Finding higher meaning in Sept. 11

I remember driving west on Park Avenue in Long Beach with my then 1 1/2-year-old daughter tucked in her car seat behind me. It was midday, and the sun shone so brightly. There was a break between the buildings, and through it I could peer toward the destruction.

A plume of white smoke billowed out of lower Manhattan in the distance. It was like a giant ribbon stretching to the heavens. “My God!” I said to myself. I realized nothing would ever be the same.

It was Sept. 11, 2001. Earlier, 19 hijackers had flown two airliners into the World Trade Center, and the twin towers had crashed to the ground, killing 3,000 people. I will never forget the moment that I first encountered that smoke line, marring an otherwise perfect azure sky.

My wife, at work as a middle school teacher, was released from her duties, and we met up on a side street in Lawrence. I could see the fear and horror in her eyes. We exchanged cars. We realized we had no cell service. I told her that everything would be OK. I wondered whether that was true.

My wife drove our daughter back to our Long Beach apartment, and I went to work. Soon afterward, I arrived at the Herald’s Lawrence office (which burned down in a freak accident three years later). From there I took dictation from reporters who had been dispatched to train stations along the Babylon and Far Rockaway branches of the Long Island Rail Road. They were speaking with survivors who had hurried out of Manhattan, white ash and sweat coating their dark business suits. They poured out of the trains like frightened war victims.

I worked until 3 a.m. the next day to produce a paper. I remember stepping out of the office onto the empty sidewalk on Central Avenue around midnight and staring into the black sky. I heard F-16 fighter jets streaking overhead. They flew so low, but I couldn’t see them.

I felt drained and hollow. I was unprepared for the sense of sorrow that I — and the nation — would feel in the coming years.