He Was There.. 9-11-01 (please read caption)

My father (as shown to the left) is a Police Officer with the NYPD for 24 years now. On 9-11-01 he like many others were summoned to respond to the attack in Do...
Read more

My father (as shown to the left) is a Police Officer with the NYPD for 24 years now. On 9-11-01 he like many others were summoned to respond to the attack in Downtown Manhattan. He has not returned to the site since then. We were Downtown a few days ago and i walked down past the trade center as i have many times. However this time my father was with me. As we walked closer my father stopped. He began to get nervous and looked about. I was still in grade school when the attack occurred. He explained to me that he was standing in that exact spot when he first arrived on scene. He stated that at that point in time every responder there was terrified and expected more planes to fly into the area and none of them believed they would make it through the night. He then told me as we walked past the new Freedom Tower that in this entire area they were standing hip deep in debris... or so they thought. After a short amount of time they realized that they were all standing hip deep in human flesh and body remnants. He looked to his right and saw a pocket book, a pocket book that was still being held by a severed arm. He then began to get nervous and it almost looked like my father was experiencing PTSD. I asked my father if he wanted to take a different block to our destination and he said that he would face his fears and it was better that i was with him. He told me how he never thought he was going to see us again. He explained to me that no one in a million years thought that the buildings were going to come down and that when they did not a soul in that city new what to do or how to handle it. Most of my generation only know what the world is when it is at war, however soldiers of this time had never experienced anything like this before. My father as "The Senior Guy" on the job was sought to for help and advice. My father had no better response than any other but he had explained how soldiers were coming up to his group of officers crying and asking them what to do. My father as the old and senior man on the job was just as inexperienced in this new found world of terrorism as anyone else was. Soldiers like the other responders were crying with no clue what to do. He spent 6 months down there with the rest of the responders. Sleeping in churches between shifts hoping they would find their buddies, their family members. My father doesn't speak much of those times. Like many in such a situation, they hide it. Each 9-11 we have televised memorials here in NY. Most television channels replay footage and documentaries. For my father like most these act as triggers. They disappear to a locked room or bathroom where they can let it out and deal with the horrific memories they cannot escape. My father would probably kill me for sharing his story with the world as a man is to keep his business to himself. However i believe there is very intense meaning to his story. After this picture was taken of my father taking in what they had done with Ground Zero we left. About a block away i asked if he was okay and he said that he could have gone another 14 years without coming back. Here in NY we have very mixed feelings in regards to the Memorial. The Freedom Tower was inevitable and does stand for moving on. It shows the world that we cannot be beaten, when you knock us down we will rise again larger then before. However Ground Zero is a mass Grave site. It is hollow ground and should not be a tourist attraction. We here in NY still hurt, still remember what happened here in our home. We truly will never forget.. but we never should have remembered with an open public photo shoot location. While there someone placed a rose upon their family members name engraved in the memorial.. moments after tourist rushed in to capture the moment that a loved one shared with another. If you were at a cemetery visiting a loved one, would you want to be surrounded by the tourist paparazzi? We all lost loved ones in the attack, for us it was Best friends, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins. Here in NYC we will never forget our stories even though some wish they could...
Read less