Grand Junction public library will present a special commemorative program marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 7 pm in the Max F. Wetrich Community Room in the library.
Alan Robinson, a New York, NY, resident on Sept. 11, 2001, will present the program, sharing with the audience his experiences before, during and after the attack that destroyed the “Twin Towers” of the WTC that fateful day in American history. He is the library director of Grand Junction public library.
He will take the audience through his steps that day—9/11/2001—sharing how he and his co-workers dealt with the attack and how they navigated their way home in the aftermath. A senior editor of Food Logistics Magazine, owned by VNU Publishing, he was going to work at 9 am on the subway headed to the VNU headquarters at 770 Broadway, just west of Washington Square Park and just two miles north of the Twin Towers.
He will share what it was like to be a part of a magazine company where he and his co-workers had the very unfavorable “group experience” of learning—in subsequent order— that the Twin Towers were attacked; were on fire; and based on a phone call from the mother of a fellow editor—one of them had collapsed.
“I recall someone said there’s a TV in the conference room, so we filed in,” says Robinson. “Not seeing is not believing, as was the case for me. I even said something to Deena Amato-McCoy, a co-worker and a friend, that she must have misheard her mom who had phoned in from her home on Long Island and told Deena that one of the towers had fallen. ‘Not possible,’ I said to Deena.
“Yet there were the TV images—one tower standing, one gone,” he continues. “And then, just like that, the other tower implodes. Two down and a room full of people in shock.”
“All I remember next,” Robinson shares, “is that everyone’s primary response was to go home. And most of my co-workers commuted in from Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut—especially Long Island. They all left the building—most were walking east across Manhattan and the bridges linked to Queens and Brooklyn and to the subway and rail system that was still running in those boroughs, as everything was shut down in Manhattan. I lived on the Upper West Side at West 75th and Amsterdam. I could have walked, but it’s a pretty long distance. I did not know what the situation was outside of 770 Broadway. Was it safe? Could planes attack us again? Drop bombs?”
As it was, Robinson remained in the vast reaches of 770 Broadway, which spanned two, long city blocks from east-to-west and was seven floors high. “It was not until I ventured up to the next floor up from my floor and knew there was a huge window on the south side of floor with an expansive view of lower Manhattan, including all of the financial district. Believe you me, those images on TV meant nothing compared to looking out that window which framed the absolute madness that had just happened—no Tower 1, no Tower 2, just this hellish plume of smoke that first blew straight up and later was drifting toward Brooklyn to the east.
“From that moment on, my life was changed forever,’’ says Robinson.
Hear how he and his neighbors, friends, family members, and co-workers navigated their lives in a very changed universe the rest of that day and the weeks and months to follow in 2001 and into the next year. Grand Junction public library is located at 104 Main St East in Grand Junction, two blocks east of Iowa Highway 144. Persons who want more information can contact the library at 515-738-2506 or text 515-370-5029.
