DISPATCHES: MY INVOLVEMENT WITH THE EVENTS OF 9-11-01
ALM No.94, October 2026
ESSAYS
I am a personal witness to the events of 9-11-01. From that tragic day until 9-11-26 I have been involved in the reporting and the search for domestic solutions to repair our country from the events on that fateful first day of 9-11-01. Here are my dispatches of how my life has changed over the past twenty-five years since that fateful day.
DISPATCH #1
I was working at Washington Adventist Hospital in Tacoma Park on the morning of September 11th, 2001. The U.S. Pentagon was in our view from our windows. As the singular jet hit the Pentagon a large cloud of black smoke filled the air above it and it became darker and larger as you stared at it. Suddenly the security alarms went off in the hospital and we were told to prep and be ready to take casualties from the Pentagon! The physicians on the floor said we will be injured too from the toxic chemicals that will most likely be on the victims’ bodies. My cellphone went off and my older daughter said within her tears she was worried for me. I told her I was alright and I should be ok (when suddenly my phone went dead.) Later I was told there was a national blackout of radio signals because another plane was heading for D.C. next. I wondered if I would be alive by nightfall. No casualties came to the hospital that day because they were being treated at other area military facilities. By 6 PM a bus picked us all up and we were escorted to our parked cars with military escorts. Overhead two Air Force jets patrolled the skies looking for the last suspect terrorist plane. (Later we learned that terrorist plane went down in Pennsylvania.) As I drove home I thought this was truly the end of the world.
DISPATCH #2
In February, 2002 I was selected to have a phone interview with a major University researcher for consideration for a new job to study the health impact to the first responders working at Ground Zero in the recovery of the Twin Tower casualties. I was told my work would need to be sealed from any outside news bureau and any New York City official. After her questions about my methodology and statistical analysis training I was asked if I had any questions. I asked about the residents living in the area and all the persons in contact with the toxic gases if they would be studied too. The researcher stated it would only be a study of the City’s first responders. I then asked what control group would be created as a comparison group to our studied case findings. She stated it would be a case study only (Meaning the rises and the falls of health changes of the first responders would be reported only in the final report. It would, therefore, not allow the researcher to know if any health changes were reasonable, expected, or alarming.) I protested the study design as both inadequate and leading only to a narrative for the persons receiving the study findings. The researcher said I sounded like I knew my stuff. I stated I was trained professionally at Johns Hopkins University, School of Hygiene and Public Health. Lastly, the researcher asked if I had any other ideas to create a better study design! I said YES – I stated clearly and accurately the neighborhood residents were also another high risk group because they would be returning home day in and day out around Ground Zero. A group of controls matched to age and race needed to be created with routine health visits to compare changes in the health of those exposed to the toxic chemicals so early detection of any disease would allow for an early treatment, if necessary. The researcher said I was extremely professional and she would let me know if they would consider my research design changes. Now the current history of care to those first responders and those neighborhood residents in lower Manhattan have demonstrated the abandonment of an adequate research design that could have helped our first responders and the exposed neighborhood residents at risk to receive adequate routine care! We are now very aware how the toxic materials have impacted their current health lives.
DISPATCH #3
I arrived in New York to live and I found work as a photojournalist while working for the Tribune Newspapers and the Herald Newspapers. The Nassau County Memorial at Point Lookout was built and I came there to document their memorial services and their special activities. Pencils and paper were offered to family members of the deceased and they were invited to write personal notes that would be stored at the Ground Zero 9-11 Memorial and Museum. Many of the notes were very private and I chose to never use their notes to sell newspapers. And I have never been sorry I never did that to this day. I always wondered if these family members thought their notes would be close in the vicinity where their loved ones fell. I still think about that to this day too.
DISPATCH #4
I was granted special permission from the 9-11 Memorial and Museum to record the turning on of the Memorial Lights one year from a roof near Ground Zero. Into the dark sky the twin beams appeared to reach up and up and up. I thought where does light beams go after they leave the Earth? Does a particle of those beams’ light go on and on into space or do they disappear. I never did learn what happens to light over time. For those who can see the light beams I imagined they thought this is a fitting memory of our deceased loved ones and our beloved Twin Towers.
The following year I went to the local restaurant and pub the firefighters would go to after work. It is still there. It is called O’Hara’s Restaurant and Pub. I came in with my camera. The owner asked me to be respectful of the firefighters as they came in. I promised I would only take photographs if they granted me permission. Some did and others waved me off with faces that said it is still too much to bear. I rested my camera on my table and I had lunch. Then the bar doors opened and children and mothers came in together. The firefighters got up and hugged the kids and held hands of the spouses. It was a magical moment. Some of the children approached me and asked if I knew their dad. I said I heard he was a hero. The other firefighters around me smiled and nodded that I said just the right thing. After that exchange I got up and I have never been back to that pub ever again on any future 9-11 memorial event.
DISPATHCH #5
I realized this past week I was 50 years old when I was near the attack on the Pentagon in 2001. And now on the 25th anniversary I am 75 years old. I am no smarter or thoughtful about what could be done to address our national tragedy. I realize this week the winds of doubt and criticism about how our country’s politicians acted to protect; to care for; or to cover the health needs of New Yorkers working or living in Lower Manhattan is still a deep wound. I am glad I am not part of that conversation. I carry too much disbelief of how insensitive my government is to those that did respond to help others and who were willing to sacrifice their own lives, if necessary, to save one or more of their fellow men or women that day.
My last act on the 25th anniversary of the attacks of 9-11-01 was to get into my car and drive to a private and dark location where I could get what is called in landscape photography ‘the best general view’ of the Memorial Lights over Manhattan. I drove to the Rockaways in Queen, New York and at a deserted gas station with cyclone fences facing the City I raised my Leica camera and as I rested my shoulder on my car door frame to create stability I took a photograph at sundown plus two hours. I reviewed my work and I felt I could give this one special picture to anyone who would like to remember why we have memorial lights on the 11th of September! It says to me, something terrible happened that day and our grand and majestic city can still shine brightly as two beams of light go on and on and on into space. And perhaps they continue to go on and on and on as light particles because their importance needs to be eternal and never forgotten.
Joe Abate is a maturing photojournalist who continues to search for documentary subjects to communicate to the general public the lives of others both in their joys and their unfortunate struggles. His honest depiction of historical events is his passion in his documentary work too. He has had numerous photographs published in local newspapers along the South Shore of Long Island, New York. Presently, he lives near the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean and every day with the changes of the weather by the shore he recognizes every moment of every day can be special!
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