To Discover the Language of My Soul.....: 1 World Trade Center, North Tower

Sunday, September 11, 2011

1 World Trade Center, North Tower

The "Twin Towers" of the World Trade Center. The North Tower is on the left, the South Tower on the right.

1 World Trade Center North Tower (with the antenna), not long after being struck by American Airlines Flight 11.

Struck at 8:46 a.m., it took almost two hours, or 102 minutes, for the North Tower to burn and then collapse. The impact zone was between floors 93 and 99. One of the most memorable shots from 9/11, is the famous 'Waving Woman of the World Trade Center.'

As for the 'Waving Woman's' identity, people have suggested that she may have been Edna Cintron:

Edna Cintron was a 46-year-old administrative assistant for Marsh & McLennan brokerage firm.

Another of the famous 9/11 shots of the North Tower shows people- most likely employees from the investment banking/financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald, who lost 658 people- leaning out the windows of the building, trying desperately to get air.

It's impossible to imagine being surrounded by smoke filtering into the offices above the impact zone, and the only way to get even a breath of fresh air, is to press against the windows of the office, eventually becoming stacked like sardines in the windows. Now imagine doing that in the windows of the 106th or 110th floor...

"You're able to see more and more people assembling at the windows as time is passing, not only assembled but they're stacked up against each other. Imagine leaning out of the hundredth and ninth floor of the World Trade Center, no rational person would do that."
- Eric Lipton, New York Times reporter

The first official victim of the September 11th attacks, was Father Mychal Judge, chaplain of the New York City Fire Department. While giving last rites to another victim, Father Judge was killed by falling debris, and later carried out by firefighters of the department he was chaplain of.

                    Father Mychal Judge
       (May 11, 1933 - September 11, 2001)
         Photograph by Shannon Stapleton.

As the tower became engulfed in flame and smoke, people on the floors above the impact zone- 91 to 110- began moving to the windows. It's not impossible to imagine what the choices were to the ones trapped on the floors above the impact zone: suffocate and burn up, or jump. It's no surprise that those that chose to jump- "jumpers" as firefighters working that day catagorized them- in a most likely desperate, final attempt to take back some control of their lives, and choose how they would die.

One of the most haunting images of "jumpers" is perhaps that of the 'Falling Man' by photographer Richard Drew:

The man appears symmetrical; he divides the towers, the North on the left, the South on the right. He appears so calm, so accepting of his fate, that it's scary.

"I just remember looking up, thinking, how bad is it up there that the better option is to jump?”
- Joe Casaliggi, NYFD, Engine 7, 9/11 documentary

Those that jumped fell in 10 seconds, and hit the ground at 150 miles an hour- a fall that doesn't cause instant unconsiousness, but does kill quickly and instantly on impact with the pavement or whatever they landed on. The majority were from Cantor Fitzgerald (floors 101 to 105), Marsh & McLennon (93 to 100) and the Windows of the World restaurant (floors 106 and 107).

Everyone from the 90th floor up to 110th floor perished when the North Tower collapsed- either by jumping or suffocating or being crushed as the towers fell.

The collapse of the North Tower at 10:28 a.m. 1 World Trade Center was the second to fall, despite being the first hit. After 102 minutes, the tower fell, taking hundreds of lives with it.

It's a sight we- as a nation, a world, a generation- will never forget.

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The Photograph in the Music Box

April 15, 1912

“They recovered two children that had been in first class. One was identified as Loraine Allison. The other was never identified.”

The RMS Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic on April 15, 1912, taking thousands with her. Though the majority of the survivors are first and second class, and the majority of the victims third and crew, there were a few casualties among the upper classes that have long since been forgotten with the passage of time.

Among the casualties is a young girl; never claimed, she is later referred to as Victim 281 and buried in Halifax. All that is left of this innocent girl is a fading photograph in a music box buried in the wall of an apartment building in Manhattan- discovered nearly a century later by Shaynee Wilcox, the daughter of the new tenants. Armed with only the faded photograph of the young girl, Shaynee’s determined to discover
her true identity, and finally lay to rest the spirit of one of the Titanic’s youngest victims. As she uncovers clue after clue, Shaynee soon discovers that, not only does the girl have a link to the Titanic sinking, but she also has a link to Shaynee herself.

The Romantic Egotists

“I grew up among the great artists of Paris- Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley; Ezra Pound and William Faulkner, Picasso, Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice Toklas, and
of course my parents Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.”

It is with these very words, that Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald takes us back to those long ago nights in Paris; when the
world was still recovering from the destruction of the Great War, when Russia was trying to reassemble the shattered pieces of itself after the bloody fall of the Romanov dynasty and Germany was allowing a man called Hitler to start taking control.

In Paris, the wave of painters, writers, dancers and playwrights’ crashes upon its shores like the Allies upon the European coast. Sex, drugs and alcohol run the streets of grand ol’ Paris, corrupting the mind and setting in motion the wheels of rebellion. It is here, in Paris, at 27 Rue de Fleurus, that a group of expatriate Americans meet and begin turning out some of the greatest literature, art and dance of the twentieth century. The child of the couple forever known as the “Romantic Egotists”- the real beautiful and damned- Scottie tries
hard to come into her own during those muggy Paris nights, despite the constant push and pull of her mother’s erratic behavior and her father’s egotistic criticisms. Here, among the sting of smoke and smell of alcohol, surrounded by lust, love and sex, young Scottie sips her first taste of jealousy, and
discovers the cost of being famous. Into this world, Frances Fitzgerald is thrust, a silent witness to the trials, tribulations, darkness and light of a generation defined as forever “Lost.”

The Sound of Sickness

"Sickness has returned.
Cover your ears and hold your breath.
Breathing in could result in death."

Alexi Michaels has been surrounded by Tuberculosis his entire life. With his mother, he places docent at the Waverly Hills Sanitarium to tourists in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, telling them the history of this sad and disturbing chapter in Kentucky's history.

That same evening, while taking a private night tour of the decaying building, Alexi meets Marit, a fourteen-year-old girl who resides at the Sanitarium while she slowly dies from TB. She's watched and waited for Alexi to arrive, spending decades within Waverly's rotting walls, a spiritual shell of the girl she once was.

Over time, Alexi begins to win Marit's trust, and using a series of family photographs, Marit tells him of her unfortunate story. She knows all the secrets and stories of the hospital, including those of her unlucky family members- both hospital resident and worker.

But Marit has a secret. A secret that sent her to an early grave. A secret she's willing to share with Alexi if he gives her something in return.

Something that, to Marit- like every other patient at Waverly Hills- is worth more than its weight in gold.