We had been together just two weeks prior. We celebrated Nick's Ring Weekend at West Point, and then spent the rest of the weekend living large with all of our friends in New York City...One of our many stops was to the World Trade Center, where we rode the elevator to the 106th floor of the North Tower to the Windows on the World restaurant for brunch. It was our second time there, but we were still in such awe of the whole experience. We spent the majority of our meal looking out the windows, marveling over the fact that we were literally on top of the world.
I picked up my developed pictures from the trip the day the towers collapsed. Emotions raw, my wonderful memories were quickly replaced with fear...I remembered riding up the elevator and the excited feeling I had; and then I thought of the friendly port authority doorman who rode up with us and I wondered if he was working that day. I remembered our waitress and the delicious meal she served us; and then prayed that she wasn't trapped inside the building. Then I worried about the chatterbox bathroom attendant, and...They put a face on the terrified people who leapt to their death from the upper floors of the towers; because that was their only way out. Those images are so deeply burned into my mind. To say that they haunt me would be putting it mildly.
As the following hours and days passed, we began looking at our future on a wider scale. It became clear that our country was no longer in peacetime. Overnight, my Nick's military career drastically changed. Like everyone, life for us has never been the same.
Saturday, August 25th, 2001
Windows on the World Restaurant
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