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Dealing with 9/11: Then and Now

I wasn’t in New York City the day the Twin Towers fell. I know many people who were, and they have the scars and stories to show for it. My 9/11 experiences are not heroic or even all that dramatic. But they are case studies in personal growth.

It was a terrible day, but I’d like to think we all learned something positive about how to live in the aftermath. This is simply my personal measuring stick.

“Sept. 11, 2001”
Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001. This post is my own account.

“Songs That Mattered After 9-11-01”
Like so many other times in my life, music made the difference between sanity and insanity. I focus a lot on the metal. But in the weeks after 9/11, I turned to a broader group of musicians to help me along. They did their jobs well, helping us all see that it was OK to go on living.

“Flying on September 11”
One of my biggest moments of shame came a week after September 11, 2001, when I scrubbed a planned trip to Arizona for a relative’s wedding. I was terrified to get on an airplane and fear won out. Not only did I miss an important day in a loved one’s life, I also deprived my wife of the same thing. I didn’t want her flying, either.

“TV News and Depression: How I Learned To Turn It Off”
I find myself increasingly outraged at what I see on the TV news channels. I’m not talking about the news itself, but the way it’s presented with loud graphics, dramatic music and louder newscasters. Those feelings started on 9/11.

“9/11 Lessons: We Rise Again”
As we take time to remember those we lost on 9/11, let’s also remember what we’ve held onto.

“I Didn’t Know Danny Lewin, But I’m Grateful for Him”
As an Akamai Technologies employee, I practically inhaled Molly Knight Raskin’s book, No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet. It’s a spectacular look at the history of the company and the experience of losing Lewin on 9/11.

“A 9-11 Obsession”
It happens every time the calendar rolls into September. I start watching documentaries about 9/11 and can’t stop.

“9-11-01 Jumpers: A Suicidal Mystery”
I remember the photo well: a man falling to his death in a zen-like pose that haunted me for a long, long time. It haunted us all.

Sept. 11, with the twin towers as the 11

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I Didn’t Know Danny Lewin, But I’m Grateful For Him

As an Akamai Technologies employee, I practically inhaled Molly Knight Raskin’s book, “No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet.” It’s a spectacular look at the history of the company, and it captures the Danny Lewin I’ve heard about from colleagues who knew him.

Mood music:

I was laboring unhappily at a newspaper on Sept. 11, 2001, when Lewin died aboard American Airlines Flight 11. It’s largely believed he was the first victim of that day, stabbed while trying to stop the terrorists from hijacking the plane.

Back at Akamai, as the surge in online traffic threatened to grind the Internet to a halt, Danny’s colleagues worked feverishly to keep the web from crashing. They succeeded, and it’s one of the many inspiring stories to come out of that horrible day.

At its core, the book is the story of Lewin’s friendship with Tom Leighton, which took root at MIT. Lewin was a mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would be used at Akamai to create a faster, more stable Internet. Leighton was his soft-spoken professor and mentor. Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Leighton, who is now Akamai’s CEO. You can listen to the interview here.

But the thing I most identify with is Lewin’s restless, relentless personality. He was loud and pushed his goals with the speed and power of a freight train. I’m pretty useless when it comes to mathematics and code writing. But I identify with that drive. It’s one of the byproducts of my OCD — sometimes a curse, many times a blessing that has helped me achieve success in my own profession. There’s no record of Lewin having OCD. He was shaped by a history much different from mine.

He served for four years in the Israel Defense Forces as an officer in Sayeret Matkal, a unit dedicated to fighting terrorists. He had unlimited energy that kept him going with little sleep. He was a devoted husband and father.

He was also loud and could be ridiculously demanding of people, something I relate to.

Learning about him has been a pleasure. His story inspires me to work harder and take nothing for granted. I’m grateful for that.

There’s a cool footnote to this story: Danny’s remains were identified in 2004 and buried in Sharon Memorial Park, a massive Jewish cemetery south of Boston. It happens to be where my brother is buried, along with both my maternal and paternal grandparents and my great-grandmother.

It’s just one more bond connecting me to a man I never met; a man who influences me all the same.

Lewin book

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9/11 Lessons: We Rise Again

As we take time to remember those we lost on Sept. 11, 2001, let’s also remember what we’ve held onto.

