The View From There

By J.C. Vaughn

The view was breathtaking, staggering, humbling. It was awe-inspiring. There were those grimy, slimy hot days of summer when that view was seemingly the only thing that could make the city beautiful. There were the cool, crisp nights of autumn when that view was the only thing that could make the city more perfect.

Almost all of my personal photos of New York City were taken from the top of the World Trade Center. There was no place I identified more with New York or New Yorkers than standing in the shadow of those great glass and steel towers, except maybe on top of them. Whenever I took friends for their first trip to the city, I tried to make sure that we ended up there at night. It never failed to dazzle my friends, and it never failed to get to me.

They weren't, however, the greatest buildings ever built.

Older New Yorkers - and many younger ones, too - often lamented the way they didn't blend into the skyline. They didn't have the storied panache of The Empire State Building, which they replaced as the tallest office buildings in the world, nor did they have the stunning elegance of the Chrysler Building, still probably the capital of architectural style after 70 years in a world of fickle tastes and changing ideologies.

Our individual reactions to the buildings themselves, before the attacks, probably had something to do with when and how we first saw them. It's always been mostly understandable how those of us who grew up with the Empire State Building as the tallest didn't quite take to the Twin Towers. It's also been understandable how those of us who have grown up with the Twin Towers always being there never gave it much thought. They were the biggest things in New York, whattaya gonna do about it? For me, though, they were New York City. Everything good and bad, rolled into two. They were impersonal, intrusive and arrogant. They were bold and powerful and almost majestic. They were buildings from an era when architecture had no soul, but to be there in person was to see them as the hubs of activity, massive activity, the World Trade Center, emphasis on "Center."

Living in northern New Jersey for a couple of torturous years in the mid-70s, I had seen the Manhattan skyline and I'd been into the city several times. I didn't care for it. The first time I saw New York, though, really saw it, was from the cabin of the Goodyear Blimp Mayflower. We took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and flew out toward the city. We circled the Statue of Liberty and stared, stared, stared at those massive buildings. I don't think I've ever been the same since then.

Although I then lived in Texas, my regular trips to the city started when my friends Rob Miller and Ming-Na moved there after college in the mid-80s. Very quickly I became at home in the city and learned my way around.

In the '90s, the visits increased in frequency when I met my ex-fiancé, Rosina Ally, who also lived there. Through the comics, I met a lot of good folks there, including Billy Tucci, one of my best friends in this industry, so New York City became a very frequent destination for me. My perception of the skyline was delineated by those towers. Like lots of people, I was already at work when the first plane struck. My brother, Scott, a Major in the Air Force, called me and told me to find a television right away. A guy in Air Combat Command not prone to such statements calls you and tells you to find a TV right now; that gets you going. I couldn't comprehend what he said. It wouldn't be the last time that day I couldn't comprehend something.

I went downstairs from my office in Diamond International Galleries (where Gemstone Publishing's administration is headquartered) to our sister company, Diamond Comic Distributors.

With Sammi Cohen, Steve Geppi's executive assistant, I watched the sickening replays of the attacks. I started wondering about all of my friends and their families.

Rob commutes through the PATH station at WTC, I thought.

Ming's in California now, at least usually, but what if…

What about Rosina? It seems so trivial now, but we weren't even speaking at the time.

With a group of co-workers, I watched the huge volume of smoke and debris engulf the site. I doubt I was the first one in the room to realize it, but I was the first one to say it: "It's gone. It's not there. It's gone."

I had an idea of how much communications equipment was centered around the towers and logic told me that everyone else on the planet would be trying what I was trying, but I tried to call Rob. His office was about a half mile from what news people were calling "Ground Zero."

I tried to call. Not a prayer of getting through.

Rob commutes through the PATH station at WTC, I thought again.

Back up in the Gallery, John Snyder, Joe McGuckin and I watched in proverbial stunned silence. John had held a succession of important jobs in the Federal government prior to becoming President of Diamond International Galleries. There was no surprise when his phone started ringing like crazy.

