A Heart in New York
by Jane Paznik-Bondarin
I
have spent summers here in Rockport, Massachusetts, for more than thirty
years, but I am always back home in New York City to start the new work
year by Labor Day. But this year affords me an unprecedented chance to
enjoy September by the Atlantic. I have heard it called “August without
the tourists;” clear blue skies, deep blue water, sun, warmth and quiet.
How better to begin my “early retirement?! ” Yet my heart lurched when
I realized that I would be here on September 11. How could I be away from
my city on the anniversary of its great sorrow?
Every New Yorker is separated from September 11th by fewer than six degrees. These are mine: the school at which I have taught writing and literature for thirty-two years -- Borough of Manhattan Community College -- is five blocks from Ground Zero. We are the only college in America to lose a building in a terrorist attack, a distinction we would gladly forego. What you should know about us is that we graduate the highest number of African American and the second highest number of Latino students of any community college in the United States, and that we began a distance-learning program two years ago rooted in thoughtful pedagogy and intense communication between and among students and faculty.
What history will record, however, is that our newly renovated second building was splattered by World Trade Center building 7 as it collapsed several hours after Towers 1&2, and it remains uninhabitable. Before the renovation, the building -- Fiterman Hall -- housed the college’s art gallery, which exhibited work by Michael Richards, the Tribeca installation artist who died in Tower 1.
The whole school remained closed for three weeks. Rescue workers lived in our gymnasium, water and power were restored to the neighborhood, and our fabulous Buildings & Grounds staff constructed temporary classrooms in every imaginable space (and some not so imaginable). Seven of our students and graduates died in the towers, as did hundreds more from the eighteen other colleges that make up the City University of New York. Think about John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which educated many of the police and fire fighters who walked into hell and could not return, and Baruch College whose business programs are the mainstay of the financial industry in New York. It is painful to scroll through the memorial page on the CUNY web site.
When I saw the cloud of gray smoke to the southwest as I left home on September 11th, moments after the first plane hit, I admit to the selfish thought that whatever “this” was, it was below Canal Street and would affect my commute. As it turned out, I didn’t make it to school. Just the Thursday before I had wandered through the concourse of the WTC, buying luggage to use on a family visit to South Florida that weekend. As my daughter and I parted that Sunday evening at Palm Beach International Airport (she returning to Boston; she still wonders if one of the nineteen terrorists was aboard her plane), I told her I planned on returning to the World Trade Center Tuesday morning to buy a matching bag. Her first call that morning was to my office. No one had seen me, and they were being evacuated. Next, she tried my cell phone, rendered useless because the cell-site was the roof of Tower 1. You can imagine her terror for the hour it took to find me.
And mine … until I knew that my first cousin, an officer with the Port Authority, was alive. There was no reaching him -- I tried his cell phone and beeper. His wife’s and his sister’s lines were busy. I was too frightened to call my eighty-year-old uncle. The clock moved slowly as I remembered visiting with my cousin a few months before in his grand 65th floor office and marveling at his commanding view of NY harbor, the Statue of Liberty, around to Brooklyn, and up to the George Washington Bridge. This was the best view in town. You could see forever.
Three hours later, my uncle’s voice on the phone -- delayed by overloaded circuits -- said, “He’s alive.” At 8:46 a.m. Ken was ascending a podium in a Boston hotel, about to receive an award, when his beeper went off. Rushed into a limousine and escorted by police all the way, he and members of his staff hurtled toward New York. Seventy-five Port Authority employees died. Much work and an indomitable can-do spirit keep Ken’s demons of wonder away. Why was he out of the building on this fatal and fateful day?
On September 11, 2002, people again will gather at my door step -- Union Square, the northern border of the “frozen zone” where traffic was stopped -- to light candles and write their evocations of grief along the pathways. Like the rest of the neighborhood and the city, I am still haunted by the leaflets that ringed the park a year ago; the missing, pictured in happy moments, personal statistics and information displayed, in a family’s futile cry.
But this anniversary finds me walking on Long Beach. My friends here who called and emailed last year to make sure I was safe know they can come by to share part of the day with me. I will try to avoid the TV. All year in New York, I yearn for Rockport - the sight, smell and sound of the ocean, bright-colored flowers set against white houses, the mauve light at sunset that bathes the town in quiet, and crullers at The Coffee Shop. Seascapes by local artists hang in each room of my New York City apartment; beach glass, photos and miniature wood seagulls make me smile as I walk through the house. Normally when I am in New York, my heart is in Rockport. But this year isn't normal. This year, on this day, it is the reverse.
Jane
Paznik-Bondarin's heart lives in New York City.
Her email is: 