9/11:Where I was and Why it should be declared a National Holiday
I am saddened today as my mind relives this day five years ago. I remember a phone call at my home office desk in my Bronx apartment. As I prepared for the day’s work, I suddenly got a phone call. A friend called and frantically said, ‘Hey did you see what’s going on? Turn on CNN and call me back later, ” and hung up.
As I did as instructed, I saw what at first seemed like a fictional TV show. My final glimpses of the World Trade Center towers began with images of a hole in the side of the first tower with black smoke billowing from it up high into the morning air. A moment later, a second plane suddenly struck the second tower.
The rest is history but in my mind I am suddenly transported -weeks and perhaps months after the attack-to the funeral service for the remains of 24 year old Yvette Moreno. Yvette’s mom, Ivy Moreno, was a former co-worker of Jeff Cotto, one of my dear friends. I had to extend my support to Ivy both as an American and as a Puerto Rican. Then and now, my thoughts and prayers and fondest hopes as a human being, are with Ivy Moreno and the memory of her daughter Yvette. May god bless and keep you.
I remember going to ground zero with my best friends Richie Toro and Arthur Levine on Thursday the 14th, two men who I consider brothers. We came across the Red Cross station down on the West Side Highway and spent another 14 hours helping, carrying, organizing donations, collecting cash(thousands of dollars), food, underwear, shovels and other construction gear, and trailer loads of all kinds of goods. I was even asked to go on BBC World News and talk about some of the things we did that day, which included gathering and assisting in the making of thousands of cold cut sandwiches, directing traffic, I mean anything and everything that we could do to help.
I remember a young black man who came by to help, crying and being comforted in the arms of three white people (including Arthur) as he recanted his tale of getting out of the 26th floor of one of the towers just moments before it came down. There I saw compassion and connecting on a purely human level. There was no race, there were no class differences, there were only compassion and hope.
Today I feel the hurt of this act as I did five years ago in all its crippling sadness, anger and humiliation that runs throughout my soul with deep emptiness that only time may ever heal. I’m not over it and somehow-although ideally I would like to forget the pain I’m feeling-I don’t believe I ever will.
Perhaps we should consider making this day a national holiday. Few if any of the national holidays I celebrate now have this much meaning to me.
J.M. De Jesus
Publisher HispanicPRNow.blog.com &
President
QUADRANT TWO PR
