New York City, September 2001

(Note: As regular We Want Marangi readers -- both of you -- may recall, this post was originally published last year. The image above was originally published in the Sept. 18, 2001 edition of the Niagara Falls Reporter.)

Late in the afternoon of September 11, 2001, a bunch of us gathered at Faherty’s on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. As we watched CNN on the bar television, trying to absorb what had happened that morning in Manhattan and wishing there was something, anything we could do, my wife Josselyn encouraged me to get in our Prizm and go. So I did.

I thought maybe I could put the summers and Saturdays spent operating a blowtorch to use as a volunteer. By the time we got into Manhattan the next morning, all the volunteer work was pretty well tied up, so a guy who worked for Josselyn and had ridden along with me and I spent the next couple days looking for a way to help.

My friend Jennifer, who was riding the subway to her job near the World Trade Center when the first plane hit, had a friend who was a volunteer coordinator and got us a few hours helping to pile bags of donated clothes on trucks that took them to workers digging through what was left of the towers.

The rest of the time, we wandered around lower Manhattan and other parts of the city, trying to stay out of the way and taking it all in. The piece that follows, published in the Sept. 18 edition of the Niagara Falls Reporter, details what we saw.

By David Staba

Editor's note: In the aftermath of last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Sports Editor David Staba traveled to New York, where he spent time loading trucks for the relief effort. He filed the following report.

NEW YORK -- Just over 24 hours after the most devastating 103 minutes in American history, things are eerily normal on Manhattan's southeastern coast.

The sky is clear except for a single, albeit extremely large, cloud to the south. Two teenage boys sail by the intersection of 10th Avenue and 23rd Street on rollerblades. A pair of buff young men in short shorts and tight T-shirts stroll past, chattering amiably in nebulously European accents. A woman walks her border collie.

Then the first sign of what has happened about three miles away (other than that innocuous cloud) appears -- a man briskly passes by with a pile of towels higher than his head, trying to balance them while getting where he's going as quickly as possible. A few feet behind him are two monks in gray robes. Then a priest, leafing through a tiny, well-used bible, apparently searching for a verse appropriate to the moment.

All four head west, toward the Chelsea Piers. The privately-owned complex includes an 80,000-square-foot field house, a golf club, marinas, skating rinks, restaurants and movie studios. But after a pair of 767s pierced the twin towers of the World Trade Center, triggering the manmade earthquakes that killed thousands and reverberated across the globe, it became a donation and volunteer destination, as well as a makeshift triage center.

By Wednesday afternoon, there are few for the clergy to minister to at the Piers. Medical personnel stand ready, with a mobile surgical unit and 150 beds waiting for survivors who will never arrive. And despite an occasional ambulance carrying exhausted or distraught rescue workers, the cold realization settles in that there's no one who was at ground zero left to help.

Around the Piers and throughout Manhattan, people instead reach out to help each other. In a city where the first rule of personal safety has long been "avoid eye contact," strangers don't just look. They speak. They ask each other how they're doing and if they're OK. They sound like they mean it.

For all its diversity, New York normally prizes its individuality, whether based on race, religion or lifestyle. But the suicide missions aimed at tearing apart the city and sending its residents into a panic has the opposite effect, at least for a few days. These post-catastrophe New Yorkers introduce themselves to each other, almost always by first name.

Suddenly, the biggest city in the country has become the largest small town in the world.

***

Jennifer started her day like millions of others who live and work in New York. She emerged from the 14th Street subway station and basked momentarily in the exceptionally beautiful morning.

Until she noticed the people pointing. And saw what they were pointing at.

The World Trade Center's North Tower was on fire. The native of Darien headed toward her office at 41 East 11th St., unsure exactly what was going on.

"I heard people go 'Holy shit,' and looked to see an explosion on the left tower," Jennifer said. "I ran up to my office to get my camera. I heard on the radio that it was a plane and went back outside to check it out.

"There was no traffic, just people outside, standing in amazement, a few crying. One lady in the lobby of the building was crying over her friend who worked in the tower."

