A day has passed, and that day late, with a dollar for consideration, I have all of yesterday's thoughts standing there in review.
Mostly, I thought about my Brother Bob, and his Sons. Bob wasn't here, yesterday, to reflect on the facts of the day. The Covid took him on January 3, 2019. He was my best friend, my mentor, and my muse. Ten years my senior, he was as much an Uncle as a brother.
The key thoughts, though, were about his Sons. The two older ones were booked on flight 93, scheduled to be the first flight out to the Coast that day; they were flying for business. But fate intervened and they were able to catch one which departed earlier. But we didn't know they were safe until late in the day.
As my yesterday wore on, I came across a pair of tiny model airplane engines out in my shop, made by Bob and his boys in their PAL Model Products business. They were, and are, still sitting pristine in their boxes, nearly a decade old, but never opened except for an occasional reminiscence or two. Later in the day, I was surfing the net and came up with a set of plans for a Midwest Dakota, one of Bob's favorite airplanes. His love of flying models had always been roughly as dedicated as mine has for rifles. The PAL engine is a replica of the old 1950's OK Infant .020, one of the then revolutionary small glow ignition engines that revolutionized Free Flight modelling, and for which the Dakota was designed to utilize.
I printed out two copies of the plans, and will be putting at least one of the planes together in his memory, complete with the PAL Infant .020.
The Tube was full of programming related to 9/11, and as I watched the ceremonies and such, I reflected on how immensely different the Liberty Plaza area of Lower Manhattan has become. A park back then, it's more park-like now, with a sacred aspect it never had back then. You see, it was a place I frequented every day, sitting on the park benches eating my pushcart lunch, then returning to OLP (One Liberty Plaza) or 1WTC, where I had worked for Litton Office Supplies (I had an office in the basement, next to the parking garage that was blown up in the now mostly forgotten first bomb attack). I was out doing some computer wiring at another location that day.
I also worked for Merrill Lynch in 1WTC and OLP. But by the time the planes struck, I had moved on and was living in the New York Finger Lakes, medically retired, and getting down to brass tacks with my rifle stuff. When the Towers fell, I had Merrill Coworkers, and probably even some family go down with them. My family was/is NYC Irish, big and spread all over NYC, and full of police and firemen. My Grand Uncle Ed Lavin had risen to become a City Fire Battalion Chief, but he was retired and gone by then. His sons, though, Eddie, Neal, and Lawrence...; they could have been caught up in it. I'll probably never know, now; we've all been out of touch since I moved Upstate just a few years before the catastrophe. I'm honestly not sure I want to know; I'd rather remember them as I knew them.
My other Brother, Bill, was living in Rockaway LI; observing the goings on from his back porch deck/dock on the Reynolds Channel. He was simply astounded by what he could see (and hear) going on a few miles West of him. We spent a lot of time on the phone together that day.
And finally, on a lighter(?) note, the day after the disaster (20 years ago today), a funny thing happened in Penn Yann, NY, the next town North from us then on Rt 14A. The small airport (no tower, etc.,) had a flying school, and an Instructor took up one of his students that day in a single engine aircraft. He was intercepted by a pair of NYNG F-16s, and escorted to the Syracuse airport where he was arrested for violating the nationwide no fly ruling established the day before. Dumb mistake, I heard it cost him his license for life. That was bit of a shame, because he was also the pilot of "Fuddy Duddy" the restored B-17 that flew out of Corning/Big Flats daily for tourist flights.
...A fine day for reminiscence... A lot has passed since then.
Greg
PS; Did you now that in the entry corridors of the WTC, the NYC Fire Department Chaplains were spread out, giving last rites to the first responders as they entered the buildings. Most everyone involved understood that it was most likely they were going to their deaths.
...And still, they went...
I KNOW I couldn't have done that myself.
May God look down with love in His sacred heart for each and every one of them...
