The Souls of The Twin Towers

       By

        Barbara J. Stock

          Written on the 1st anniversary of 9/11

On September 11, 2001, America met a lot of heroes. Firefighters, paramedics, Port Authority Police, NYC Police, the people on Flight 93, the men and women who fought the fires at the Pentagon and crawled through fire and smoke to save their co-workers. We heard the phone calls that passengers on the doomed planes made to their loved ones to calmly say goodbye and tell them what was happening for posterity. It didn't matter what your social standing was that day. The wife of the President's Solicitor General died on the plane that hit the Pentagon. She had delayed her flight a day to be with her husband on his birthday. A producer on the TV show "Frasier" died as his plane hit one of the Towers. They were men, women, children, white, black, straight, gay, Christian, Jew and Muslim, old and young. Every one of them will be remembered on September 11 by all of America. Each life was special and irreplaceable.

Something else died that day-American innocence. The belief that terrorism happens somewhere else. It happens in Israel. It happens in the Middle East. It happens in Ireland but not here. Not to us. We had not suffered such an awakening since Pearl Harbor.

There are two other heroes that are talked about all the time, but rarely as heroes. They are referred to as landmarks or icons of capitalism, even as human folly. We all watched in horror as they fell, one after the other. They plunged nearly straight down, exactly as they were designed to do, most of their collapse shrouded in dust and debris. Who can forget the TV tower, almost in slow motion, starting its slide straight down 110 stories.

Their lives were very short for buildings such as they. They were built to last 100 years. They were designed to withstand high winds, hurricanes, lightening, even hits from wayward jets. There was no way the designers could have anticipated the much larger, much faster jets of 2001 back in 1962 when the Twin Towers were infants on the drawing board. Even if they had, no one ever contemplated the idea that someone would intentionally fly planes like that, at high speed, into those towers. Who would do such a thing?

The land where they would eventually die encompassed 16 acres of Manhattan. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates of Michigan won the honor of designing the Towers. It took four years of planning and testing but construction finally began in 1966. They were a mammoth undertaking. From the start they were ridiculed. To tall, to expensive, robbing NYC of it's Empire State Building history. Environmentalists said they were an environmental disaster. This strikes me as odd since they were being built in a city that is already mostly concrete and steel. They cost millions more to complete than projected. As the economy of NYC and indeed, America crashed in the 1970's, the towers were going up, way up. The political elite stayed away from their dedication ceremony. The North Tower opened in December, 1970 and the South Tower opened in January of 1972. They had the short lived honor of being the tallest buildings in the world until the Sears Tower in Chicago was built in 1973. At their end, they were 5th and 6th tallest, respectively. Tenants moved into the lower floors before the upper floors were even finished.

They both just stood there, soul-less and apparently unloved by the people of New York until a French tightrope walker lived his dream of walking between the Towers. He sang; he danced. He even laid down on the wire and watched a sea gull who was surely wondering what this human was doing up so high. He said he felt as though he was one with the Towers that day. He felt their soul and they welcomed him. They also gave him a "nudge" that perhaps his dream, now completed, was best finished. He heeded their whisper and walked into the waiting arms of some very angry NYC Police. The towers had life, he said. A life force all their own.

Many say the Twin Towers were born that day. They had arrived. They were accepted as a part of that great city. They now had a history. Not as monoliths who wanted to rob the Empire State Building of it's honors, but to forge their own. They were willing to share the city with Lady Liberty, the Empire State Building and all the other landmarks of NYC. What they did was make New York City the center of the business world. Some said, they made New York the very center of the modern industrial world. The Towers even had their own zip code: 10048. They had "children" if you will, in the form of smaller support buildings. All would die on 9/11.

It was that fame that made them the target of those who hate all they stood for. In 1993, they suffered their first attack. A truck holding 1,100 pounds of explosives drove into the parking garage and blew up. It blew a hole five stories deep and 22 feet wide. While six people died and a thousand were injured, the damage to the Towers was minimal and it was repaired and reopened in a month. The Towers had done their job well. The vast majority of the people in the building, thousands of them, were protected from injury. They stood tall and proud in the NYC skyline, unshaken by the attack.

That is not how it ended on September 11, 2001. At 8:45 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11, full of fuel, with 92 innocent people on board, crashed into the North Tower at an estimated 400 mph. 18 minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, also full of jet fuel, with 65 innocent souls hit the South Tower at a speed some say was near 500 mph. The South Tower that collapsed first began dying at 9:03 a.m. That massive structure, the support beams melting from the 2000 degree heat, managed to cling to life until 9:50 a.m. For 47 long minutes, it struggled to remain upright in the face of overwhelming damage. It stood its ground long enough for thousands of its inhabitants to escape to the safety of the ground. The North Tower, also mortally wounded, stood for much longer. It survived until 10:29 a.m. The North Tower gave its wards one hour and 44 minutes to escape. It gave rescue workers, unlike those who were trapped in the South Tower, time to evacuate as their superiors realized that both Towers were likely to fall. One by one the Tower "children" burned and collapsed with the largest falling at 5:20 pm that night. None survived. All buildings with the World Trade Center name were gone.

I heard that the designer, Mr. Minoru Yamasaki said he felt responsible. That the buildings should have stood. He did not do the job he was hired to do. It was not the buildings, but the lives lost. Buildings can be rebuilt. He had failed them. No, Mr. Yamasaki, neither you nor your buildings failed that day. Your buildings were a wonder, a modern wonder. They were just as mortal as the humans that lived and worked inside them. They were built by man, not God. But they are, in my mind, heroes just the same. They had a life and a history and left a mark on this country like no other buildings ever will.

They both withstood mortal injuries and struggled to stand tall as long as they could. Looking back at those injuries, it is amazing they stood as long as they did. They stood long enough for thousands to flee... to live. They didn't die with a whimper. They died with a roar heard around the world. It was as though they roared their defiance at those that killed them and 3000 humans, none of whom deserved to die that day. It is a roar that still echoes in our minds. Did they whisper to those that died with them? An apology for not being stronger? Only they know. But I believe their souls were all joined that day. If a building can have a soul, the Twin Towers had them. Their mortal remains are joined forever. One will never think of the Towers without thinking of the people that died that day. That in itself is a form of immortality. No one old enough to remember 9/11 will ever look at the skyline of Manhattan and not see them, still standing there in their minds eye.

Perhaps the souls of the Towers are there, waiting for the new shining towers to reach for the stars as they did. They will stand even taller and stronger as a symbol of America and her determination and courage. The enemy destroyed some buildings that day but their souls, the essence of what they were, lives on in the hearts and minds of every American. That, no enemy can collapse. We will rebuild and those buildings will spring to life, just as the Twins did and they will live on.