The morning of September 11, 2001 was a sunny beautiful late summer morning on Long Island. The temperature was cool, the sky was blue, there were little or no clouds, and the humidity of summer was gone. It was one of those late summer days that hint to the wonderful days of the coming fall season. It was a totally normal day as I walked from the parking garage to my usual place on the Manhattan bound platform of the Mineola Long Island Rail Road platform, and waited for the 7:24 train to Penn Station.

All along the platform there were groups of LIRR regulars, who gathered at the proper location to board their desired car of the train. It might be a matter of knowing where that car would platform in Penn Station, or might be a gained knowledge of what cars on the train might be a little less crowded at that time of the morning. Being creatures of habit, you tended to see many of the same folks day after day waiting on the platform with you, on the train already when you got on, or getting on the train at the Merrilon Avenue and New Hyde Park stops. By in large you hadn’t talked to them and knew nothing about them beyond the fact that they took the 7:24 train to Penn and sat in the second car from the end of the train most days.

Of course, that normal feeling of the morning of September 11th ended when we watched the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center just after 9 AM! Most of us were then aware that we’d just entered a new world and life would never be the same. The horror of the day continued to unfold as we watched on live television the unfathomable happen with both towers of the World Trade Center collapsing. Rumors were everywhere, and working 17 Floors above Penn Station, and just two blocks from the now tallest building in NYC, the Empire State Building, nobody was sure if there were more attacks coming, and if so, where would they strike. When they finally opened Penn Station late that afternoon, the trip home was strange and very quiet, and when the train came out of the tunnel in Queens, I think most of us looked to the south where the twin towers of the WTC were that morning, but now there was just a pillar of smoke.

The days, weeks, and months following September 11th were very odd in the New York Metropolitan area. Living in Mineola on Long Island, depending on the weather patterns, we were under the landing pattern for either La Guardia, or JFK, and were very used to having a plane go over head every couple of minutes, but with air travel in the United States grounded in the days after 9/11, the skies were eerily quiet. Almost immediately, there were American flags everywhere. Continuing to travel into Manhattan daily on the Long Island Rail Road, the trains were very quiet, especially when we got to the point in Queens where we used to be able to see the towers and now just saw smoke. Penn Station was also very different than it had been before 9/11. There were armed soldiers everywhere and many more police than usual. As the days went on, people started placing pictures of loved ones on bulletin boards, around the station, asking people if anybody had seen them after the towers fell. Security in office buildings all over the city was increased, especially in ours at 2 Penn Place, being above Penn Station. At home, we were missing friends who were members of the NYPD, the NYFD, and even local volunteers, all who were involved in World Trade Center Search and Rescue, and then Recovery. It was a sad time for sure, but also a time that everyone felt we were united as one; there to support each other!

As I said in the beginning, those of us who were daily Long Island Rail Road riders into Manhattan were creatures of habit, traveling on the same train and sitting in the same car everyday. But there were people I’d seen for months, and many that I saw on the 7:24 to Penn Station on that fateful September morning that I never saw again. I always wondered, were these fellow LIRR travelers victims that died in the WTC, or people who were traumatized by the events of 9/11, and just didn’t have the ability to go to work in Manhattan anymore, or had something else change their commuting patterns? As I said, one question I’ll never know the answer to from 9/11.