The United States of America turned somber today because the country and the world changed forever 18 years ago. A lot has changed since then, the raw emotions are not as fresh in some peoples’ memories, and a growing portion of the population was not even alive or old enough to remember the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
But a number of Brooklyn’s electeds still have graphic memories of that day.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James remembered being outside of PS. 20, 225 Adelphi Street in Clinton Hill on election day during a run for city council. She said that everyone thought the first plane was an accident, but after the second plane hit, the election was canceled and she found herself on the Brooklyn Bridge with her campaign volunteers.
They handed out sandwiches and water to people who were coming across the bridge to flee Ground Zero. “On that day, we were all united, and everyone looked the same because they were all covered in dust and debris,” James said. She ended the day at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Clinton Hill to pray with the congregants.
City Councilman Alan Maisel (D-Bergen Beach, Canarsie, Flatlands, Georgetown, Gerritsen Beach, Marine Park, Mill Basin, Mill Island, Sheepshead Bay) had a similar recollection to the attorney general. He said he just started doing work for then Assemblymember Frank Seddio, a lawyer who now chairs the Brooklyn’s Democratic party. Maisel was also standing outside of a Brooklyn school on election day, but he was all the way down in Mill Basin. He still had clear views of the Manhattan skyline.
“Someone pointed up because there was smoke coming out of the World Trade Center,” Maisel said. He thought about the time a plane went into the Empire State Building and thought “my G-d, this is a terrible accident.” He said that the second plane going into the other Twin Tower made it clear that they witnessed a terrorist attack. The horrors of what just happened spread from the Financial District to throughout the borough of Brooklyn.
“I will not forget the burnt paper that was flying over Brooklyn,” Maisel said. The “little scraps of paper” that blew into Brooklyn came from office files and other paper documents that were inside the Twin Towers during the attack. The councilman didn’t know anyone who was affected by the attacks directly but has since met with people affected, like firefighters.
He only remembers two things in his life, and one of those events is not his father dying. He has “very very strong memories” of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination because he was home from school and watched the news coverage on television. His experience on 9/11 is the other time in his 74 years of life that he remembers vividly. “I could never get that out of my mind.” He assembled at Thomas Jefferson Club in Canarsie to watch news coverage with other people that night.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was a New York Police Department (NYPD) captain and a first responder on the day of the attack.
“My memory of 9/11 is going there that night and seeing the smoke rising from the ground and hundreds of officers and first responders exhausted and covered in dust,” the borough president said in a statement. “In spite of all that we went through, we rose the next day and showed our enemies that we were on our knees, not to show surrender, but to pray for strength. We received that strength and won.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor earlier about his memories from this tragic day. He said that he knew people who died like someone who played basketball with him in high school, a businessman who helped Schumer succeed in life, and a firefighter who would participate in blood drives with Schumer.
The senator talked about seeing names of fallen firefighters on street signs dedicated to them and how it constantly reminds him of their sacrifices on 9/11. He said that he remembers the president sending him up in a plane to see the aftermath and that it was odd to be the only plane in the sky.
Schumer spoke about how the generosity of New Yorkers sticks with him. He talked about a shoe store owner who helped people in need by providing free footwear. He remembered the way the first responders acted that day and recalled one specific hero who made the ultimate sacrifice.
“I remember a firefighter from Staten Island, based in Brooklyn,” Schumer said, continuing that the firefighter “went to his firehouse, put his full gear on, ran to the tunnel, with about 60 to 70 pounds of gear on. He was on his day off, but he knew he was called. He went up the stairs of the World Trade Center and was crushed when the towers collapsed.”
U.S. Rep. Max Rose (D-South Brooklyn, Staten Island) lived through 9/11 as a New Yorker and served his country overseas after enlisting in 2010. Now he serves New York’s 11th district and brings his experience as a New Yorker and veteran to congress and sees military policy through this lens.
Rose worries that calls to “Never Forget” may ring hollow, saying in a statement that “with every passing year there will be more and more Americans for which 9/11 is something in a history textbook and not a day they could never forget.”
