9/11

A deputy commissioner in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's office, Bradford Billet of East Hampton helped oversee a program to locate people who had been injured, killed, or had gone missing after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in Manhattan. "At one point we had a list of over 20,000 missing people that we had to pare down," he said. "We had a solemn obligation to give the families closure."

During and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people relied on newspapers, broadcast news, editorials, and documentary films to deepen their understanding of what was happening. Adults were living the reality of what is now a lesson learned by children in schools, where age-appropriate textbooks, worksheets, assignments, and classroom discussions are underscored by the teachers' own experiences and sensitivity.

Heading into New York City to assist the New York Police Department in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with an East Hampton Town and Village emergency service unit team, it was all quite surreal, from the quiet almost empty roadways on the drive in to the moment we crested an elevated portion of the Long Island Expressway in Queens where you would normally see the Twin Towers on the skyline, but instead there was just this cloud of dust hanging in the air where the towers used to stand.

Anyone who was on the South Fork on Sept. 11, 2001, and old enough to remember the events of the day will likely start by recounting how perfectly it had begun: the weather dry and cool, the sky a brilliant blue, the surf as good as it gets. It was a perfection made all the more remarkable by what would follow at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. 

Memorial ceremonies are planned in Southampton, Riverhead, and East Hampton. And on Tuesday, F.D.N.Y. companies will begin a five-day memorial bike ride in Montauk.

It is too big, too awful, too otherworldly to comprehend without being surrounded by it. Standing at Ground Zero, breathing the mingled rot of burning chemicals, cooked plastics, and the unspeakable, I realize why it will take months if not years before we can begin to rebuild.

Every day since terror found its targets in New York and Washington and was intercepted by heroism in Pennsylvania, worship services here have drawn hundreds of people, some in business dress, some in beach sandals, parents carrying infants, a few elderly in wheelchairs, and almost all with tears welling.

The gate in the high fence that surrounds the Montauk Coast Guard Station was shut tight on Tuesday morning -- the station's people and the crew of the 87-foot cutter Ridley on high alert like all of this nation's military. Without radio and television, the closed fence would have been about the only indication that something terrible had happened 118 miles to the west.