Mood music:

As the years have passed, I’ve found myself comparing the terrorist attacks to the personal demons we all deal with at various points in our lives.

Many of us have fears, regrets, dreams and nightmares. Like terrorists who threaten to blow up buildings and people, our personal demons threaten to destroy us. But as I’ve learned from my own experiences, we don’t have to let the evil win.

One thing that has inspired me since 9/11 is the way New Yorkers have gone on with their lives. I’ve been to Lower Manhattan many times and seen people doing so even as they walk past what we used to call Ground Zero. The first time I saw that I was angry, because people seemed to be passing hallowed ground without a care in the world. I’ve since come to see it as a sign of strength.

Terrorists can destroy buildings and take lives. But they can’t keep us down for long.

The WTC site now includes a museum commemorating that terrible day, as well as a memorial built around the footprints of the Twin Towers. There’s also 1 WTC, which is now the tallest building in America. I’ve seen it at various stages of construction.

Bill Brenner at 1 World Trade Center

I see it as a symbol of how we manage to face our adversity and rise up.

For years after 9/11, I was terrified of flying. I eventually got back on planes, and today I love to fly. A couple years ago, I even took a flight on 9/11.

I rose.

Before my current job, I worked for Akamai, a company co-founded by Danny Lewin, who died that day aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the plane that struck the North Tower of the WTC. The company was struggling at the time of his death, caught up in the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. He always said the company would make it because its people are “tenacious as hell.”

He was right. His company ultimately rose from the depths and is a powerhouse today. Many entities and individuals have risen in similar fashion.

We rise after awful events like 9/11. We rise after sickness, loss and the mental-physical maladies that threaten to ruin us. Not everyone makes it. But enough do to fill me with a hope that will never dim.

Take time to remember the dead today. Watch some of the 9/11 documentaries on YouTube, because they’ll remind you that people who didn’t make it that day conducted themselves with honor and saved others.

Then rise up and carry on.

one world trade center aerial shot

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Making Sense of a 9/11 Obsession

It happens every time the calendar rolls into September. I start watching documentaries about 9/11 and can’t stop.

It’s as if an unseen force is controlling my actions. I go from one YouTube clip to the next.

Many people do this in the days leading up to the anniversary, but for me there’s the OCD element, where after I watch something I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll forget the rest of the world exists and just replay the scenes in my head over and over again.

Maybe it’s supposed to be this way. We need to remember what happened that day — the people we lost and those who distinguished themselves as heroes.

Or maybe I’m just making excuses for the part of me that can’t seem to look away.

Whatever the case may be, there’s at least one documentary I want to share with you: the Discovery Channel’s Inside the Twin Towers.

You can watch it all on YouTube in ten 10-minute clips. Here’s part one:

I think this documentary is important because you can learn a lot about the goodness man is capable of.

There’s a morbid aspect of the program where they show what it was probably like to be inside the towers as they collapsed. But this is mostly about people helping other people despite the risks to their own lives. You see a lot of strangers helping each other.

Once the haunting aspect of the documentary wears off, you’ll walk away feeling inspired.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll realize that you are capable of great things, of touching a lot of people, regardless of your own personal demons.

Events like 9/11 are full of evil and sorrow. But, as Mister Rogers said in a show he did right after the attacks, the helpers always come. Some are firefighters running up endless flights of stairs with 60 pounds of gear on their backs. And some are stock traders who, when put in a certain place at a certain time, did something they were always meant to do.

God has a plan, all right. Sometimes it involves awful events. But it’s a plan that sorts the boys from the men, the girls from the women, and the good souls from the selfish and indifferent souls.

If that’s the lesson I take from this annual obsession, so be it.

9/11 World Trade Center Memorial

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12 Years After 9/11: Six Grief Survival Suggestions

Like everyone else, 9/11 had a profound impact on me. I live in Massachusetts, the departure point for the two planes the terrorists hijacked and crashed into the WTC, and I work in the security community. Through those two worlds, I know many people who lost loved ones or were called into action that day.

Mood music: 

This isn’t about where I was and what I was doing that day. You can read that post here. This is about six lessons I’ve taken from my own experiences of losing loved ones. May it offer you some measure of peace, whether you’ve suffered from the impact of 9/11 or lost people under more natural circumstances.

