by philmoberg » Tue Sep 11, 2012 9:43 am
From time to time, I used to have business with the Port Authority and other agencies in the WTC, and I remember vividly the view of Manhattan from the 83rd floor. I also remember the way the tower swayed at that altitude: it was more of a circular motion than a sway, actually. A colleague of mine who had left the agency in the early-'80s was working with the Port Authority a few years later, and was in a meeting on the fifth floor when the bomb went off in '93. The day the planes hit the towers, he happened to be running late, and his train never got past Newark. He and I had frequently discussed the poor state of dispatching on the NEC back in the '80s, and no doubt he recalled a few of those conversations until he and his fellow passengers got the word about what was going on. He stopped by my house one cold October evening, a couple of years back, to tell me that he was taking his retirement from the Port Authority, and that he an his wife were moving far away from greater New York. He hasn't forgotten, nor have I, because we both remember friends and colleagues who didn't have the chance to retire.