She returned to her building, numb and unsure of what was happening.

"We all crowded around a radio in the office, and heard about the Pentagon," she said. "Then we heard that the left tower had collapsed."

***

At the Chelsea Piers, guards screen the crowd trying to cross 12th Avenue, allowing only clergy, medical personnel and those with press credentials to pass.

"We can't take any more volunteers unless they're medical personnel," says a Hispanic man who looks almost too young for his New York Police Department badge. "You can't go any farther."

His partner at the checkpoint, an African-American woman, spots a man on a bicycle, holding a video camera.

"Get that out of here," she shouts. "This is not a show."

The rebuffed volunteers and would-be gawkers, fueled by false rumors that the Piers were serving as the disaster's morgue, head back up 23rd Street. A block away, most stop around a "Rent This Van For $19.95" van to listen to the radio blaring of out the open side-doors.

As the gathering grows to more than 100 people, a somber FBI spokesman refutes reports that arrests have already been made.

"But we have identified associates of the hijackers in the United States," the voice intones.

While the crowd listens for something, anything, that might explain what happened the day before, a parade of sustenance marches past. Volunteers from the Tibetan Association carry cases of bottled water and cola and dozens of pizzas toward the Piers, bound both for the people working there and those digging through the rubble.

"We are very, very sad," says Karma, vice-president of the Tibetan Association, struggling in vain to find more words.

***

Alfonso's Lounge is on 75th Street in Queens, about as far as you can get from the World Trade Center in Manhattan. But it was not far enough to escape talk of the bombing or not to run into someone who was there on Tuesday.

Take worked as a sushi chef at a restaurant about two blocks from what passed for hell on Tuesday morning. He was prepping for the day's lunch patrons, most of whom streamed in from the towers, when Flight 11 slammed into its target.

"I was at the restaurant, working in the kitchen and I heard the big explosion," Take said.

Dazed survivors of the initial blast started wandering into the basement restaurant, as well as the market above.

"Nobody said nothing," he said. "We didn't know what happened. Everyone was just covered in gray dirt."

Over the next hour-plus, as Flight 175 cleaved the South Tower and both colossi tumbled, bringing ash-covered survivors streaming in, the meaning of the sights and sounds became clear. "I just heard 'BOOM! BOOM!'" Take said. "I thought, it's a war."

***

In the grimy bowels of New York's subway system, it's easy to ignore the picture-window-sized advertisements plastered along the walls. Along with the faded yellow walls and mysterious black goop dotting the walkways, the ornate banners blend into the ambience, indistinguishable from each other (unless you have a particularly long wait for your train).

But in the aftermath of Sept. 11, what were conceived as eye-catching promotions looked wildly inappropriate.

One, promoting Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest would-be thriller, "Collateral Damage," features a glowering Ah-nuld, accompanied by newspaper headline text that reads, "Veteran Firefighter's Wife And Child Killed In Bomb Blast."

The movie was scheduled to arrive in theaters on Oct. 5, but a release dated Sept. 12 announced that it was being shelved indefinitely.

"Warner Bros. Pictures is making an immediate and complete effort to retrieve all outdoor advertising; to pull the Web site and all in-theater advertising, including trailers and posters; and cancel all radio and television advertising and promotions for this film," the release read.

Another subway wall banner highlights Steve Madden, a women's clothing chain with 10 New York City area locations. The chain's mascot (a photo/cartoon hybrid in tight jeans, crop top, leather jacket and spike heels with an outsized head, open mouth and purse trailing behind her as she rushes through her hectic life) hurries out of an airport terminal. She's oblivious to the jumbo jet that looms over her, occupying the top third of the picture.

***

Peter was almost across the Brooklyn Bridge when he felt the explosion and looked up.

"I saw the flames, and then the smoke everywhere," he said. "I thought, 'My God, they bombed the World Trade Center again.'"

But this bomb, unlike the exploding truck that killed six in 1993, was fueled by 20,000 gallons of jet fuel and would ultimately alter the Manhattan skyline, rather than just shaking it.

