September 11, 2001

No Man is an Island...

There are days that affect all of us, that happen once in a lifetime. A day that for the briefest of moments, we all feel the collective that really populate this planet. September 11th, 2001 was such a day. This is my memory of the that moment, and the context around it.

The Days Before
Life had been very normal for all of us prior to the day. Items in our life seemed quite normal. They may have even been so normal that we really did not recognize how good we had it.

Our sense of freedom, our definition of heroes, and sense of normality all changed in one moment.

We had the son of a previous president serving in the White House, who was best know for the paradies done by Saturday Night Live. The news was headline for countless weeks with the story of Congressman Condit and a missing intern he was involved with.

Our movies were providing us with empty heroes. The summer blockbuster was an epic telling of the turning point of the 20th Century, Pearl Harbor. The story even had to be slightly altered so that it would play in Japan.

Travel was cheap. We could go to Vegas for under $150 round trip. We travelled the world over, and conducted business with movement on a moments notice.

And exactly two weeks earlier I had had a son, my third child. I was looking forward to the wonderful world I intended to share with him.

Little did anyone in this country know that everything was about to change.

5:30 am Tuesday September 11, 2001
Had to get up early and to into the office early to stay ahead of the new workload.

Ran into Evonne, our live-in nurse. She had been staying with us taking care of Lucas, our two-week old son while Julie recovered (and rested) from the delivery. It did not help that all of the kids (and myself) were recovering from a serious cough.

I ran into Evonne in the kitchen, who was preparing Lucas' bottle for his morning feeding. Afer making my lunch, I raced out the door to catch the 6:30 am train into the city. At that hour the Lake-Cook Rd. was nice and quiet. The crowds were very minimal

An Article
On the train I read an article that was on the front of the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune. The article reviewed what would become of the Sun-Times site on the Chicago River. There was heavy speculation on whether the new tallest building in the world would be built there (I had worked on a similar project in 1990). Donald Trump, the major figure behind this new development had talked to OWP&P (a major Chicago firm), and it was their rejected design that was used in the speculation on what the site, and how a tall building would fit into the current Chicago market. That all changed a day later.

WTC - September 11, 2001 8:05 am - taken by a Port Authority employee on his 1st day of work

WTC - with Battery Park

7:50 AM
I was getting ahead on my workload for the day. Then Douglas, the CTO and my boss, popped into my office and said "Did you hear the news?". Not having a radio (my office was also windowless), I had not checked headlines on the internet since 7AM that morning. Douglas conveyed to me that he just heard on his car radio that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Mesmerized we quickly scoured the office looking for a radio. Not finding one we tried going to the internet news sites and found pictures of the first tower burning. It became obvious to us that something big was up.

9:05 AM
Once we realized that we needed a more immediate news source I recommended to Douglas that we go down to the basement to the World's Gym workout facility. Like any modern gym the exercise room is typically full of televisions. The receptionist understood something big was up and let a number of people in. In the workout room there was a women in white working out on one of the machines as well as a weightlifter taking a breakfast snack break. Slowly the room began to fill with people from all walks of life

9:14 AM
We were watching the events unfold on multiple televisions. The monitor on the farside of the room began depicting a smoking low-rise building. Someone commented that it was probably debris from one of the planes after it had smashed through a tower. I thought not. There are no low areas around Manhatten. Then the words below the image confirmed our darkest fears. The Pentagon had been hit. The world had truly gone mad this morning.

The reporters showed the video of the second plane hitting one of the towers. The scale of the devastation was more than we could comprehend. The company that owned us, Aon, had offices in the WTC.

We also started checking our pagers, which received electronic news e-mail. The headings all were coming up "Breaking News!". Each report further confirmed the events on the set.

No Man is an island, entire of itself; everyman is a part of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John Dunne Mediation 17 1684

9:20 AM
Then the report of a missing airliner that appeared to crash in Pennsylvania was broadcast. There were little details on this new event.

At this stage my boss and I returned to the office. We were not sure what would happen next, and what we would do.

Once in the office, there were a number of the others gathered around the radio, trying to understand the horrific events. We soon realized that Aon, the company that owned us, had offices in the WTC. And most of the notable firms that used our services were located in both towers.

Within half an hour it was decided by the directors to evacuate the office. The Mercantile Exchange, right next door, was already empty. The office cleared quickly but I stayed behind with Douglas and Rick Hathaway, our Technical Architect

10:05 AM
It took us about a half hour to get all the back-up tapes, and to contact our offices around the world and let them know what was occuring in our Connecticut and Illinois office.

Then I left the building. The office was located across the street from Union Station, and the tide of people were headed in that direction. But is was a day of unknowns, and given the shocking events unfolding I walked into the Loop and went to St. Peter's Church, a beautiful place of worship in the heart of the business district, off Madison Ave. It is strange that so many of us were attending an emotional gathering just as the buildings collapsed.

I called my wife, Julie, and shared the emotion of the day. She was taking care of our two girls and our two-week old son, Lucas.

10:45 AM
I now began to make my way across the Loop, heading east towards the Renaisance Hotel at State & Wacker. Nelson, my brother, was there with a collective of Aon employees. After hunting around the expansive lobby I finally located Nelson. We hugged in a reasurring manner given all the chaos that had marked the day. The group was gathered around a televisions that was now showing a cloud of dust. I was immediately informed that both towers had collapsed. As an architect, this massive structural failure was just incomprehensible. And sure enough the media began replaying the failure repeatedly. Amongst the gathered group were individuals from Aon's New York office that watched the events of their home city in shock. One even remarked that he would have been outside smoking at the key moment of the first strike.

12:10 PM
Nelson had to gather his team and find a hotel room to begin their work of updating Aon's corporate web page with all information regarding the New York Office. As it turned out, we lost 179 individuals from our corporation. The head of my division actually made it down to the plaza, and was on his cell phone to his second in command (who was home to take his child to school - an emotional story he shared with us at our next quarterly phone conference) when the second plane hit and communications were cut. His remains were never found.

I now headed towards Union Station to catch the 12:40 train home. It was the oddest walk I had ever experience in my city. There was no traffic. There were no people. The bustling center was silent. There were no planes in the sky (all would be grounded for the next three days). Even my blueberry no longer transmitted urgent bulletins. As I passed the government center I could see them surrounded by police cars ineffectively showing a presence of protection. I could have walked to Union Station down the middle of the streets with my eyes closed without hitting anything.

The train was relatively empty. The main mass of people had gone home in the early morning flurry. Upon arriving home I welcomed seeing my family and wondering how this day had become so crazy. Like the rest of the world I was glued to the television and watched the images of the day repeatedly trying to comprehend how something like this could happen, and wondering if more was to occur.

That evening I held my son with mixed emotion. During the 80's I had visited East Berlin and Hiroshima during the Cold War years. Both were symbols of the dangerous world we lived in and I wondered how I could raise my children with such a bleak future before them. When the Wall came down in Berlin, and when the Soviet Union fell, I thought we finally had a chance to create a hopeful future. I could only hope that we would find the strength to overcome the events of the day. And it would take me years to come to term and accept the events of the day, and find a proper way to express my grief .

On my honeymoon trip to Bermuda and Europe, Julie and I stopped in New York City for a couple of days. Our first stopping point was going to the top of the World Trade Center. Little did we know that we would never do that again.
Renato E. Imana Jr. Sept. 2004

The Second Plane Appears

Unforgettable Images

The Second Plane strikes

A different kind of rush hour