After 9/11, I look at the Yonkers City Hall clock tower differently.
.Like all of us who lived through it, the details of that day are forever in my memory — the clear blue sky, the first cool breezes ushering in the fall. When the Twin Towers fell, I worked in City Hall as the Yonkers Inspector General. I remember that after I parked, I lingered a few extra seconds on the top of the garage looking out at Getty Square and the Hudson Palisades. It was a top-ten weather day.
My office was on the 5th floor; it had once been part of the city sign shop, where street signs were printed. In the late 1990s, it was converted into the office space for the newly created Department of Inspector General. It was a small and oddly-shaped space shoehorned next to the dome above the city council chamber.
Although there was an elevator, my usual routine was to take the grand double stairway, which wound around the ornate rotunda on the second floor. Its marble steps were unevenly worn from decades of city employees and residents making their way to various government offices, city council meetings, and proceedings in the ceremonial courtroom.
When I emerged on the fifth floor, which still had an industrial feeI, I walked by the entrance to the clock tower, an old brown wooden door with a glass window and a sign that admonished do not enter or keep out, I can’t remember which. In the many times I passed that door, I often thought to myself that, regardless of the warning, I had to climb the steps one day. There was no real security; sometimes the door was locked, but mostly not. I had tried the doorknob on many occasions.
We were a department of four people — Harvey and Ed were accountants, and Sue was our administrative assistant. Our task was to audit and investigate for fraud, waste, and abuse in city government. A few weeks before the fateful day, we had released an audit report on the Board of Ed’s purchase of millions of dollars of new Apple Computers.
We Were at Our Desks at 8:30 a.m.
Our workday began at 8:30. We were all at our desks. At 8:45, the first plane struck the North Tower.
Harvey told me to turn on the TV. We had a small set we mostly used to watch breaking Yonkers news. We gathered around, and at first didn’t understand what was happening, but after the second jet hit the South Tower, we knew. We didn’t say much, I remember thinking that I should try to reassure the staff but struggled to find the words. I vaguely remember saying something about how life as we had known it was about to change.
We were mostly just quiet, each of us drawn into ourselves, trying to process what was happening. At around 9:45, I told everyone to go home to be with their families.
But I stayed to climb the clock tower.
The door was unlocked; I think I found a light switch that turned on one bare bulb that dimly illuminated the climb up the metal stairs. It was a steep but short ascent to the next level. There I found four enormous translucent clock faces, the clocks visible from much of the city.
I stopped to consider the early 20th-century clockworks – the cogs and gears that moved the hands around the large dials. I noticed some measurements written in pencil on the supporting cinder blocks.
On the level above the clock, there are four windows just below the copper dome of the tower. I think I got to them by climbing a short steel ladder. At the top, I discovered that the window facing south towards NYC was open; light flooded in.
From the Tower, I Could See for Miles, Black Smoke Billowing from Lower Manhattan
I had an unobstructed view for miles. Although I felt the strong breeze of a stiff northerly wind, it was eerily quiet. It was about 16 miles from Yonkers City Hall to the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. I could clearly see two small, slender buildings with a stream of black smoke billowing south and east away from Yonkers towards Brooklyn.
For several moments I just stared and thought about how the people in those buildings were just like me – at work, starting their day. And now this. For three years I had worked a block away from the Trade Center; I was intimately familiar with it. I feared that thousands of people had been killed.
I turned to look at one of the statues on the clock tower, then the Hudson River and New Jersey. It was a spectacular view. If only I could wake up from the nightmare of what had just occurred.
Looking back at the Twin Towers, I saw the South Tower disappear, and a cloud of white and tan smoke and dust rose from the ground to quickly envelop the remaining Tower. What had just happened?
Scared, I didn’t want to be alone in a tower. I quickly went down and returned to my office. I remember Mayor Giuliani saying that the death toll was more than what we could bear. That was exactly right.
I left the building to pick up my daughter at school and hoped to be of assistance in any way possible if parents or children needed help.
