Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [61]
The next day Joanne called back and said Larry’s people would be calling. Friday night, Roselle and I were in the Green Room at CNN’s New York studios with Karen and Tom Painter. I felt more than a little overwhelmed. Monday had been a normal workday. Tuesday had been hell. Wednesday and Thursday I was exhausted and in shock. And here it was Friday, and I was about to tell my story to Larry King and his millions of viewers around the world.
E-mail Message from Roselle’s Puppy Raisers
From: Kay and Ted Stern
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001
To: Michael Hingson
Subject: Thank God
We just heard from Guide Dogs for the Blind that you and Roselle are safe and that you both had a truly harrowing escape from your World Trade Center offices. We are so thankful and proud of you two partners to be able to work together and survive under the most testing of circumstances. We had sent you an email immediately after the attack and not hearing a response were very concerned. We are so relieved that you both are okay. Amidst the sadness we all have much for which to be grateful. We are sitting here embracing our nine-week-old service dog puppy that we are raising for Canine Companions for Independence and we all send you, your wife, and Roselle puppy kisses and hugs.
Fondly, Kay and Ted
If I had been thinking, I’m not sure I would have been so quick to respond to Joanne’s question on Wednesday. But my experience with Larry King was a positive one. As always, he was warm and encouraging, engaging me in a conversational give-and-take that highlighted my blindness and Roselle’s role in our escape from the tower. Afterward, I was glad I shared my story. Most of Tuesday’s news was both grim and disheartening; if my experience could serve as a bright interlude in an otherwise dark and desperate day, I was grateful and willing to do it. Our country needed hope and healing. So did I.
New York shut down for a few days. While the rest of the world experienced the events surrounding September 11 through the confines of a television screen, the attacks and the catastrophic consequences had taken place in our backyard. Everyone knew people who had died in the towers. Their untimely deaths caused shock waves that stretched out far beyond Manhattan and the surrounding bedroom communities. Then the funerals started. Some New Yorkers were attending four or five funerals a day.
The choice to move on wasn’t even a remote possibility during the weeks after. Reminders were all around us. One poignant story came from a reporter who noted the large number of cars left sitting at suburban train stations around New York. Over the next few days, those cars stayed, abandoned and gathering dust. In many cases the owners would never return.
During the days and weeks after, my body recovered. I was able to sleep okay, and I resumed my daily routines. But it was not the same with my heart and my spirit. There was no more normal. First and foremost, I mourned the loss of life and the tragedy of the many rescuers who had bravely stayed in the towers, doing their jobs even as the buildings collapsed. I thought often of the firefighters who passed us on the stairwell, the man who delivered the ham-and-cheese croissants that morning, and the two women who had been so badly burned. I wondered about the people on the floors above us in Tower 1, the people I rode the elevator with every day but didn’t know by name. Who among them lived? And who did not? I would probably never know.
I did get some good news, though. I was relieved to find out that all six Ingram Micro employees who had been in our offices that day made it out safely. And no Quantum employees were lost.
I was angry at the men who did this to us. Their