Thank you for sharing these powerful images Jeremiah.
This story means more than words can adequately articulate for three main reasons.
First:
Three years ago, I lost my youngest maternal uncle, Deputy Chief Inspector (DCI) Rahman to COVID-19. He was a 22-year FDNY veteran, one of the senior leaders of the Bureau of Constructions, Demolitions, and Abatements (CDA), and later recognized as the first NYC public official lost in the pandemic. I mention this because COVID was the second national emergency in which he served as a first responder. He was there at Ground Zero on 9/11.
Second:
My father immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 1985. For the next 13 years, he worked on Wall Street at United Bank Limited (UBL), and to support our family, he moonlit as a chauffeur and taxi driver (back when "side hustles" comprised hard labor and were invariably relegated to graveyard shifts and weekends, years before GPS and decades before ridesharing apps). He worked in the Exposure Zone (south of Canal) every day, 6 days a week, before and after 9/11, until he retired many years later.
Third:
As a native New Yorker, quintessential Queens kid, and proud product of public education, it was my childhood dream to attend my alma mater, Stuyvesant High School. When I first learned about its competitive entry through standardized examination, the chance to earn one of ~700 seats out of a testing pool of 35,000 students made it seem like winning a golden ticket to the Willy Wonka Factory. Once I did, however, it was even better -- it was Hogwarts. Stuy is only a handful of city blocks, less than a full mile from Ground Zero (0.9 miles from One World Trade and the WTC Memorial). In fact, in one of the images you shared, the Tribeca Bridge--traversed by students and faculty daily to cross the West Side Highway bisecting Chambers Street--is clearly visible in the distance. I mention this, despite first attending two years after 9/11, I walked through the WTC area every single schoolday over four years. (Including weekend library visits, summer enrichment programs and research internships, that's easily 1000+ round trips through the area, across and within the labyrinthine subway station complex and the solemn streets above.) Each trip felt, and every visit since feels, like a silent eulogy, their paths indelibly etched into memory. Most of my high school friends were upperclassmen who were evacuated and displaced to the Bronx High School of Science for months after 9/11, and many of our teachers have since succumbed to 9/11-related cancers and other respiratory diseases, with each year seemingly marked by another passing. The haunting specter of arguably the worst day in American history continues to cast its pall upon our community to this day.
