Ten Years After

September 11, 2001, was an unusually beautiful early fall morning in New York. It was the first time I would be able to spend a full day at The Armory away from my medical practice. I would have the time, I thought, to finally spend less hurried time to wrap my arms around the fast-growing organization that would serve over 100,000 youngsters yearly in the sport of track and field.

As I rode south from my home in Hastings, along the Hudson River, headed for the George Washington Bridge I had no idea nor ever heard the two low-flying passenger planes that at that very moment passed over me heading on their unspeakable path toward lower Manhattan.

When I parked my car in front of The Armory, the cool, fresh clarity of the air around me lasted only a few brief minutes. Something had gone wrong. At N.Y. Presbyterian Hospital across the street, the glass walkway four stories up was unusually crowded with men and women in white coats gazing southward in silence.

Inside The Armory, televisions had been set up and the horrific scene at the World Trade Center was unfolding. Some of the staff watched over and over the tragic collapse of the buildings, calling me over to see. I was not able or willing to witness them go.

When New York City emergency services called to set up a treatment center for the injured in The Armory, I felt better to at least, in some way, be able to help. Doctors, medical students from Columbia and hospital nurses came to the Armory and we had more than 200 volunteers by late morning.

I divided the vast floor space of The Armory track into three triage sections — one for the modestly hurt, another for more serious injuries and the last on a canvas floor for the dreaded bodies of the dead. The volunteers fanned out over their areas and we began to wait. The Westside Highway was closed down and there was a direct line up the highway to the midtown hospitals, then the overflow north to Washington Heights where N.Y. Presbyterian would be available, then the overflow of hundreds expected shunted to our team at The Armory.

The day passed fitfully. By three o'clock we still had not seen our first victim. By 6 pm we still waited until a city representative called me. I thanked the doctors and the nurses as they left in silence. It was no longer necessary to stay here at The Armory. No survivors, on that awful day, were expected to arrive.

Weeks later The Armory had the great honor to lend our huge American flag, one of the largest in New York, to the memorial ceremony at Yankee Stadium. The flag was spread out magnificently in the outfield as the dramatic ceremony commenced, the sight of which reached millions across the country on network television. But there is more to that flag. Since The Armory reopened in 1993 more than a million high school students and track & field athletes had stood facing our unbroken powerful symbol of unity and sung quietly to themselves the national anthem of the United States of America.