  • Let it suck. Don’t be a hero. If you’re feeling the pain from losing your grandmother, let it out. You don’t have to do it in front of people. Go in a room by yourself and let the waterworks flow if you have to. Don’t worry about trying to keep a manly face around people. You don’t have to pretend you’re OK for the sake of others in the room.
  • Don’t forget the gratitude. When someone dies, it’s easy to get lost in your own grief. There’s even a self-pity reflex that kicks in. Try to take the time to remember how awesome your loved one was. Share the most amusing memories and have some laughs. You’ll feel more at peace when you remember a life that was lived well.
  • Take a moment to appreciate what’s still around you. Your girlfriend. Your friends. If death teaches you anything, it’s that you never know how long the other loves of your life will be around. Don’t waste the time you have with them.
  • Don’t worry yourself into an anxiety attack over possible loss. Yes, God could take your loved ones at any moment. He holds all the cards, so it’s pointless to even think about it. Just be there for people, and let them be there for you.
  • Take care of yourself. You can comfort yourself with all the drugs, alcohol, sex and food there is to have. But take it from me, giving in to addictions is nothing but slow suicide. You can’t move past grief and see the beauty of what’s left if you’re too busy trying to kill yourself. True, I learned a ton about the beauty of life from having been an addict, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever wish that experience on others. If there’s a better way to cope, do that instead.
  • Embrace things that are bigger than you. Nothing has helped me get past grief more than doing service to others. It sounds like so much bullshit, but it’s not. When I’m volunteering for my kids’ school and Scouting events or taking time to talk to people who have read this blog and have their own issues to sort through, I’m always reminded that my own life is so much better than I realize or deserve.

This isn’t a science. It’s just what I’ve picked up from my own walk through the valley of darkness. I’ve learned that Life is a gift to be cherished and used wisely. I’ve also learned that it hurts sometimes, but that’s OK.

9/11 Memorial

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The First Victim of 9/11

I’ve been studying up on Akamai Technologies’s history since starting work in the InfoSec department earlier this month. One of the coolest and most moving lessons has been a study of company co-founder Danny Lewin, who died aboard Flight 11 on 9/11 when terrorists drove it into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Mood music:

Lewin is actually considered the first casualty of that terrible day because he was killed during an attempt to stop the hijacking. I wrote about it in “InfoSec Central To Lewin’s Legacy” in the Akamai Blog. Check it out!

Thanks.

Daniel M. Lewin

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Life in a Place of Death

As regular readers know by now, I’ve been taking a class on how to keep my attention on the present. Saturday was an all-morning session that included a silent, hour-long walk through Oak Hill Cemetery in Newburyport, Mass. A lot of us tend to see cemeteries as a place of death. But I found a lot of life there, instead.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4s4S5JJGfqXGlNY6eQZWQB]

This wasn’t a new experience for me. There are three cemeteries within walking distance of my house, and I’ve walked through all of them. I tend to look at the date of death and consider the myriad ways the person passed. If it’s 1918, for example, I find myself wondering if he or she died in the Spanish Flu pandemic. If a veteran died in the vicinity of early June 1944, I ponder the likelihood that this person died in the carnage of D-Day during WW II.

In Oak Hill Cemetery, I was stopped in my tracks by a gravestone with the death date of Sept. 11, 2001. I looked up the name, Thomas Pecorelli, and learned that he was on American Airlines Flight 11, which terrorists flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. He was 30 when he died and was carrying the ultrasound image of his unborn child, headed home to his wife.

He lived a hell of a life. He was a cameraman with Fox Sports and E! Entertainment Television, the obituaries said.

Thieves stole his original gravestone, but a new one is in its place, complete with two benches and a garden with bird feeders.

There’s a lot of life to be found in these graveyards. But you might miss it if you jog through. You have to walk through slowly and silently.

If you have a mind that sometimes gets stuck on one obsessive thought or often drifts when someone is talking to you, the occasional cemetery stroll is worth working into your life.

Few things will get you out of your own head like a study of other people’s lives.

Now that I’ve learned something about giving my present attention to the dead, I’m eager for the next step: learning to give present awareness to the living.

Pecorelli Tombstone