120 Liberty Street

I went on a field trip to the World Trade Center Tribute Center at 120 Liberty Street the other day. We went on a walking tour around ground zero and an audio tour with sixteen personal stories of people who experienced the September 11th attacks in some way.

I honestly don’t understand how people can work there. Being there for a few hours alone was too intense for me.  The people that work there, like John Henderson – who gave us our tour – spend whole days surrounded by reminders of the tragedy. They have a twisted I-beam from one of the towers, a charred piece of an airplane window, and – perhaps most moving – a wall reproducing the many flyers people put up searching for loved ones following 9/11.



John got involved in May of 2009 when he saw a piece on the Tribute Center on NY1. His wife was working six blocks south of the Twin Towers at the time of the attack.

I wonder if, after working there for a long time, that emotional response to the place starts to fade – or maybe it gets even worse. There is a 4.5 hour video that constantly plays featuring the names of all 2,749 people that died that morning. There is also a wall of pictures that is on a constant rotation through the many images of victims.

The pictures, John said, are all the more moving because the people always look so happy – on vacation or in a tux – like most people in pictures. Every smiling face on the wall reminds you of the void that person left in the lives of the people that loved them.

I couldn’t believe that they are still working on identifying victims of 9/11. The last two I.D.’s happened two weeks ago, and only about half the bodies have been identified.

After the tour, we all talked about our experiences on 9/11. It was really interesting to go back to that morning in 8th grade, when I had no idea what the attacks meant or what was going to happen as a result. I realized that I hadn’t thought about that day in a very long time, and it made me respect people like John even more, people who spend their days thinking about what the rest of us may want to forget.