Traffic had already halted beyond the bridge, so Paul parked his car about 10 blocks away from the smoking structure and got out.

"I left the radio on and just stood there, watching," he said. "There must have been 50 other people doing the same thing I was -- staring and listening to people who didn't know what the hell was going on, either."

After 15 minutes of watching in silence, he saw the second plane hit.

"Then you knew the first one wasn't an accident," he said. "And a few people started to scream."

Most, though, kept watching the billowing smoke and the surrounding sky, wondering if there were more manned bombs on the way. Paul left the side of his car and started walking toward the World Trade Center.

He got as far as a hastily posted checkpoint a few blocks away, his thoughts caught in an endless loop as he watched flaming debris and the doomed, who chose to jump rather than burn, plummet dozens of stories to the asphalt below.

"I just kept thinking, 'Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.'"

Paul was watching the smoke billow from the South Tower when its twin started to fall. The enormous black cloud obscured both towers and sent onlookers into a panic.

"Everyone turned and ran," he said. "It was like the cloud was chasing us. I thought a bomb had gone off in the building, or another plane had slammed in."

***

Over the next two days, Paul and Jennifer join thousands of others from across the city, state and nation, heading toward the disaster area to help out.

Most are turned away. Only military personnel, firefighters and police officers from other communities and those with other needed skills, like construction and iron workers, are allowed to reach ground zero.

The rest make their way to the Chelsea Piers or the Jacob Javits Center, in an effort to find an outlet for their anger, grief and guilt.

"It was so frustrating yesterday, just standing and watching everything happen," says Paul, who, stranded in Manhattan by the closing of all bridges and tunnels to and from the island, spent the night at a friend's place. "At least here, I can do something."

Something ranges from sorting donated clothes and packing them into garbage bags, bound for rescue workers, to providing food and water to other volunteers. When the piles of full bags need to be moved from one part of the Piers to another, lines form to transfer them from sidewalk to vehicle to empty garage bay. Other groups load restaurant delivery vans and flatbed trucks with supplies headed to the war zone.

Volunteer coordinators issue softly worded commands and eager workers jump into line, some visibly trembling with anticipation. At times, there are more workers than the task requires, crowding the bucket brigade-like conveyers and slowing the process a bit.

"It just feels good to work," Paul says.

Others arrive at the Piers, bearing donations of clothing and food, as well as aspirin, paper towels and toiletries. One woman drops off a bag carrying the Ritz-Carlton logo, filled with shampoo, toothpaste and perfume.

By Thursday, donations cease and volunteers occupy themselves with transferring remaining donations to vans and trucks bound for an outpost at Stuyvesant High School, closer to the crash site.

Ann Marie, a very tired-looking volunteer coordinator, gathers Paul, Jennifer and about a dozen other volunteers around her.

"Thank you for all your help," she says. "Anyone who wants to can give me their phone number in case we need you in the days and weeks ahead. I'm sure we will. Otherwise, I'm releasing you for today."

"Ann Marie, are you firing us?" one man asks.

She laughs and closes her eyes.

"No, but thank you. I think that's the first time I laughed since Tuesday morning."

***

Shortly after the South Tower crumbled, Jennifer left her office and started walking.

"There was no subway, no buses and no cabs," she said. "So I didn't have much choice."

She started up Fifth Avenue, trudging along with hundreds of others who had also arrived via more modern transportation just a few hours earlier.

"Nobody was saying anything," Jennifer said. "It was the creepiest thing. Just people walking on the sidewalk, on the street. It was like everyone was in shock."

Many snapped out of their daze for long enough to stop at a shoe store, exchanging their business footwear for sneakers.

Jennifer crossed over to Broadway and continued north. Nearing Times Square, she noticed a departure from the business community's form.

"All the electronics stores were closed by noon," she said of the myriad shops, many of which are operated by their Arab owners. "They must have been afraid of looting."

The parade of refugees thinned out as they crossed 42nd Street and continued up Broadway all the way to her apartment on 112th Street.

After covering more than 100 blocks, she joined her roommates and much of the rest of the nation on the couch.

