Dear Reader,

Nearly a year has gone by. And so many hearts still ache.

Where were you on September 11?

I was covering one of the mayoral candidates on the Republican ballot, Michael Bloomberg, for The New York Times. It was Primary Day in New York City and the billionaire political newcomer was expected to trounce his opponent, though the political pundits considered him a long shot in the general election in November. But then nobody knew that New York on September 11 would not be the same New York it was on September 10. At year's end, Bloomberg would take the oath as the city's 108th mayor, succeeding Rudy Giuliani, another politician whose career was catapulted by the terror attacks.

The night of September 10 had been a very late one. Bloomberg attended Republican rallies across the city, ending up in Staten Island. He was not a very dynamic speaker, but the crowds of Republican faithful chanting, "We want Mike!" pumped him up. Wherever he went, he responded with a wordplay based on the primary date. "If you write it out, it is 9-1-1," he told the crowds. "It is a call for help for this city." I jotted the quote down on page 9 of my notebook and again on page 17.

Of course September 11 would be a call for help, but not in the way Bloomberg was imagining. Nearly a year later it is a bit unnerving to flip through that notebook and see those words trivialized as part of a political campaign. I don't blame Bloomberg. On the night he spoke them, they were just a throwaway soundbite, the invention of some enterprising speechwriter. Now they screamed out as another telling moment in the story of unsuspecting New York Ð evidence of how na•ve and complacent we were, how little we knew about the agony of real cries for help that would come the next morning.

The primary returns on September 11 were expected to arrive late, maybe even after midnight, so I had planned that morning to drive into Manhattan from my home in Montclair, New Jersey instead of taking the bus. It had already been decided that I should skip the early morning ritual of Bloomberg posing for the cameras as he cast his ballot at P.S. 6 on East 81st Street. So I was taking my time. It was my youngest son's birthday. He was turning two. We sang "Happy Birthday" and had an ice cream cake for breakfast. I knew the Lincoln Tunnel would be a parking lot during rush hour, so after breakfast I drove my two older boys to school. We said our good-byes and I switched on the radio to get the traffic report:

"WCBS news time 8:48. It is traffic and weather together, sponsored by Henry Miller's Theater. Tom Kaminski, Chopper 880: Alright, Pat, we are just currently getting a look at the World Trade Center. We have something that has happened here, at the World Trade Center. We noticed flame and an awful lot of smoke from one of the towers of the World Trade Center. We are just coming up on this scene. This is easily three quarters of the way up. Whatever has occurred, has just occurred, within minutes. And we are trying to determine exactly what that is. But currently we have a lot of smoke at the top of the towers at the World Trade Center. We will keep you posted."

As the helicopter got closer, the details got more specific: "I am just coming up now and looking at the north face of the World Trade Center. It appears at least from this vantage point that something has hit it. Something has gone into the World Trade Center. I do not have that confirmed in any way, shape or form, but there is a gash across, I would want to say about 10 stories down from the top of the World Trade Center, from right to left."

When I got home a few minutes later, my cell phone rang. It was the Metro desk. The newsroom is virtually empty at that time of the morning, but they thought maybe I was already at work following Bloomberg. They wanted me to break away and come into the office to help figure out which companies were located on the floors where the jet had hit. But I was still in New Jersey Ð on a good day, 30 minutes away. And this was not a good day. I went into the house and turned on the television. In a few minutes, the second plane struck the South Tower. I knew I needed to get into Manhattan, so I ran back outside to the car. I hadn't even pulled out of the driveway when my wife shouted out the front door that the Lincoln and Holland tunnels had been closed. Manhattan was being sealed off.

I tried calling the office but it was impossible to get through on the telephone. I was able to dial an Internet access number so I sent an e-mail. "I can't get across the Hudson. Can't get through on the phones. But can sign on with the toll-free number. Please onpass any instructions."

I got a response from one of the editors.

"The election is cancelled. Do scene in your neighborhood for an hour, then get back to me. We want you to try to come in, but it may take forever."

It did. I finally walked into the newsroom at six o'clock. After going to a hilltop in Montclair and watching the thick white cloud consume Lower Manhattan, I set out for the Hudson River. It took me three hours to go 15 miles. And even then I was turned away by the police at Liberty State Park, where hundreds of the "walking wounded" had been evacuated, so I continued on to Jersey City, where I boarded a PATH subway train to 33rd Street.

