Mandy Nagy on “Remembering September 11th and the importance of loved ones and endurance”
Mandy’s 2013 post is particularly poignant in light of later events: “September 11th taught me the importance of family and loved ones in our lives, as well as the compassion of those we may not know, and that we can never, ever take life for granted….”
In 2013, our then-Editor Mandy Nagy wrote one of the best posts on 9/11. Considering what would happen to her a year later, the post was particularly poignant.
Here is the post, excerpted, click on the link for the full original post:
Remembering September 11th and the importance of loved ones and endurance
Posted by Mandy Nagy Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at 9:30am
The morning of September 11th, 2001, I was sitting in my office at a prior job, admiring the beautiful blue sky outside my window, when my phone rang.
“I can’t reach your brother anymore. His phone cut off. He was running and his phone just died,” my mother cried on the other end.
For a moment, I had no idea why she was upset or what she was talking about. But then another line rang and a friend’s voice, equally upset, screamed to me, “They’re flying planes into buildings where your brother is.”
I sat stunned for a minute, paralyzed with fear and dread. I opened my office door and there was an eerie feeling in the air. It was noisy, yet quiet and somber at the same time….
My brother worked for a Wall Street brokerage firm at the time, just steps away from the World Trade Center. By now, my mom had explained to me that she’d been on the phone with him while he’d been running from his building. He’d called her, absolutely frantic, trying to tell her that planes had hit the Twin Towers and he was trying to escape the area. He was describing an absolutely horrific scene of destruction and death as my mom cried on the other end. And then the phone went dead….
I drove straight to my mother’s house, where the whole family gathered and waited to hear from my brother again, not knowing if he was safe. Every few minutes, the phone would ring and it would be a family member or friend, checking to see if he had made it out and home safely….
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that we’d finally heard back from him. He’d borrowed the phone of a stranger and was able to get the call through to let us know he’d made it across the Brooklyn Bridge by foot and could hitch a ride to an exit on a nearby highway, where I had later picked him up myself.
We all spent the night together at my parents’ house, thankful to know that my brother was safe, but heartbroken about what our country was enduring.
My mother still has that stranger’s phone number written down and saved on a piece of paper.
September 11th taught me the importance of family and loved ones in our lives, as well as the compassion of those we may not know, and that we can never, ever take life for granted….
I’m hoping to be able to update everyone soon on Mandy’s condition.
Some of our recent 9/11 anniversary posts:
9/11: Remembering Thomas and Peter Langone, Roslyn, NY
9/11 – Remembering Firefighter Danny Suhr, killed by a falling body
Wife Shares Final Conversation With Her Husband Who Died in the 9/11 Attacks
IDF Veteran Danny Lewin, the first person killed on 9/11/2001
September 11, 2001 – 8:46 a.m. Eastern
9/11 +13
9/11/01 and Memory
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Comments
I feel that this is a somewhat special anniversary of September 11th, it’s the 18th one. An entire generation of Americans who were born on or slightly before that date have now grown up and reached legal adulthood. In light of that I think it’s important to think about what we’ve done as a nation to try and help ensure that this generation does not have to go through such a horror again and what we can still do to help limit islamic terror from happening to them.
VictoryGirls blog mentioned this- that we all need to share with our children, grandchildren, our memories of 9/11 to be passed down. I suggest we all write those memories down. We all know where we were and what we were doing.
Never forget.
One of the three epic days of my life I will never forget: JFK assassination, 1969 moon landing, 9/11 attack. I spent that entire day wondering if any friends I worked with regularly in those towers fell victim.
Miraculously, despite of the 2,000 or so people employed there by my employer, not a single casualty. In fact, a majority of the people who died that day were rescuers who went in the building to help others get out. Networks were reporting a possible 30-40 thousand deaths were possible. As bad as that day was, it could have been so much worse.
Individual citizens of our great country remember that day. We as a nation, however, have largely forgotten. I long for the unity that we all had for the year or so following the attacks. Flags everywhere you looked, patriotic songs filled the airwaves and TV stations, everybody was a proud American—not some hyphenated American who only looks to one-up everybody else. Unfortunately, that kind of unity only comes through great tragedy. I hope and pray we don’t see that kind of tragedy again. I’m almost certain we’ll never see that kind of patriotism again…
Hope this anniversary of the horror of 9/11 finds Mandy well and continuing to improve.
May the light and love of God surround her and her family, and also the souls and families of the 9/11 victims, and may they all forever know the peace that passes all understanding.
I was just thinking of Mandy the other day, and was wondering how she was doing. Thank you for posting this, and please let Mandy know she is in our thoughts and prayers!!
a tragic day to be sure–to see those first-responders though, police/ems and so many others but especially the FDNY members overcome their personal shock and go up into those buildings to rescue innocent people–my god, if that sort of valor doesn’t bring tears to your eyes believe you aren’t human–and the media, doing what they’re supposed to do, INFORMING the country as events unfolded–no white,black,brown,hyphenated or otherwise divisive nonsense just extraordinary AMERICANS working together and trying to save their fellow countrymen
in the intervening years we had to suffer eight of them listening to a narcissist of the first order lecturing us nonstop from his bullypulpit on pennsylvania avenue about how america was broken, was flawed, was worse than many third-world nations in fact and about how we had failed as a country
bullshit–all it takes is a cursory tour through the video and photographic archive of 9/11 to see what americans are, what we are made of, what we can do in adversity to help our fellows–we are indeed a great nation and the american spirit and ideal are truly the hope of the world
I was actually in the air during the time of the attacks [flying from Albany to Harrisburg]. We landed in Harrisburg just before 10 am and the pilot came on the intercom to announce there would be no further flights that day, but he never said why.
The photo at the top of the article has a nightmarish quality to it.
NPR’s 2019 tribute to 911?
Five minutes hate from their resident atheist recalling xis conversion to Maoist-Stalinist humanism. Xis harrowing nihilistic trail to Superior Thought. A tale of True Woe. So very superior in the retelling.
See, according to His Superiorness the rubes got taken in by The Flying Spaghetti Monster aka Fairy-tale Jew-Jesus. He actually said that last bit about fairy tale Jesus on air.
If you have the chance please tell Mandy that a lot of people who never met her in person developed a great affection for her.
There’s a school district in New Jersey who no longer mentions the 9/11 twin towers attack to their children because they say, “It’s no longer pertinent.”
The left would just like us to believe, “Some people did some things”.
Also reminded of Mandy’s absence here, something I looked forward to but it never came to pass. Liberty Chick will always be in my thoughts. God Bless her today also.