1-800-PRO-LAW1
Of course for me, like everyone else, it started out as an ordinary day. Most days, when I'm not in court, I walk to work. While doing so, I suddenly I realized I had forgotten to tell my wife about an appointment that we had at my son's nursery school. I repeatedly tried to call her but could not get a line on my cell phone. Unbeknownst to me, the first plane had struck and all the phone lines in the city were jammed. I next tried to call her using a pay phone on the corner. I found the same condition, no lines.
At that point a stranger in passing said "Did you hear what happened? A plane hit the World Trade Center." He pointed to the sky and to my surprise I could immediately see the sky downtown was filled with a thick black smoke. I recall thinking that I knew in the 1940's, during WWII, an errant plane got lost in the clouds and hit the Empire State building. I believed in that incident only six people died. The Empire State building was built in the thirties of reinforced concrete. The Twin Towers were built in the seventies of aluminum and steel. I knew the twin towers could withstand the impact of a plane.
My mind wandered to whether or not I knew anybody of the perhaps ten or twenty people I imagined perished in this crash. I suspected because the sky was clear it could not be a lost pilot. I believed it must have been some sort of small plane that had a mechanical problem. Ten minutes later I began to hear the real news and became increasingly aware of the magnitude of the tragedy. Like everyone on the planet, my next two hours were spent glued to a television. We were witnessing horrors we never dreamed of in our worst nightmares. I spoke to my wife. She wanted to take the kids out of the city. I was determined to stay.
From the window of my apartment, I saw thousands of people walking over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. The subway service, buses, and bridge vehicle traffic were all suspended. People having no other way to get home were going by foot. Elderly people, women in high heels, people with children, and people caked with dust from the rubble of the towers collapsing, were all walking over a bridge that is usually filled with cars.
My wife and I came to an agreement. When the bridges opened, we would take the children out to our house in Long Island. Then I would come back to the city on my motorcycle. I felt lucky and privileged to be a motorcycle rider. The city's future seemed so uncertain. If there were any riots, traffic jams, or forced evacuations from the city, astride my bike is how I wanted to be. The next morning the bridges were open and my wife, our four year old and twenty month old sons, and my mother-in-law from Italy (she was supposed to fly back to Naples, Italy on September 14th) were all in my car. As we were driving, my older son Robert who, of course, watches "Sponge Bob Square Pants" cartoons and not the news began to question me.
"We just went over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, right Dada?"
"Right."
"Then we are in Queens, right?"
"Right."
"THEN DADA, WHERE ARE THE WORLD TRADE TOWERS?"
"They were knocked down by bad men who took a plane"
"What happened to the people working there?"
"The parts of them that laugh and love are called their souls and that will live on and go to heaven and be with God."
"Who is stronger, God, or the President of the United States?"
" God. He created everything"
"What is God going to do about this?"
"God will accept the souls of the people that died when the buildings collapsed."
"Then what's the President going to do about this?"
"The President will hunt for the bad guys and make them sorry they did this."
"Oh."
We drove on for approximately two hours and arrived at our weekend house safely. I started up my 1993 HD Softtail Heritage, kissed my wife and kids, and headed back to the city. Driving back to the city was eerily quiet. It seemed almost post-apocalyptic. There was no traffic. As I rode on, I could smell the air as you can only on a motorcycle. This time however was different. The air had a pungent quality to it. It was like when you throw a Styrofoam cup into a fireplace, only with more of an electrical smell to it.
I got into the city at around 4:30 p.m. and decided I had better visit my friend Cesare. He had a restaurant in my old neighborhood, six blocks from ground zero. To get downtown, there were a series of roadblocks with armed soldiers checking identification. No one was supposed to get past 14th Street. Fortunately, I carry a badge I that I got from one of my investigators, Tom McGovern. Tom has been working with me for more than ten years now. He rides to Sturgis every year. He can rebuild a bike on the side of the road but before he ever started working on accident investigations for me, he was a full rank NYC detective for more than twenty years. Years ago Tom gave me a badge that sometimes helps when you're getting pulled over for DWIB. (Driving While In Biker mode.)
Heading downtown, I just showed them my badge and the GI Joes and assorted police let me through three roadblocks. After each roadblock, I saw less and less vehicle traffic and people. When I finally got downtown, it was deserted. Inside my friend's restaurant the people were drinking. It was the only restaurant open in the neighborhood. The other restaurants could not get bread or enough food through the barricades to open. My friend Cesare was cooking, bartending, and waiting tables with his wife because his staff could not get through either. I asked Cesare if I could help with anything. He thanked me for coming but said he preferred me on the other side of the bar.
My night ended with my going back to my office in midtown Manhattan. I wanted to call all my employees. I wanted to tell them the courts were closed and our office would stay closed also. I didn't want anyone to worry about getting to work. Problems were still plaguing the public transportation system that so many of my people relied upon. While I was making phone calls, I noticed our phones barely worked. I struggled for fifteen minutes to get a line for every call I made. At about 11:30pm, by some miracle, my phone rang. It was a client. He wanted to know how his case was going. I told him the latest progress and hung up the phone. I'm still amazed my client never commented on, or sounded even a little surprised, that I was in the office answering phones at 11:30 at night, with the entire City all but shut down under fear of further terrorist attacks.
In the following days public transportation, the phones, and Government services went back to "normal." I learned that my friend Kevin, who was with me in Las Vegas just this past spring, was on the phone with his mother, calling from the second tower, telling her he was fine, when the second plane hit him. High School students in this City where I was born learned that you can tell the difference between debris falling and people jumping, because people jumping fall faster. I still live in Manhattan. My kids go to school here. I still ride my bike and I'm glad that I do.
— This article was originally written for ABATE. Mitch Proner is an eleven-year member of ABATE of NY. He is also the Aid to Injured Motorcyclist Attorney for New York and Connecticut. He can be reached at Mproner@Prolaw1.com
Mitch Proner
Proner & Proner
1-800-PROLAW1