9/11 and the Victim Compensation Fund

• Author: Kenneth P. Nolan
• Pages: 133-146

9/11 and the Victim

Compensation Fund

133

They were always there, but I never really saw them. The

Woolworth Building with its wedding cake–white terra cotta was a

masterpiece. The Statue of Liberty and its shimmering beacon stand-

ing alone and strong made me proud. The Brooklyn Bridge with its

elegant spiderweb of cables and powerful towers of peaceful gran-

ite was soothing. These were the beauties, the classics. These I would

notice, look for, point out to the out-of-towners.

But the Twin Towers were huge, that’s all. Only on rainy, dreary

days did I glance. Then the tops would disappear in the clouds like

two rigid modern-day beanstalks stretching into the heavens.

The downtown Manhattan skyline and its glittering buildings

were the backdrop to my life. In the gritty Brooklyn neighborhood

where I was raised, the F train was the umbilical cord to the city.

You board in the subterranean grime only to escape the darkness a

few stops later as it climbs an elevated trestle into the light with the

most magnificent views of lower Manhattan, a distant, almost alien,

world of wealth and power.

Throughout my life, this downtown skyline of shiny skyscrap-

ers remained a constant. They were there when I jogged along the

shore, drove the ugly and decrepit Gowanus Expressway, traveled

to and from work in midtown. I passed the giant sleek Towers daily—