....is my absolute frustration. At the time, I was an NYPD Sergeant, and I had been severly injured early in the summer of 2001 in a terrible accident in an unmarked police car. I was recovering at home from surgery, and was with my little girl, who was 4 at the time. I watched the second plane hit, called my wife on the phone and told her to come home because I was going in.
She called my boss (a captain), who called me at home and ordered me to stay right where I was. Frankly, my heart was in the right place but my legs were not working to well. All I could have done at the time was answer a phone, but even that was better than sitting around while my friends were down there. Absolute frustration.

My older brother, a computer systems analyst, was in the second tower. He was responsible for 12 employees. He waited to make sure his entire group was evacuated before he left. The big dope made it out, just 3 minutes before the 1st collapse. He was covered in dust and bruised by the debris. He is 6'2 and 265lbs and an avid weightlifter. He knew I was home with a computer, so he called me first to get the word out that he was OK. He cried all the way thru the call. At the time, our relationship was....ahem......shaky at best. The stupidity between us ended for good that day. We didn't hear from my cousins wife until mid-afternoon. Telephone communication was unreliable, so I spent my time messaging my cousin while we waited and waited. He believed she was dead, and I was trying to comfort him with IM's....how wierd was that...until she turned up at about 3:00 PM at a hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. Ask her about that day and all she will tell you about is the brave men that went up the stairs as she came down.

I knew over a dozen people, all NYPD personnel and guys who started on the NYPD but switched over to the Fire Dept. (one civil service test I NEVER took) who died that day, along with a couple of boys from the neighborhhod who grew up and took jobs as men that put them in the towers above where the planes hit. Gone.

The neighbor across the street is an American Airlines Stewardess. She could not get back in a plane for almost two years. She is back up but still is not right. The wife of my buddy who started me in the hobby owns a modeling agency downtown. She has always been the nervous type. She is STILL in therapy, and can't get over her fears from that day. My brother-in-law watched people jumping to their death from his apartment on Canal St. He said the neighborhood had a stench that lasted for months. He moved out first chance he got.

Last month, there was a terror incident and that high-level airport security was back in effect. I noted then that people were starting to complain about the security, and I though, WTF?!. I sometimes get the sense that we are forgetting, even around here where everybody knows somebody.....you ask me, we all need to be reminded, and frequently. I will admit my motivation is almost entirely selfish, but I know the day is going to come when my son and daughter leave my home and NYC gobbles them up, just as it does to so many other kids now growing up in the suburbs. I don't want to EVER have to be staring at the news and praying to God that they got out alive.

Sorry this is so long, but I really hope that today people can refocus on what happened that day and what needs to be done to be sure that it NEVER happens again.