There are two images that to this day constantly return in my mind regarding 9/11. One is the fact that finally after we got the building evacuated and secured, I went home that night. My car was parked in Weehauken so It took a while to get across the river. It was late and I was driving north on Route 95. As I passed Manhattan, I saw a huge sign lit up on the thruway. It said " All bridges and tunnels into Manhattan closed to further notice due to terrorist threats."

I felt as though I was in a movie. Any minute I expected to see Godzilla and Rodan fight it out by the bridge, it was that surreal.

The second image which was even more powerful was when President Bush came to NYC to survey the damage. He was speaking at the Javits Center which was across the street from the Ferry Terminal, I used it to get to New Jersey. We waited there for about 3 hours because the secret service and the Coast Guard blocked off all traffic in the river. After a couple of hours, we were getting ancy. The crowd started to get a little loud. Then all of a sudden there was a huge hush. Silence slammed on the crowd like an iron anvil. I turned around sucked in my breath for in front of me just yards away was the hospital ship USNS Comfort. She was slowly steaming up the Hudson. She was so huge that she blotted out the sky and the Jersey coast as she went by us, a huge white hull with three gigantic red cross' painted on her hull. No one said a word till she passed out of our view further upriver.

I'll never ever forget it.

ollie

Good post, Ollie...it must have been a feeling like none other before or since for you... being not only in a surreal environment, but to be in the middle of all of that history as it was being made.

If you'd had a notebook with you, you would've probably been jotting down all of your impressions and observations. It's eerie...that hospital ship steaming by...rather like an omen of things to come in other places as a result of this tragic attack.

Catherine