"We just sat there and watched the news on television," she said. "It still didn't seem like it was happening."

***

Desperate family members and friends wander through the streets of Manhattan, clinging to the narrowest hope that their missing loved ones made it out. That somehow, somewhere, their moms, dads, fiances and children walk, live and breathe.

Unconfirmed media reports of survivors that prove to be false (like the five firefighters supposedly found alive and well in a buried sports utility vehicle) and the inconceivable cruelty of Web sites that falsely list the missing as rescued, tease them and intensify their pain. If that's possible.

But they carry on.

Some, like Vanessa Kolpak's family, post flyers on garbage cans and lamp posts. Many of the pictures, like Kolpak's, aren't posed portraits but candid photos taken at happy events like weddings, parties or graduation ceremonies. With a mischievous white smile, sun-kissed blonde hair and freckled nose, she exuded life. It's easy to understand why her family wouldn't believe she was gone.

Other searchers take a more active approach, walking up to strangers and asking them to take a flyer. Still others let the milling crowds come to them, setting up checkpoints of their own, where you had to take a flyer in order to pass.

Roger Mark Rasweiler's family follow that route. His son and daughter and their two children each carry a thick stack of flyers printed on a home computer.

"We don't know for sure if he even made it in to work before it happened," his son says. "We're praying he's in the hospital unconscious, or wandering around somewhere."

His daughter simultaneously addresses another passer-by briefly before breaking down.

"He's such a good man," she manages between choked sobs, tears coursing down her cheeks. "If we only knew where he was. If we just knew."

Deep down, they have to know. With so many doctors and so many available beds for so few injured, the chances of a survivor lingering in the hospital without being identified become fainter and fainter by the hour.

But their vigil serves another purpose.

By taking to the streets in an active search for someone they logically know has been dead for days, they work off some of the unimaginable grief and earn a feeling of empowerment in a situation that renders them, and the rest of us, powerless.

And by showing those pictures to strangers, by putting them on television and the Internet, the families ensure that, in some small way, the victims will be remembered, that they were important human beings.

Especially since they were so much less than that to their murderers.

***

Peter was nowhere near the World Trade Center when flights 11 and 175 tore into it, but lower Manhattan, as it was before, remained clear in the lifelong New Yorker's mind, days after the billowing cloud replaced the towers in its skyline.

"I went there several times a month," the freelance editor said of the terrorist-torn region. "It's all still the same, as far as I'm concerned. What I've been seeing on television must be in another country, or on another planet."

Waiting for his next task while volunteering at the Chelsea Piers, Peter glanced at where the towers used to stand, but saw only smoke.

"It looks like a plain old weather cloud, doesn't it? And not a particularly threatening one, at that."

He said he spent most of Tuesday in a depressed funk, staring at the television in his uptown apartment, before forcing himself out into the streets.

"I just couldn't sit there any more. Coming down here and pitching in helped, but the thing that really made me feel better was just being with everyone else. I've never seen this city rally together like this. Of course, we've never had to before."

***

Riding the E train from Queens into Manhattan, a solemn middle-aged man with short salt-and-pepper hair, matching moustache and Arab-appearing features and coloring sits alone on a bench seat at the end of a car.

Dressed in a crisp yellow shirt and khaki slacks, he pulls a fingernail clipper from his pocket, opens the tiny blade and begins passing the ride by cleaning his fingernails. After a moment, he feels a half-dozen sets of wide eyes on him and glances at the Caucasian, African-American and Asian faces to his left.

He sighs lightly, closes the blade, slips the clippers back into his pocket and retrieves a stack of Post-It notes. He peels off the top one, meticulously folds it to create a hard point, and resumes his time-passing grooming.

Across the car, one bench down, an African-American student wearing headphones and a red windbreaker, holding a bookbag, takes in the scene. He subtly shakes his head and softly tsks, as if to say, "You poor bastard."

The man with the yellow shirt finishes his task, puts the folded paper back in his pocket and stares through watery eyes at a spot on the floor for the rest of the trip, looking very much as though he might never smile again.