I had flown from Milan to SF via JFK on a red eye hours before the attack happened. I'm a native NYer and lamented not being able to spend a few days there. I got home in the wee hours so I called and left a voicemail for my boss that I would be in late to get some sleep. I got a couple of hours sleep and turned on the TV. It took me quite a while to wrap my head around what was happening. It seemed utterly IMPOSSIBLE that FOUR jets where hijacked and two crashed into MY CITY? When I finally realized, I called my family to let them know I was home and safe.
I got a chance to go to NY at the end of Oct that same year. We went down to ground zero on our way to the airport to go home. I had a friend that lived the American dream. He immigrated from Italy and worked at my favorite restaurant as a bus boy. Every year we'd make our annual business trip to NY and dine there. We watched him work his way up to maitre'd then he disappeared. We were told he had opened a restaurant of his own but no details. As we walked around the area around ground zero, we saw a restaurant called Rocko's...my friends name! Could it be? It was closed and still had inches of soot and dust on everything. We peered thru the window and who did we see? ROCKO! He opened the door for us and poured us some wine and told us how lucky he was to be alive and his place standing..dirty but standing. He was prouder than ever to be an American. It gave me renewed hope that there is goodness in this world.
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