Katy McDermott

My husband and I didn’t experience much of the most traumatic event in our nation’s history firsthand. This is as close as we got (I wrote this essay just days after), and it was close enough. God rest the souls of those who lost their lives that day.

We saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center today. Painted on a homemade banner suspended from a highway overpass, they formed the letter “H” in the message “Home of the Brave”. Twenty minutes later, as we crossed the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, we saw the skyline of New York City, forever changed. The cloud of smoke and debris, still visible four days after the attack, drifted toward the Statue of Liberty. Her face was turned toward Ground Zero.

We were driving north from Philadelphia, fueled by rage and sorrow and an e-mail message from the New York City Fire Department, asking for supplies. Everyone I’d spoken to since Tuesday was desperate to help, to do something. Within 36 hours, the idea of a trip to New York had rippled out to family, friends and co-workers, and by Saturday morning we’d gathered over $1,000 worth of supplies for the men and women doing the unimaginable work at the site. 

The list of items they’d requested was as chilling in its way as the nightmare footage that filled the news. Dust masks, flashlights, work gloves and sterile eyewash. Lanterns, emesis basins and biohazard bags.

There was paperwork, of course. We would need a letter of authorization to get near Fire Department Headquarters in Brooklyn, now cordoned off and guarded. The woman I spoke to was sorry she wouldn’t be able to meet us when we came up. She had a funeral to attend, but she counted herself among the lucky ones because her firefighter husband had made it back from the scene alive. In a note on a fax cover sheet, she said that she would now have to go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of her life – that was the bargain she’d made with God if her husband came home.

The day was almost indecently beautiful as we loaded the car for the drive. It seemed impossible to reconcile this soft blue quiet with the video footage shot by a volunteer doctor in the moments after the first collapse – the nuclear winter of soot and debris, the unearthly high-pitched whistling of the firefighters’ locators.

It took four and a half hours to drive from the Philadelphia suburbs to Brooklyn – we spent most of that time sitting in traffic on the highways leading into the city, left lanes closed to all but emergency vehicles. 

We saw the best of America on that drive… a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, catching sight of the flag in our window, saying “God bless” as she handed us our change… a beat-up hatchback full of college kids, the windows painted over with messages: “God Bless America,” “Keep the Faith New York,” “Honk If U R Proud To Be American.” We honked, & flew our flag, and exchanged pumped fists with strangers at 70 miles per hour. The closer we got to New York, the more banners we saw on overpasses, defiant slogans hand-lettered on bed sheets. 

The staff was so kind at Fire Department Headquarters. They added our shovels to a pile in the corner of the loading dock, and told us about the firefighters they knew who were missing. Supplies crowded the sorting room… pallets of water and Gatorade donated by corporations… cardboard boxes with the words “towels” and “flashlights” drawn in black magic marker. 

The drive home was quicker. On our way out of Brooklyn, we passed a federal office building, patrolled on each corner by an officer in a bulletproof vest holding a pump-action shotgun.

But we saw a passenger jet as well, gliding peacefully into the Newark evening. 

The next night, walking up to the door of my townhouse, I heard the usual late-summer chirping of dozens of crickets. It made me feel anxious for some reason I couldn’t define. 

And then I realized why.

It sounded exactly like the whistling of the firefighters’ locators in the video from Ground Zero.