Another Piece of the 9/11 Story
Sun Jul 26, 2009 1:07:31 am

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My parents lived close to the World Trade Center, around a 10 minute walk away. My mother had watched both towers collapse from her kitchen window and I was on the phone with her during the second collapse. Water was cut off, electricity was intermittent, and phone service stopped completely some time in the afternoon. I discussed the situation with my siblings online and we decided that it would be best to get our parents out of there, but we did not know how and we were unable to notify them about this plan.

Ordinary vehicles were not permitted beyond 14th Street. This prohibition included public transportation. I could have walked from 14th Street to get to my parents, but it would have been impractical to get them to walk back with me. At my mother's pace, it probably would have been a 2 to 3 hour walk. For my father, it would have been impossible. He had diabetes, kidney failure, and lung disease. A vehicle was required.

I got a surprise call that afternoon from one of my clients. He called just to see how I was doing. I told him about my situation and he offered to help. His first attempt at helping involved getting a fireman to go to the apartment to escort my parents out. This plan failed due to language problems, but it still would have failed even if the fireman had been able to speak the proper dialect of Chinese.

After that failed, my client called back and said he could arrange something else. He didn't tell me what he was going to arrange, but he asked me to go to his home and I did. When I arrived there, he explained to me that his wife is on the Board of Directors of the Red Cross and that their car could get special authorization because of this. I later discovered that he had other connections beyond this, but I cannot discuss what those connections are. When we arrived at the 14th Street checkpoint, my client wrote a special passphrase on a piece of paper and showed it to the policeman. This granted us access without any inspection of the contents of the vehicle.

I immediately felt ill when I entered the apartment. The windows had been tightly shut for several hours. It was evident that some of the toxic debris had already entered the apartment before the windows were shut. My mother was surprised to see me there. I explained the situation and she refused to come with me. I called my sister and had her talk to my mother. It took her nearly half an hour, but she succeeded in convincing my mother to come with me.

I did not understand why it took so much convincing and I did not know what kind of things my mother packed in her luggage. This is the missing part of the story that my mother told me today. My mother was concerned about looters stealing her most valuable possessions. She had taken some jewelry out of her safety deposit box to give to my sister, because my sister was going to get married. There was also a substantial amount of cash stashed at home, because my parents feared the possibility of bank failure or government seizure. This was the consequence of having lived through the communist revolution in China. My mother brought all the jewelry and cash with her, but she didn't say anything to me about it. I sensed the terror in her when we reached the 14th Street checkpoint, but I didn't know why. She was afraid that the police might search her and confiscate everything. The secret passphrase granted us free passage again and we left without being searched. Although my sister lives in Connecticut, she happened to be in New York for work that day. My client drove to the Marriot Marquis where my sister was staying and she drove our parents to her home where they stayed for a few weeks. The jewelry was left behind in Conneticut, but the cash was still with my mother when my parents returned to New York. My sister offered to escort them to the train station, but my mother asked to be escorted all the way to the apartment because she feared being mugged.