Ten Years Ago Today

 Photo courtesy of John Wolf

…I was sitting in the lounge at the Hotel Storchen in Zurich where I am as I write this.  I was waiting for my friend Andreas to come by after work and we were heading out for an early dinner because I was flying back to New York the next morning.  Jean-Philippe Jaussi who was the manager of the Storchen at the time noticed me and, as Andreas came through the door, pulled me by the sleeve to the television at the back of the lounge just in time to see the impact of the second plane into the World Trade Center.  Beyond shocked, I ran up to my room to phone my mother who was hysterical; I managed to calm her down by assuring her that no terrorist attacks were going to take place in either Newark or Zurich and that I would let her know when I got a flight home.  I was stuck for a few more days and finally left Zurich on the following Saturday, September 15.  Since then hundreds of people have asked me if I had still been working at Windows on the World, though I had left my job there in early 1984.  And my friend Andreas whom I met right after arriving in Switzerland to work in 1973 passed away a month ago, so I began this day filled with so many other sad memories with a visit to his grave.   I accept sadness and loss as part of life but the senseless destruction and death that occurred ten years ago certainly are not.