East Coast Odyssey – Part II | Gold Country Media

Part one of this series last month talked about my excursion to Washington, D.C. This segment is about a one-day, special-purpose trip to New York City, specifically to the World Trade Center Memorial. It has been more than a decade since I was last in New York. This trip segment was, frankly, emotional for me because I'm a native New York City boy, watched the World Trade Center (WTC) go up, worked in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center was always visible, watched on television as the Towers came down, and visited the area when there was nothing but a hole in the ground. 9/11 changed America. We are living with its aftermath today and will continue to feel its consequences well into the future. What distorted the visual appreciation of the original complex – to non-New Yorkers - is the vertical enormity of Manhattan itself, where there are 240 buildings more than 40 stories. It's hard for anyone who did not visit the original World Trade Center towers to appreciate the scale of that complex. Each tower was 110 stories – ten-million square feet of rentable space in all - and each floor was about one acre. Fifty-thousand people worked daily at the complex and 150,000 used the subway system station in its basement every day. There were seven underground levels for services and shopping. In total, there were 43,000 windows. What came down was 200,000 tons of steel and 425,000 cubic yards of concrete. When the planes hit the Towers, it (fortunately) came down vertically… it could have been so much worse. My cousin was working nearby and fled his building, showered by debris as he walked uptown. His wife walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of others. Words are inadequate when talking about the heroism of New York's police and fire departments, and of everyday citizens helping one another to escape the unthinkable. The memorial and the museum – two sides of the same coin The new World Trade Center Memorial actually comprises two visual experiences – the physical outside structures and the Museum. I would suggest contracting with a tour company for the former because there is so much to know about what was there and what is there now. Our guide worked in the original World Trade Center, lost a good friend who was in Tower 2 and a close firefighter friend who died from complications from working the "Pile." It was personal for her. I suspect that the story is personal for most of the World Trade Center tour guides. The new 9/11 Memorial and Museum occupies eight of the 16 acres at the World Trade Center and are tributes to the past and a place of hope for the future. There are five primary structures; perhaps the most impressive is One World Trade Center, which stretches to 1,776 feet. 2 World Trade Center tops out at 1,270 feet, while buildings 3, 4 and 7 top out at 1,079…977… and 741 feet tall, respectively. And there's an enormous amount of shopping embedded in each building. There are two giant reflecting pools at the site, each an acre in size. Etched into the bronze parapets are the names of the 2,983 people who were killed in the 2001 and 1993 terrorist attacks But it's the museum that drives home the enormity of what happened that day. Twisted steel girders, misshapen rescue equipment and photographs. Perhaps the most impactful is the large room with nothing but photographs of those who died that day, with a voice overlay by a relative who says who the victim was. It's the only place in the museum where photographs cannot be taken. Pictures from floor to ceiling. And no one speaks in that room out of a sense of reverence. The only other place I have experienced that is the Memorial to the Children, in Yad Vashem, Israel. Both places are holy. Catastrophe happens, we are shocked to our core and we rebuild. The World Trade Center is a touchstone to that resolve. Richard Pearl is a Lincoln resident and retired consultant to local governments. He is also the elected Lincoln city treasurer. This column represents only his personal, and not elected, opinions. The goal of the column is to present issues that impact city residents in an impartial and understandable format. He can be reached at richardpearl.lnm@gmail.com.