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Great events, dastardly events even, live with us all but only in personal ways. People may ask “Do you remember what you were doing when you heard that JFK was assassinated ?” My answer would be no, I don’t because this teenager that sat up until 03:00 in the morning to hear the “Cuban Missiles Speech” was busy leading his own life at the time when JFK was gunned down in Dallas.

The fact is that 9/11 was a truly significant ‘event’ but perhaps sometimes, big stories can also be told via small personal ones. I can only recall it all through my own eyes and personal experiences and for what little it is worth, on this 7^th Anniversary, this is my story.

My Brother Michael

Michael was two years older than me and to a large extent, “My Hero”, he was very funny and direct. Whilst I was settling down rather early to a ‘married life’, Michael went on a ‘jolly’ to New York with a couple of mates. To this day I have all his scrawled letters from there, clearly he had fallen in love with the place, the sense of freedom and optimism too, I guess and I kind of knew that he wasn’t coming home again.

Eventually he met and married my Sister-In-Law Rosemary Maddelena and they started planning a life together. Unfortunately he intervened in a mugging, got stabbed and the wound never quite healed, he was diagnosed with a weird form of cancer that normally only effects children and after 4 years and much treatment, died in August 1978. Thanks to Freddie Laker and Skytrain, I got to spend time with him and on my last trip, took him back into Lennox Hill Hospital from which he never emerged.

Our last conversations together before I caught the flight home to the UK were based upon what we would do together, the next time I came, “The whole tourist bit, the Circle Line, Empire State…” and so on.

A ‘Pilgrimage’

On my visits to the Big Apple, for all the hoopla about what it is supposed to be, whether from strangers or people I was engaged with, I was always met with kindness. After Michael’s death I always intended to ‘go back’ but time passed I didn’t and perhaps thought vaguely that I would do my pilgrimage ‘one day’ with one or both of my sons.

However in 2000, I went to the States to live and work, some 90 miles West of Chicago my job to do a nationwide roll-out of new technology to various sites in the USA. As part of this I visited a number of “sample” business sites to talk to the people and gauge the degree of technical difficulty one of them was in New Jersey – called the New York Office. It so happened that I had my main Technical Expert over from the UK called Nick, as our visit was scheduled for the Monday/Tuesday, I asked him whether he fancied a weekend in New York.

Nick turned out to be the perfect companion and we had a fun time doing all the usual tourist stuff together. The picture below comes from the Circle Line Tour and is how I will remember the Twin Towers. Below that, Nick standing in the Plaza of the Twin Towers on the Sunday.

Now Another Thread to this Tale:

 The Eve of Wedding, two Sons, one Old Man !

My youngest son Michael married in Glasgow on Friday 7^th September 2001.

Happy Day in Glasgow…

By that time I had moved back to the UK and was living right next door to Heathrow Terminal 4 at a place called Bedfont. Their Honeymoon was to Singapore, Bali and Hong Kong and they were flying out on the morning of the 11^th via BA and Terminal 4 so they stayed with me overnight and I took them to the Airport before driving just a few miles down the road to Slough for some meetings.

Checking in at Heathrow…

I finished my meetings around 12:30 and as I was about to leave the site, my friend Nick saw me and said, “Some thing’s up, the Internet is down and over loaded.” I got in my car, turned the radio on and started to hear the early reports coming in, by the time I got home and turned the TV on, I saw the Towers coming down live, I was horrified and heartbroken.

Today is my Grand Daughter’s 17^th birthday and today we remember over 3,000 who died on this same day seven years ago.

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