PASCACK VALLEY AREA, BERGEN COUNTY—We swore we would never forget. Two and a half decades have passed since the day that forever changed the course of life for countless individuals. Parents lost their children; husbands and wives lost spouses; aunt, uncles, cousins, friends, were all lost by loved ones. With each passing year since that beautiful, blue-skied late-summer morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the 2,977 individuals who perished at the hands of terrorists are at risk of being lost again.
Except now, they are being lost to time.
You see, you can’t forget something you don’t remember happening, something for which you may not yet have even been alive to witness. As schoolchildren, we are taught about all of the pivotal moments in our nation’s history; the good, the bad, and the ugly. We are schooled on all of these things based on the recollections of others, records that were kept, and research that was conducted over time.
As founding editor of Pascack Press, the terrorist c of Sept. 11, 2001, happened during my tenure. It was the biggest event to ever have happened in my then 26-year-old life. While I was only thinking in the short-term at that point, I knew that, as editor, it was up to me to bring a record of how the events of 9/11 affected the residents in our coverage area.
Every year for the past two decades, in the few days leading up to the anniversary of 9/11, I begin to feel a somberness come over me. I pull out my old Pascack Press newspapers and photographs from that period in time and I re-read everything that we published during the weeks following the deadliest attack on our nation’s soil. I’ve done this for 20 years now, and every single time, the feelings behind the words I wrote at that time come rushing back.
The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, began for me like any other Tuesday. I wrapped up my weekly meeting of the Westwood Rotary Club at Romanza in River Vale and slid behind the wheel of my car. Before driving away, I fiddled with the radio, landing on 92.3 K-ROCK. It was just about the 9 o’clock hour and Howard Stern was still on the airwaves, uttering something about flying a plane into the World Trade Center.
Not in the mood for his nonsense, I was about to change the channel when I realized that his voice had a note of seriousness that it was typically lacking when he said something to the effect of, “turn it up,” directing his sidekick to turn up a television in the studio. It was then that I realized that something had happened. Minutes earlier, at 8:46 a.m., an airplane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. As I began to pay closer attention, I heard him say another plane had crashed into the second tower.
It was at that moment I knew that this was no accident. One plane hits a tower, sure. But two? No way. This was deliberate. We were under attack.
I sped to my mother’s house in Hillsdale, where I burst in the front door and called out to her.
“Jul, did you hear what happened?” she said from the kitchen. I found her sitting at the table, numb. We sat together, our eyes fixed on her small TV, trying to absorb exactly what was happening. Thousands of pieces of paper, like confetti, fluttered through the air surrounding the Twin Towers, both of which blazed with fire. Pieces of debris and other things were raining down from the towering skyscrapers — things which we suddenly realized were people, actual human beings, jumping from the upper levels of the towers in a desperate attempt to escape the hell that was unfolding right before our eyes on live television. It wasn’t long before we watch in pure horror as the towers began to crumble.
There are some things you just don’t — can’t — forget. The horror of those images and thousands upon thousands of others from Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, fall into the can’t category.
In the wake of the attack, I drove around the Pascack Valley, taking pictures of shows of patriotism, going to candlelight vigils, meeting with folks who were in the city that day, interviewing families who lost loved ones, and attending memorial services for individuals who had died. I was documenting what would become a time capsule of black and white newsprint for future generations to read and from which to learn about how their small communities in the suburbs across the Hudson River from Manhattan had been affected by the events of that tragic day.
One of the most meaningful things I did at the time, however, came two days after the towers collapsed, on Sept. 13. My Pascack Press colleague George Harcher and I decided to take a PATH train from Hoboken into the city and make our way to Ground Zero. What was happening across the river was big, and it was directly affecting our readers — our families, friends, and neighbors. We had to get into the city to see for ourselves what was unfolding so as to bring a clear picture to our readers.
It’s one thing to see images in a newspaper or magazine or on television. To witness the live version of those images with your own eyes is truly next level.
For example, you can read all the books and watch all the movies you want about war but unless you’ve been to war yourself, you can never truly grasp the reality of what is happening.
Having gaped up at the Twin Towers through an open sunroof and from the window of my friend’s small plane on a New York City sightseeing route along the Hudson, I knew just how impressive the towers were because I’d seen them up close with my own eyes more times than I could ever count. It’s impossible to fully appreciate how massive they were just by looking at pictures — or just how altered their collapse had left the NYC skyline.
When we got as close as we could to the wreckage of Ground Zero, the magnitude of what had happened really started to sink in. Devastation and destruction surrounded us in the form of crushed police cars, the haze that hid the tops of skyscrapers like a dense fog, and piles of debris strewn about the sidewalks, roadways, and pretty much all over. Messages of patriotic pride and defiance in the face of evil, such as “U.S.A.” and “my will stands steadfast” were scrawled on windows and car hoods in the thick dust that coated literally everything, everywhere. I shudder to think about what comprised all of that dust and ash and debris.
All the while, I was snapping away with my camera, creating what would become part of a recorded history of what was, and still is, the biggest historical event to happen in my lifetime and a record that would share this history with future generations.
I am honored to have been invited to return to Pascack Press as a guest editor to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and to share some of my photos (much more online) and memories from that period of time with a new generation.
We swore we’d never forget. I know I never will.
About the author: Juliana (Hendriks) Demarest was the founding editor of Pascack Press in 1997 and led the newspaper until 2009, including during the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath. In 2010, she and her husband, PJ, moved west with their two children to the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe.