WTC Field Trip

I grew up in New Jersey, and on September 11th, 2001, I had what basically amounted to a front-row seat of everything happening in New York City. Not in the literal sense, since my middle school sat at the bottom of a hill and my vantage point was therefore nonexistent. But my cousin went to the corresponding high school (the same one I eventually went to) and, from the view of his cafeteria, he saw the second Twin Tower fall. My uncle was somewhere in Jersey that had a full skyline view; the Kodak picture of the smoke that he took is framed in his house for everyone to see. As for me, I didn't see anything happen firsthand. But I was one of those kids that got picked up early from middle school by his parents, and I called around to make sure my family members were OK. Luckily, nobody I knew or was related to suffered losses in the attacks. But I could see the smoke driving home from school and the people gathered around Bloomfield Ave to watch, I remember the radio broadcasts on the way home, I remember being generally freaked out, and I certainly remember having friends whose parents were working in Manhattan on that day. Ironically, however, my absolute clearest memory of 9/11 is listening to U2 on the bus ride to school and thinking what a nice day it was.

All of this considered, going to the WTC Tribute Center in downtown Manhattan was kind of a strange experience for me; since I live so close to the city I saw everything firsthand and didn't exactly need a reminder of what occurred on 9/11. A place like that exists for people who don't come from around here, and during my journalism class's field trip to the Tribute Center last week, I kept remarking on the fact that a good amount of my friends in the class had experienced 9/11 from a distance, not up close as I had. Granted, I was lucky enough to have not experienced it too too close - after all, I didn't lose anyone, thank God. But still, for someone like me the very existence of a guided tour of Ground Zero, or talking to someone who didn't see the towers burn from across the river seemed a little...odd.

I will admit: the idea of the tribute center is a good one; people have forgotten about 9/11. But I got the feeling that the whole tour turned the site into a bit more of a tourist attraction than it needed to be; as a group of tourists snapped photos all around me and the class, I quietly hoped a less ostentatious reminder of the attacks would be put in place along with the new Freedom Tower.

The one part I did appreciate was when my class spoke to Tracy Gazzani, a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn resident whose 24-year old son, Terry, died in the attacks. Since 9/11, I've heard and seen a million stories like hers on TV just like everyone else has, but this was the first time I'd actually met someone who had suffered an inconsolable loss on September 11th. I enjoyed hearing her speak glowingly about her son, gamely recount a drunken story of his or two for our professor and even poke fun at her own, ultimately unrewarded, optimism during 9/11 with a bit of black humor ("I was the one who thought my son was coming home, remember?").

Ultimately, I was more blown away by meeting her than the whole tribute center experience as a whole: the world has changed a lot since 9/11, and the things that were important to us on that day don't necessarily resonate anymore. Middle school is long gone for me, U2 has put out two albums since the one I listened to on 9/11, my father passed away, and pretty soon I'll be looking for a job. But hearing Tracy talk sort of made the experience complete for me; to a certain degree, her life will always be stuck on 9/11 because her son never came home, and that, to me, is the kind of thing that truly bridges the country and connects people who only saw 9/11 happen and didn't necessarily live through it.