We watched from our office windows as one tower fell, then the other. That night I remained in the office until 1 a.m. The D train then resumed service, allowing me to return home to Flatbush. Getting off the train on the elevated platform on 18th Avenue after 2 in the morning, I could still see clouds of smoke rising in the night sky over lower Manhattan, and smell “burning” in the air…
The next day as stories of congregations that had lost members — and former parishioners and people I knew too — were coming in our UCC office, I got a call from Old First. Geneva — I knew of her, but I’m not sure I knew her yet personally — and her staff meeting decided to call and check on us, offer us their support and prayer.
It was that kind of solidarity that turned out to be both astonishing and healing in the midst of very tragic, difficult times (the anthrax scares every morning on the subways lasted for months).
I offer you President Obama’s message this morning as our Fear Not. Pay particular attention to the promise of the last sentence of his message. Pray for unity and resolve to emerge in our dark times.
“If you were young in 2001, or weren’t even born yet, it can be hard to imagine what 9/11 felt like. The shock of that beautiful, cloudless morning. Families feel heartbreak as someone takes their loved ones with such swiftness and cruelty. The realization that the forces of malevolence and violence were closer, and the future less certain, than we knew.
But in the days that followed, we felt something else, too. Pride in the rescue workers who had rushed to the scene, and the passengers who had stormed the cockpit. Admiration for the men and women who left behind lives of comfort to serve their country. A deep resolve that nothing would break the will of a truly United States of America.
Today, Michelle and I are remembering those we lost that day, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the wars that followed. We pray for their families. And we hope Americans everywhere remember the true lesson of 9/11: that we can survive even our darkest days as long as we move forward as one nation and one people.”
Thank you, Mr. President. I still find it remarkable: the sense of solidarity, shared experience, and abiding concern for one another that took over NYC—not always the most neighborly of places! — in the days, weeks. months that followed.
In faith and courage,
Michael
Submitted by Rev. Michael Caine. Michael is the Pastor of the Old First Reform United Church of Christ in Old City Philadelphia. Old First celebrates 300 Years on September 27th 2026.
The submission was edited and published by Rev. Renaldo Mckenzie Editor in Chief and Content Chief at The Neoliberal Journals and The Neoliberal Corporation.
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