The phones in New York were busy, out or just nothing, but I kept on trying to get Rob. I knew he could access his e-mail from both work and home, so I e-mailed. Other friends started calling me to find out if I knew about him. Some of them were crying and I couldn't blame them.

Even while I was trying to get a hold of him, I called Rosina. On the fifth or sixth time, I found her at her desk at NYU's Breast Imaging Center, part of one of their many medical facilities. Elsewhere the staff was preparing to receive the injured and the dead who would never arrive, but she was safe.

The other tower collapsed.

The Pentagon had been hit. I knew my brother had friends there.

A plane had crashed near my hometown of Pittsburgh.

We had two temps in that day and they left to get their kids from school.

I imagined my Aunt Beth, who worked at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, and my Dad, who works at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, would both be doing whatever they could, even if that meant just being frustrated that they couldn't do anything.

All flights were grounded. Folks speculated that the one near Pittsburgh might have been shot down by our own Air Force. Even in the shock of that day, I remember distinctly how no one reacted like that was a bad thing if that was indeed what happened.

We watched and watched the video replays, the different angles, the ruthless efficiency of the destruction. I would periodically walk away from the TV because I couldn't take it non-stop, but I was drawn back time and again.

On one of the moments away from the coverage I went to the phone and called John's son, the artist John Snyder III, who is another good friend from the comics business. On even a moderately clear day, he can walk a few hundred feet from his front door in Alexandria, Virginia and see the capitol's dome in Washington, D.C. That day, when he stepped outside, he could smell the fire at the Pentagon.

We talked briefly about the people we'd been able to check in with and those we hadn't heard from. The comics industry is like a big dysfunctional family and you're generally never more than one or two people removed from anyone else in the business. I started thinking about Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada, and how they had always portrayed firemen as heroes. I suspected they knew some of the lost guys, and this was the first inkling I had that comics would help in the response to the attacks. Later on, when I reflected on it again, I knew Billy would do something, too.

An e-mail from Rob came in around 4:00 PM. He was safe. He had been at work early, so he wasn't in the station when the buildings were hit. On a normal day, who knows? I let our many friends know via phone and e-mail.

How many stories were there like this? Through friends I heard that Joe Rybandt, who used to work with us at Gemstone, was in the WTC station on a PATH train that then backed out of the station and over to New Jersey.

There are a lot of truisms, many insights and even a number of clichés that came out of the attacks of September 11.

Here's my take on the world of today:

No one got out of this unscathed, but I didn't lose anyone. Anyone who considers themselves untouched by these events is someone I don't want to know.

Make sure the people you care about know how you feel about them.

Some things that seemed like big deals before and don't seem that way now never really were big deals. A little moderation in our reactions to others was probably long overdue.

Most firemen and cops are quiet heroes every day. A lot of other people are, too.

Most of us don't really have too many problems.

A lot of people who have never been to New York (and some who still have no intention of ever going there) became New Yorkers that day.

The United States of America was never as fragmented as it appeared to be, but it became a whole lot closer than many of us ever imagined.

Despite a contentious, bitter election, if there was ever an administration with the résumé for dealing with these attacks and their aftermath, it is the one in place right now.

We, as a nation, can still surprise ourselves with the level of resolve we posses.

The New Yorker who said we should put the monument to the victims on the 200th floor of the new World Trade Center made me smile the first time I heard the comment and every time since. That just seems like something a New Yorker would say, and I'm with him.

And finally, whenever you're someplace interesting, somewhere that really does something for you, take a few minutes and enjoy the view. It might not always be there.

J.C. Vaughn is the executive editor of Gemstone Publishing. He wrote Shi: Akai for Billy Tucci and is presently at work on a new Shi series from Crusade and Avatar. He is also the creator of the comics McCandless & Company and Twenty-First Century Romances, both published by Mandalay Books.

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