About Portland: On September 11th Never Look Away

Sitting in my living room in Portland 15 years and thousands of miles away from lower Manhattan, it’s the little moments in that day that are still so clear. Standing outside around 8:30, having a cup of coffee, looking up at a sky bluer than I think I will ever see again and thinking about how perfect everything was.

Barely 15 minutes later. The call over the scanner of a gas explosion at the Trade Center. How quickly it became apparent it was something worse. Much worse. Breaking crews. Telling them to get as close as they can. Losing contact with them when the first tower fell. The seemingly endless minutes that passed until everyone was accounted for.

Talking to the mother of one of my colleagues, assuring her that he was okay, that I had just spoken with him. Neither of those statements were true. He - along with all my colleagues - escaped unharmed. Physically.

Of course, not everyone was so lucky.

As the towers burned, there was no question that people were dying, that people had died, that people on the floors above the fire would never make it out. Then there were the jumpers. Those who had chosen their own fate. There were discussions about what do you show. Discussions you can never imagine yourself having.

Then there were discussions trying to guess how many people were in the buildings. How many might have died? None of it made sense. It was too unreal. Someone found on the internet a statistic that 40,000 people worked there and another 200,000 people visited every day. No one thought there would have been that many people. Still. It could have easily been tens of thousands.

The day was unrelenting.

One plane. Two planes. One tower down. Two towers down. The Pentagon is hit. Another plane in Pennsylvania. All air traffic is suspended. Travel in and out of New York is suspended. Seven World Trade Center collapses. The city is cut off. The horror seems like it will never end.

Yet people keep moving. People need to know what’s going on so you keep making calls. Keep moving crews. Find out what you can. Nothing seems to make sense yet people are desperate for information.

It would be two weeks before i went home. And when I arrived on the Upper West Side, it was a neighborhood I still find hard to believe existed. The streets were filled with people moving in silence. In a city filled with passionately emotional people, there was quiet. I wandered into the Barnes and Noble, moved around the stacks for about 15 minutes and then went into the cafe and ordered a latte. And cried.

Now. Fifteen years later. I find myself struggling to explain why it’s so important. Still.

A Patch investigation found there many states don't offer guidance about teaching September 11th to the generations coming into schools - generations that, in many cases, had not been born.

On the Jewish holiday of Passover the question, why is this night different from all other nights, is asked.

And it’s the same of September 11th. Why is this day different from all other days.

It was on this day that people ran toward the horror.

So many people who died that day had no choice. But for some - hundreds - they ran toward the horror. Were they afraid? Probably. I knew some of them. I promise that they were human. But on that day - as they did on every day that they worked - they put the fear aside and ran toward the horror.

There were people who needed help. Nothing would stop them from trying to provide that help.

Which brings me back to Portland.

Portland is a city that holds itself out as a progressive utopia. In many ways it is. At the same time, it is a city that has a hard time confronting the fact that not everything is perfect. Recent events - test results showing a racial divide among students, the school district labeling hip music as inappropriate, a club owner saying she was forced out of business because of the color of her clientele - seem to scream out there is more work to be done. Much more.

On Friday, Multnomah County released a report detailing how 88 people homeless people died on the streets last year - a more than 50 percent increase over the year before.

There is so little affordable housing in Portland that the city council has extended a state of emergency for another year.

There are unpaved roads in Portland - one of the largest cities in the country because we can’t come up with a good way to pay for them.

People want a lot of things in Portland. They just don’t want to have to pay for them. There are no easy answers but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try.

A colleague of mine told me today that she was going to hug her kids and figure out how to explain to them why September 11th is so important.

My suggestion is to tell them that the day teaches us that sometimes, no matter the risk, no matter the danger, we need to run toward the horror. If people need help, we need to be there for them.

I often think of Father Mike - Mychal Judge - the fire department chaplain who died that day when he he was hit by falling debris in the North Tower.

He'd rushed in there with firefighters ready to offer comfort. He wasn't reckless. He wanted to be where the action was, which was where he was needed the most.

In my wallet, I carry a card "Mychal's prayer."

"Lord, take me where you want me to do; let me meet who you want me to meet; tell me what you want me to say and keep me the hell out of your way."

For him, and so many who died that day, it was about being where they were needed. There was danger ahead but it didn't matter.

"Never look away," Father Mike used to say.

Photo Nightscream via Wikimedia Commons