From John Richards: Further update on Tim
Devlin -- he was safely at work in Westchester County
during the terror attacks. He knows some people who are
listed as missing, but his close friends who work in the
WTC were either out of the office that day or got out of
the buildings.
He welcomed people to call him at work, after 11:00
AM, at (914) 253-0900 ext. 236.
From Pam Cefaratti: Thanks for the forwards and keeping us all in touch thru this craziness. I have an update for the web site. I married Orestes Gutierrez on Aug 31! My name is not changing. He's a fellow med student. We're blissful.!
John Richards got a message on Sunday the 16th from Tim Devlin. John reports: I haven't been able to talk to him yet, but Tim is okay.
From Gina (Bonanno) Morrison: Lots of family in New York actually. But everyone who was working in the city that day got home safely. Thanks for asking - and I am grateful for the updates on the class page. Could we ever have imagined it would be used for such a thing?
From Tim Bush: Boy, if this all weren't so
miserable, it would be fun to hear from so many people. I
haven't written this many e-mails the rest of this year
put together.
I'm fine, or as fine as I can be when I'm frustrated at
not being able to do anything. I just ran some supplies
over to the relief staging area a few blocks from here: it
is amazing to see so many people out and trying to help,
but I think all of us would rather be downtown digging
through rubble to reach survivors. In the absence of that,
I can at least take advantage of my proximity to the
relief effort to buy and deliver ice and first aid
supplies when I hear on TV that they need them.
I don't know how well you know the geography here: I'm
about two miles north of where the World Trade Center was,
on 19th St and Eighth Avenue. As of last night, they
weren't allowing civilian traffic below 14th St, so I'm
kind of on the front line of normalcy (the rest of the
island is basically back to normal today, or to something
like normal).
Thanks to the strong west wind yesterday, the smoke and
debris flew out east over Brooklyn, rather than north up
the rest of Manhattan: the most bizarre thing here was the
lack of outward sign that anything was wrong. Early in the
day, we had thousands of people walking up the avenues
getting away from offices downtown, but by afternoon, it
was just people walking dogs and walking around in a sort
of daze.
One wierd thing that I haven't seen covered in the media
much: we've only got one broadcast TV station in the city
right now. People with cable still have full service, but
I suspect that the stations all had their broadcast
antennas up on the city's highest building, and when it
went down, so did they. I've had only CBS since yesterday
morning.
From George Behringer: I don't know (about health of family and friends) yet as all phone lines to NY are still out of service. I have one brother-in-law who works in Manhattan, and the girl I took to our senior prom works in the Trade Center. I haven't heard from my parents so I'm assuming Dave (my brother-in-law) is OK. Do you know if anybody has heard from Tim Devlin? The last time I saw him he was working down on Wall street. If anyone has heard about Tim let's find out. Thanks for your prayers and support.
From Shellie (Goad) Berry: Dan called again
last night. He said it was the weirdest day of his life.
When Dan and Don left the hotel at the Newark airport,
they had a close, unobstructed view of south Manhattan and
the twin towers on fire. They headed north and took the
Tappan Zee bridge into New York in order to get to New
Rochelle (about 5 mi north of Manhattan) where they had a day of golf waiting at the
Pelham course.
The whole time they were on the course, fighter planes
were in formation above their heads. I think they were
ready to escort any commercial or rogue planes away from
the city. As you probably know by now, the WTC housed a
number of financial institutions like Dean Witter, Salomon
and the like. Dan's company does business with a lot of
these people. One of them came to the golf outing
yesterday--the only one from his office--and may well be
the only survivor from his company. Also, Don has a good
friend, Tanya, who worked in the WTC and is notoriously
late. She probably arrived in the area around 9am, saw
what was happening, and turned right around to go home.
At one point during the day, one of the guys got a cell
phone call and hollered out, "DON! TANYA'S ALL RIGHT".
But it was like that all day: playing golf and making and
getting calls to find out if people were alive.
At this point, Dan is still hoping to make his flight to
Minneapolis on Friday. He will be in the New Jersey
office working today and tomorrow. He had planned to be
in the office most of Friday, but figures he'll have to be
at the airport early in the morning
to assure getting on his evening flight out.
I don't think there is any more danger from this terrorist
group in the near future. My only concern is possible
copycat perpetrators turning up after things are running
again in 10 days or so. I doubt they'd be able to get
past the heightened security that will inevitably be in
place by then, though. On the other hand, I feel that
both my parents and Josh and I could postpone our
trips this month. Even once things are running again, I
expect added hassles at the airport which I'm not eager to
put either Josh or myself through. My dad doesn't like
airports or flying anyway, so he needs little
encouragement to postpone.
Dan can pick up email messages at either
dberry@rmggroup.net or
schpank@hotmail.com
From Mary Ann Buddenberg Miller: After our move
to northern NJ, we now live within a 30-minute bus ride
into NYC, and so our life was affected by the shutting
down of commuting systems, etc. (Although neither of us
has to travel to NYC on a daily basis!) My college closed
classes after 4:15 yesterday, and the solemnness of the
usually crowded streets was quite eerie. We are all in
shock that what has always seemed a remote threat has
actually happened!
Of course, almost everyone up here will know someone who
has experienced a death. Too many people work in those
buildings! From living in DC, I know people who work in
the Pentagon as well!
From John Richards: I'm fine, although pretty
freaked out. Everything here is going to be pretty
strange for a while.
There is a lot more obvious security around the
Capitol complex today, and I think that's something
we're all going to have to get used to.
From Ed Heflin: Great to hear from you. And to
answer your question, we are all O.K. here. To follow-up,
the response by New Yorkers to the terrorism has been
nothing short of phenomenal! After following the story on
television yesterday, Tanja and I made our way to the Red
Cross at 66th Street in upper Manhattan. We wanted to
donate blood and volunteer to help with any relief
efforts.
It was so reassuring to see that the place was packed with
people looking to donate blood and volunteer to help. In
fact, it was so packed, we were instructed to come back
tomorrow to donate blood. We filled out volunteer forms
and are waiting to be called.
We then made our way to lower Manhattan to within a few
blocks of where the crisis all began. Video camera in
hand, I watched with Tanja, in complete disbelief, the
fire-belching, smoke-spewing rubble pile that was once
the World Trade Centers.
It is known for certain that 3 skyscrapers are absolutely
destroyed, i.e. World Trade Centers 1, 2, & 7. Apparently,
fires are still burning in the Financial Trade Center and
the Millennium Building. And imagine the horror as
professional fire fighters, police officers, and ems
workers who initially arrived on the scene to help were
unwittingly killed in the process of the buildings
collapses.
What is less certain is the human toll. Psychological
trauma, personal injury, and loss of life. And even
though it is not known exactly how many people lost their
lives as a result of destruction, it's my opinion that
the final number will range somewhere between 10,000 to
40,000.
At this point, my simple question is this...once correctly
determined, how do you respond to someone who has
maliciously and seriously injured you?
Please submit your news items to Jennifer Muzyka at muzyka@centre.edu