On the evening of September 10th, 2001, I was one of the lucky ones at Madison Square Garden watching the greatest, Michael Jackson perform… What an AMAZING memory, sharing that moment with a friend who came into NYC for his birthday, some co workers from Def Jam at the time, and thousands of MJ fans and friends. We were celebrating MJ’s Comeback, Missing our Aaliyah, Anticipating Jay Z’s BLUEPRINT Album to drop & rejoicing my friends birthday (Which is Sep. 11).
After the concert, we celebrated all night. We all did shots and shots and shots of Jose Cuervo Tequila lol, I think we bought the hotel bar out that night…. Man, I was 23 years old, just so young and carefree, not much concern for whatever stresses I had earlier that week or too much responsibility in the world, having fun and living life to the fullest. I dont even remember falling asleep that night….. but I do remember how I woke up from it. Life changed that fast, literally in a blink of an eye. I woke up at The Trump Hotel to a friend banging on the door at 8 am & then rushed in the room, turned the TV on and LIVE footage of the second Tower being hit! We thought he turned on the movie ‘Independence Day’!!! The minute the plane hit the second tower, we felt rumbling. We were so close to it, just down the street almost! It took us about 10 minutes to wake up from our crazy drunken stooper and realize that there was real tragedy happening just down the street from us. Reality hit! Moments later we saw smoke and rubbles of debris from our room window floating through the sky and empty streets…
All of our phone signals were jammed. We couldnt call out or get calls in! This was the era of two-way pagers and for some reason we were able to receive and send email. I didnt know anyone down there, what is now ‘GROUND ZERO’, or so I thought. My sister had just transferred locations from her job. She had worked at MET LIFE and had just transfered to the Pennsylvania location. So I wasnt worried at all, at least not for my sisters life or safety. Then all of a sudden I received an email from my dad who was in Japan at the time, that my older sister was in NYC and he was trying to get in touch with her but could not!
I reassured my dad, she had changed locations and sure she was fine. This I was so sure of and assumed he hadn’t been updated. As soon as I sent my father that reply, News cut to a plane crashing in Pennsylvania then in Washington DC. IMMEDIATELY my heart dropped in fear for my sister and my little brother who was in DC at the time. And then for all of my family and friends in DC and who I knew worked at the Pentagon. Next to NJ/NY, DC…Thats home to me!
My dad immediately responded that my sister was doing job training for her job that week in The Trade Center. My heart stopped almost completely. I tried to get in touch w/ my brother-in-law but all phones were still jammed up for several hours! My friend comforted me (poor guy didnt know what to say or do) as I wanted to attempt to go down there to find her, but so much fear, smoke, chaos, fear, debris, did I say fear? It came over us all! For 6 hours I cried and cried hoping my sister was ok!
My world had stopped! My eyes are watering now remembering that moment, that fear! The world (at least NYC) Stopped that day! It was now 5pm and we hadnt eaten at all! The Hotel ran out of food for the day, understandably workers hadn’t come into work, none of the stores in our area were open! We walked outsi
