IGNITING A GLOBAL MADNESS

It was a gathering of New Yorkers to grieve the missing and the dead.

More than 60,000 tickets were handed out to the families of firefighters, cops, rescue workers, and thousands of civilians who died in the World Trade Center collapse.

Oprah Winfrey and James Earl Jones hosted the event in which Placido Domingo soothed the crowd with his rendition of “Ave Maria” while Bette Midler exulted those who perished by singing “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Readings were given by religious leaders of various faiths.

There were gifts, too, for those who came to attend this event — tiny U.S. flags, fresh roses of assorted colors, and lots of stuffed toys for the children. My brother got me this crying bear (pictured above) when he attended this event at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx — “A Prayer for America” — on September 23, 2001, two days after his birthday

My brother who managed the pathology department of a downtown hospital in Manhattan was deeply affected by this incident. From the morning of the attack until several days later, he helped received many people holding pictures of their loved ones who worked at the World Trade Center. They were desperately searching for their missing loved ones by walking to every hospital in the city.

It was the most disheartening ordeal on a massive scale that my brother had ever experienced.

Ironically, I was not in New York City when it happened; I was in the Philippines on vacation for the very first time since leaving it many years ago. Together with some cousins, we were about to enter a music club in Tomas Morato when I received a call from a colleague in New York. He said the city was under attack.

Instead of going inside the club, my cousin suggested that we all go back to his house to check out CNN; we did. And there it was — the first tower collapsing only a few minutes after we arrived in his house. I couldn’t sleep well during the ensuing nights.

With pressing matters that needed attending to, it wasn’t until early November when I finally took a flight back home to New York. To make things worse, my dog of 17 years died of old age in mid-October while I was still in Manila. It was my poor brother who had to make all the necessary arrangements for his cremation. Nonetheless, he handed me the crying bear because he knew losing a beloved pet dog was much like losing a child.

My port of entry was Detroit International Airport. Immediately upon disembarking the plane and walking through customs, I noticed the remarkable change — National Guard personnel equipped with their menacing automatic weapons were all over the terminal. This reminded me of how my Jewish friend described Tel Aviv airport — spilling over with heavily-armed Israeli army soldiers.

There was an eerie silence aboard the Detroit to New York plane I was on as it approached the Manhattan skyline. The iconic twin towers were no longer there.

And during the following days after my return, the change of overall demeanor amongst New Yorkers became even more apparent — everyone seemed so much nicer to one another; a drastic change in attitude, which could have been brought about by being humbled by this tragic terrorist attack.

And on New Year’s Eve, along with a group of friends, I did what I had only done once before in my life — join the throngs of revelers at Times Square. It was a show of solidarity amongst fellow New Yorkers — a way to demonstrate our not succumbing to fear. Everyone refused to make the terrorists feel victorious.

Although in reality, the terrorists did manage somehow to change certain aspects of our lives for the worse — not only in America, but throughout the globe.

A picture I took of the Manhattan skyline during the mid-1980s.

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