<First of all. Shannen used to work with UUNet in Hilliard, OH, and more happily, she used to work with me in network software. She has since moved on to bigger, if not better, things in California.

Below is an email I just received from her. I have since responded that what Mr. W. Lance Hunt has placed in email needs to find hard print in a world acclaimed news publication.

I find it breathtaking, to say the least...

Here is part 1 of 3:

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This was written by a friend of my boss's. It's quite long and it was not until today that I finally was able to get to the end. It's extremely well written and worth the time to try and make it to the end. If you have to start skimming, do so, just so you can read it all.

Shan-

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin X. XXXXXXXX
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 8:19 PM
To: Kevin's People
Subject: My friend writes of his New York experience

I have a good friend, W. Lance Hunt, who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan. I asked him to send me a quick email to let me know he was OK and then regale me with his stories when he had the time. Here is his account of his experiences on 11 September. I thought it was a brilliant read and well worth passing on.

Some of the punctuation came through as odd characters - the result of his Mac talking to my PC - so I did a small amount of editing. But I tried to leave it alone as much as possible - and 99.9% of the following is all Lance's.

Life perseveres.

-- Kevin

Subject: My day yesterday
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 18:31:57 EDT
From: W. Lance Hunt
To: Kevin X. XXXXXXXX

Here is the narrative of my day yesterday. Regale? Well. You be the judge.

I am almost embarrassed to write this. It is almost dramatic, almost a narrow escape, almost important. But, it is all I have, and is, will be in time, part of the fabric that will weave the cloth September 11, 2001.

The day was glorious, fine cool weather clear skies. I had over slept, having talked to a friend until almost 1 am. I rushed to leave my apartment, grumbling to myself about not having enough time to fix my lunch, peeved that I would have to pay too much at a deli. But, I reminded myself, as I speed-walked to the 59th Street stop, that it really wasn't that big of a deal, and that I had something good to read, and several symphonies on CD I was going to listen to at work, to brighten my otherwise drab routine.

Waiting for the N train, I discovered I had already read this issue of Global City Review that was in my hands to keep my company on my subway ride. This irked me. I mean, how could I have mixed this up. I'm more organized than this, have all my books to read lined up in order so I can anticipate reading them. Just stupid. At Dekalb Ave. We were told there was smoke at the Courtland World Trade Center stop, and that the train would be skipping that station. That's fine, as I get off two stops before that, and was flipping through my magazine to find something I had not read yet, thinking, if I had only known, I would have grabbed "War and Peace," which I had put down several months earlier for being just too much right then.

I left the train at Whitehall, and on the platform passed the usual stream of office workers heading south as I walked north, glancing at the clock. It was just about 9, so I would only be a few minutes late. Nothing to worry about. But, it still annoyed me that I had over slept. No lunch. And a magazine I had already read. And, I needed cat food. I can't forget that. They deserve Hill's Science Diet, not just Alley Cat or Friskies.

I topped the stairs, and looked up.

This was the Canyon of Heroes, all tall buildings and narrow streets, where we celebrate great things, our victorious troops from Europe and Asia, Neil Armstrong, the Yankees. The narrow slice of sky I saw was not the clear perfect blue of Brooklyn, but was filled with a column of smoke that glinted like pieces of broken glass on a beach.

People around just stood and stared.

This vexed me I was going to be late for work and after all, hadn't all these rubberneckers ever seen a fire before? With an annoyed face I pushed my way through, passed the incense, fruit, coffee, and belt and tie vendors.

Then I heard: "It was a plane"

Excuse me.

"two"

What?

"terrorists"

I walked around Bowling Green park, unsure what to think, feeling a growing sickness deep in my gut.

I run into Rance, a co-worker at the door of my building, 11 Broadway, just south of the famous Bronze sculpture of the Wall Street Bull.

"You couldn't believe it. When the plane hit you could feel the heat. It was more spectacular than any movie...."

Still, I was not sure what had happened. Terrorist? An accident? One plane? Two? All I was sure of was the smoke and fear surrounding me. I rode the elevator up to the 11th floor in silence, listening to two men talk about the two planes. How it had to be terrorists. Had to be. Had to be.

Walking into my office, everyone is scurrying around. Randi is visibly shaking. "I know people who work there. Oh, my god."

Yael, followed quickly by Eran, my CEO, tells everyone to leave.

Having just sat down, I grab my bags and head out to the hall.

The elevators no longer work.

I walk down the 11 flights of stairs.

Out front, there are people walking around, uncertain, worried, harried.

"the pentagon got hit"

"he's promised this is just the beginning"

"Chicago"

"LA"

I'm dubious. It seemed too big. Too, unreal. I ask Yael, our office manager, if the day was over for us, and after being told it was I took off walking. The subways were closed, so I knew I had to find a way home. Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge? Grab the Brooklyn Ferry, which stops only a few blocks from my new home there? I decide that I will go to Strand Books, and see if I can find that copy of "Time and Freewill" by Henri Bergen I've been looking for over the last three weeks. I cross in front of the Bull, and have made it almost to the other side of Broadway at Beaver Street when I stop. For some reason, I refuse to listen to myself. I knew I had to leave, but instead I turned back. Why? Some sense that this was all just absurd? That I was here to do work, and this wasn't going to stop me? I need to be around someone, anyone, I knew? Just not to be completely alone with my thoughts?

I stood for a few minutes with my coworkers, with Yael, Vidya, Rance, and Candice in front of my building. Then, we decided to walk around my building right at the end of Broadway and look at the Twin Towers from over top of the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

Against a perfectly clear, light blue sky with a light refreshing breeze in my face, stood the towers. Beautifully white, reaching up to the sky, strongly, symbols of what mankind can achieve if it wills.

In both buildings black gashes poured out smoke. Behind the skin of the walls, flames leapt and danced as if to "Night on Bald Mountain." Yet, everything else still seemed normal. The sky, the buildings around us, the trees behind us in Battery Park, the tree I leaned against to watch these two buildings burn like just lit matches standing from a book-of-matches.

Papers wafted out, floated above the Manhattan skyline. Occasionally, things fell from the building. It seemed as though this was it. We all just looked up, and watched, not truly believing it, but having, there, in front of us, evidence that it was so.

"do you think they'll collapse?"

Nah. Hell, a B-17 hit the empire state building back in the forties. Nothing happened. And, these planes, what Cessnas? A leer jet? Nah.

And, just think, we trained these people to do this.

The lady in front of me turns, and agrees, her words thick with an eastern European accent.

I notice that everyone I knew has left me there propped against the tree. And, I keep rolling through my mind how foolish we all are, we humans. All of us. This great folly. Playing king maker in foreign lands...grabbing power...stupidity...stupidity...

Just then Beethoven entered me. A phrase from his 5th symphony, at the start of the 4th movement, the scherzo.

Yael walks over to me. It seems the worst is over, and we can now go back. At least to make calls to friends and family, to see what the internet can tell us of this, which rumors are just that rumors, which are truth.

The elevators are all shut off but one. Yael and I ride up, just shaking our heads. What is to be said?

There are a few of us in the office. I sit back down in my chair, and just turned my computer on.

Then, I felt it. A deep, strong rumbling. The building shuddered. In my gut, the rumbling continued after it had stopped around me. The lights flickered. Computer shut off before it had finished starting.