I was immediately put to work on the phones, first trying to get information on the Rev. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar who was a Fire Department chaplain. He had died, apparently of a heart attack, during one of the building collapses. I eventually got in touch with Brother Thomas Cole, the vicar at St. Francis Friary, where Father Judge lived. He gave me the details, as best he knew them. I asked him if Father Judge would have been devastated had he lived. "He was the kind of guy that would deal with it and help people through it," he told me. "I don't think it would turn him so quickly on life and people." In this book, a friend of Father Judge tells the story of their friendship and his sad job of moving the priest's body to a firehouse.

I then started taking phone calls from reporters who had managed to get close to the World Trade Center. The information was spotty and sometimes contradictory. I did my best to make sense of it and I wrote a short article about the rescue efforts. My night would end at 2:30 a.m. I bought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a razor and shaving cream at a 24-hour bodega and checked into a hotel on Lexington Avenue.

The next morning, I called my wife. It had been a restless night for everyone. She told me that when she walked into the boys' bedroom that morning she happened upon a strange scene. The two older boys, who were seven and six, had taken their mattresses off the beds and had propped them up vertically, side by side. They had then invited the two-year-old to come in and knock them over. It was a game, they told her. A game of Twin Towers.

For the Sunday newspaper, I was asked to write a short block of copy to accompany two pages of pictures. For the first time, it was a chance to collect my thoughts and feelings.

Fleeing. Rescuing. Watching. Donating. Waiting. Grieving.

To be in New York last week was to know the pounding in your chest, the hole in your stomach, the aching at the center of your being. It was a time to be afraid of things known and unknown; to miss both loved ones and people you had never met. It was a week of solemn solidarity and of frightening loneliness, of yearning to carry on and of having no power to do so.

It was a week of what was not Ð of not seeing a familiar skyline, of not knowing how to answer a child's questions, of not being able to sleep, of not understanding why.

There was no hiding from Tuesday's calamity or pretending it never happened. The flames and smoke above Lower Manhattan would not allow that. Nor would the pictures of missing people on store windows and bus shelters. Nor would the noise Ð the weeping, the shouting, and the sirens.

It was a week when Manhattan was once again an island, a place at the center of the universe that was at the same time not part of it. The bridges and tunnels were closed to traffic, the airplanes were grounded, and the telephones rang busy. Within that island, the southern tip was sealed off like a cancerous tumor, its gaping wound covered with ash and twisted metal and concrete.

It was a week to cry. Strong men with callused hands collapsed in grief as they dug through the rubble. It was a week of lost hope. New Yorkers rushed to give blood for the injured, but by yesterday, with huge chunks of the debris peeled away, the only calls from the rescue crews were for body bags.

Several months later, as I spoke with dozens of people to compile this eye-witness record of what happened that day, the authorities were still pulling out bodies and pieces of bodies from the crater that was once the World Trade Center. One day they found Police Sgt. Mike Curtin of the Emergency Service Unit. His body and that of another officer, John Perry, were draped in American flags as they were carried away. I never knew Sergeant Curtin, but my heart was heavy anyway. One of the last people to see him alive was Officer Bill Beaury, who shared his wrenching experiences from September 11 with me for this book. For more than a month, Officer Beaury had held out hope for Sergeant Curtin and 13 other missing members of his prestigious unit. Then, suddenly, he couldn't bring himself to even visit Ground Zero. On March 31 of this year Officer Beaury retired from the NYPD after nearly 21 years.

"I didn't feel there was going to be any happy endings," he told me.

With the rescue and cleanup efforts now over, we know Officer Beaury was right, at least in terms of finding survivors. Yet as you read September 11: An Oral History I think you will be struck by the moments of triumph and inspiration amid the death and devastation. Those moments fall short of a happy ending, but they are a profound tribute to the thousands of people who made it out alive. In that regard, I am deeply grateful to the 41 featured in the book for sharing their very personal stories with me and for having patience with the sometimes difficult process that the sharing entailed. Some exchanges opened raw wounds and caused pain and grief.

And so much pain and grief persist today. The other day I spoke with Roselyn Braud, whose story is in the book and is also posted on this Web site. She had recently been in the emergency room after experiencing a serious panic attack. The high-rise in Manhattan where she now works had begun to shake. Apparently some movers had dropped a large piece of furniture on the floor overhead. It was a false alarm, but enough to bring back September 11 in all its haunting detail. Roselyn is not alone. I receive e-mails and telephone calls from others in the book. They tell me that they have moved on with their lives as best they can, but that every day remains a struggle. They wonder when it will be different. I have no answers, but try my best to be a good listener.

Nearly a year has gone by. And so many hearts still ache.

-- Dean E. Murphy, Aug. 27, 2002