For most people, today is Monday, a day to remember the fun of the past weekend and get on to the workweek ahead. But for New Yorkers who were in the city 22 years ago, today is another marker on the calendar of a grim anniversary few remember to note: 9/11.
Memory is a difficult thing. For the internet, memory is even more complicated. In the days following the attacks on the world trade center, a hole was pierced in New York’s heart, as thousands of families descended on the New York armory (which had been established as a makeshift recovery center) with questions as to where their loved ones were. I tried to document the thousands of flyers posted there in a Quicktime VR film (an early technology for doing 360 panorama).
This year, as I was updating the backend of my site to make sure digital archives were still available to all, I came upon that file… and could not play it on a modern computer. It may well be that there is only one person in the world beyond me that will ever take a look at it but I swore to myself that I would “never forget” as we had all promised the world. So I set on a journey to restore the content of that file. And thanks to the help of countless friends, I was able to extract a version of it (not the panorama it presented but enough to get a sense of enormity we all faced. Here it is again
I would encourage you to click on the picture and zoom in. Every little 8.5*11 square on there is a flyer looking for someone who is missing. To give you a sense of scale, this building, the 69th Regiment Armory, is a city block (about 260 feet or 80 meters) long. You are looking at roughly 2,000 flyers. Each one is the story of an individual who was lost on that day. Each one is a cry for help from a family broken on that day.
The content is simple: a name, a picture, some more details to indentify the person, and contact info. And, for the vast majority, each one was met with silence, as that spot at the family table remained empty.
So in the hubbub of the new week, please take a minute to pause, think about the people you love, and hug them a little more, as time with loved ones is a fleeting thing, and you never know when it might be the last.
And for those of you who are putting content on the internet, please make sure you keep it live as long as possible. You are documenting the structure of history and never know when someone may need that post you made. A few years ago, a family member from one of the friends I memorialize with those posts wrote to me. She thanked me for keeping the memory of her family member on the internet. We had never talked before, and haven’t really chatted much since but she, and all the families of my friends are in my thoughts today. I hope they are all OK.
In Memoriam
Carlos Dominguez, Mark Ellis, Melissa Vincent, Michael DiPasquale, Cynthia Giugliano, Jeremy Glick, David Halderman, Steve Weinberg, Gerard Jean Baptiste, Tom McCann, David Vera.
This post is part of a continuing series in which I remember those I knew who were lost on that day. Here are the previous years:
- 2022, 2021, 2020
- 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010
- 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002
For context, you might want to read The day after, which is about as raw as one can get about that day as I wrote that piece less than 36 hours after the first plane hit. This is the longest series I’ve ever written and I expect to continue yearly until I can no longer write.