When the second plane hit the World Trade Center 10 years ago, one Ohio University student watched firsthand as smoke billowed and panic spread across the U.S.
Greg Wasz, who studied telecommunications at OU and graduated in 2002, was an intern at the Late Show with David Letterman in New York City when the attacks took place. When the 7 World Trade Center collapsed on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, Wasz watched it happen not from a television screen but rather from nearby in SoHo.
Wasz, who now works in sales for Mane Flavour and Fragrance, which is based in Cincinnati, had been living in New York City for several weeks before 9/11.
“The week before, I’d been exploring New York City with the interns, and we were down by the World Trade Center,” Wasz said. “I remember looking up, and the towers were so massively big. I didn’t know that was the last time I’d be seeing them.”
The morning of 9/11, Wasz couldn’t get into the city at first after hearing the news, because the subways had been shut down. When the subways reopened, the New York City he found was completely different from the one he’d been exploring for the past few weeks.
“Normally, New York is noise, lights and chaos; and I came out of the subway, and it was just quiet,” Wasz said. “It was very bizarre.”
After 9/11, attitudes in New York City changed; at least for a while, the event created common ground for those who had been there to witness it, Wasz said.
One notable example of this change was interaction on the subways.
“Normally, the subway ride is a freak show; there are so many weird people on the subway that you keep to yourself and don’t talk or look at people,” Wasz said. “But on that day, weeks after, you talked to everybody — about where you were, what you know, if you knew anyone in the towers. It didn’t matter what color anyone was. All the weirdness just melted away.”
Having been in New York City during 9/11 provided an entirely different perspective on the event than what could be gleaned from newspaper or television coverage, Wasz said.
In October 2001, Wasz wrote a piece for The Insider, a publication The Post distributed for OU faculty and staff.
One month after the attacks, the then-college senior remembered departing the subway and first seeing what was taking place.
“There was a collective gasp from the handful of passengers in the car,” he wrote. “The city was on fire.”
Although his parents called and told him not to, Wasz went into the city as soon as the subways reopened, he said in the column.
“Why? To give blood, to grab a shovel, maybe I would only get in the way,” he wrote. “History was unfolding.”
Wasz described walking past people with ash clinging to them along streets that had completely cleared of cars. As he watched, dump trucks began lining up, even before their drivers knew quite what was going on, to take supplies to ground zero.
It was “the toughest city in the world,” Wasz wrote, but on this day, everyone spoke to everyone else, all hoping for more news and some type of reassurance.
As Wasz watched smoke pour from the twin towers, he snapped photos, not realizing the buildings would fall moments later.
“What’s next? I’m scared,” he wrote 10 years ago after witnessing an event America would never forget. “I turn simply, humbly and faithfully to humanity. I have strength in friends, family, the concern of a stranger, the hidden tear of a rescue worker. Strength in a proud city, strength in a nation united. Faith in humanity to face and overcome the worst enemy it has ever and will ever face. Itself.”
rm279109@ohiou.edu
