Michael Ragsdale has been amassing New York City event-specific ephemera and autographs since 1997, having taken up collecting as while working as a cameraman for C-SPAN, Columbia University, the Manhattan Institute, and the New York-Presbyterian Hospitals of Columbia and Cornell. In the wake of September 11, he began focusing on items pertaining to the attacks and their aftermath. Here, he recalls attending the premiere of the film World Trade Center and the autograph he acquired there. 

The world premiere of the film World Trade Center occurred in New York City on August 3, 2006. I was there to witness the Hollywood-style festivities. The film’s actors, director, and writers were there as well as former city and state leaders. The film was viewed in the magnificent Ziegfeld Theatre in Manhattan and a tent was constructed on the street in front of the theatre where photographers could take pictures of the celebrities. I saw the continuous flashes from cameras and heard the dialogue between the photographers and actors through openings in the tent. The film starred Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Dorff, Sofia Coppola, and Maria Bello, and was directed by Oliver Stone. Also in attendance were George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani, and many of the retired Port Authority police officers portrayed in the film. While there, I gathered an official press kit and got U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), then the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, to autograph an official press release. 

Dolch was reunited with many of her students and staff from the school by 11 a.m., and started walking home to Brooklyn with a group them. It was then that her focus shifted to Wendy. She would learn later that, along with 657 of her Cantor Fitzgerald co-workers in the offices that morning, Wendy had been killed. 

Soon after 9/11, volunteers from across the country descended upon New York City to help support the rescue, recovery, and clean-up efforts at Ground Zero. Among them was a group of real estate brokers from California who had read about Dolch and her students and wanted to help. When they met her in New York, they asked Dolch about Wendy’s legacy.

She replied, “I’m an educator; there’s only one thing I know, and that’s education. And if we don’t teach, how will we ever learn? So we have to do something about schooling to memorialize Wendy.”

In that moment, they decided to build a school in Afghanistan. 

Two days ago, we marked the 29th anniversary of the first attack on the World Trade Center. At 12:18 p.m. on February 26, 1993, a small cell of terrorists detonated approximately 1,200 pounds of explosives in the North Tower's underground garage. The bombing created a five-story crater, 150 feet wide and filled with 4,000 tons of rubble, in the sub-grade levels of the towers, also undermining the floor of an adjoining hotel. Six people were killed in the attack: Port Authority co-workers Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, William Macko, Monica Rodriguez Smith and her unborn child; Windows on the World employee Wilfredo Mercado; and John DiGiovanni, a visitor who had parked in the garage. More than 1,000 others were injured. 

Moments before the bomb’s blast, at his office in midtown, William (Bill) Lynch was on the phone with his brother Pat, who worked at 2 World Trade Center, when Pat interrupted suddenly and said he had to go. Bill next read an incoming news bulletin about an explosion in the vicinity of the Twin Towers. He and his coworkers initially assumed a faulty gas line or transformer had exploded. Thankfully, his brother Pat had safely evacuated.

In the aftermath of the attack, Bill noticed the appearance of several posters around Soho and the West Village, where he lived. All bore the tagline: "New York. Still standing tall." One of them, affixed to a mailbox, caught his eye in particular. It read: “ATTENTION TERRORISTS: If you really wanted to instill fear in New Yorkers you should have done something before Steinbrenner came back.” Referencing the surprise return of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner from a two-year suspension, this imperturbable New York response motivated him to remove the poster for posterity. 

He recalls that the poster seemed “to capture the attitude of defiance in the city at that moment in time.” Bill had accidentally torn the right edge a little bit while removing it, and the slightly tattered appearance reminded him of the bomb's impact: it had left a wound mark, but the Twin Towers were still standing tall. Recently, Bill donated the poster to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

Of this new acquisition, Dr. Jan S. Ramirez, the Museum’s Chief Curator, notes, “Our collecting has always been attentive to the two terrorist assaults targeting the World Trade Center, eight and a half years apart. The enormity and tragic finality of the 2001 attacks may have eclipsed the precursor strike, but the 1993 bombing was lethal and shocking. The sentiments infusing this grassroots poster campaign (and we’d love to learn more about its origins) deflect fear with wry, contemporaneous New York City humor. But some — including investigators of the blast, security personnel at the World Trade Center, and others working at familiar landmark addresses – were not calmed into dismissing the bombing’s implications. “  

With the 29th anniversary of the bombing fresh in our memories and the Yankees' first spring training hopefully coming soon, we share the back story of this quintessentially New York ephemera. 

By 9/11 Memorial Staff

In mid-December of 2001, Tom Cooke, Waterford Crystal's master engraver, travelled from Ireland to New York and set up shop at the Times Square Visitor Center. There, tourists and passersby could share in the commemoration as they watched him manually write out and then permanently etch the engravings into the crystals with a special drill. The ball descended over Times Square on the 31st, its brilliance symbolizing hope and reassuring the world. 

"Hope for Healing" fabricators donated the ball's engraved crystal triangles in 2011. Components of it were on display when the Museum opened.

Read our 2016 blog post about the very special New Year's Eve ball. 

May the shining light from this 2001 New Year's Eve ball carry us into 2022 as well. 

By 9/11 Memorial Staff

Around the time of the first anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, I visited the very special "Faces of Ground Zero" exhibition at Rockefeller Center. Exhibited in a huge tent were 9'x4' photographs of emergency workers, survivors, public figures, and relatives of victims of the attacks. 

The life-size photos were shot by Joe McNally during a three-week period shortly after 9/11, on a garage-size, unique Giant Polaroid camera at a studio near Ground Zero. Most of the images were of firefighters standing in full firefighter regalia holding axes, shovels, flashlights, or picks. 

"Faces of Ground Zero" was also exhibited in Boston and as far away as San Francisco and London. A companion photo book of the exhibition was published in 2002. To mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks, more than 50 images were put on display at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. I also visited it. 

I spent the morning of October 11, 2001 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell videotaping guest speaker Dr. Carl Hammerschlag, an internationally recognized author, physician, speaker, healer, and psychiatrist from Arizona. He was there to give a talk with slides to a conference room full of hospital nurses. 

What I recall most about it were his opening remarks, in which he thanked "everyone who on the morning of September 11 was ready and prepared to accept the injured from the World Trade Center.” He drew some tears. 

During his remarks he said, “September 11th reminded us of our vulnerability; we will not be the same for a while. We will wonder about low-flying airplanes and many of us may be tainted by fear.”

He also sang “Amazing Grace” in English and Choctaw, which he learned while working for 20 years with the Native American tribe.

He is a healer who “helps people transform their lives by showing them how to rise above their limitations, remove their roadblocks, rekindle their dreams and become the principal agents in their own professional and personal lives.”

Among his books are "The Dancing Healers," "The Theft of the Spirit," and "Healing Ceremonies." 

Afterward, I grabbed an official event flyer and got his autograph. 
 

Perspective is always a part of major milestones and holidays - we can't help but look around in different directions - behind us and in front of us. 

From the North Tower's 107th floor, the legendary Windows on the World restaurant had the same effect, offering astounding perspective and breathtaking views no matter which way a diner looked. It opened in April 1976, a glimmer of hope shining above a gritty New York City. Twenty-five years later on September 11, 2001, approximately 170 guests and employees lost their lives there. 

Historically, Windows on the World played a key role in the World Trade Center's holiday traditions, hosting the children of Port Authority employees at a Toys for Tots Christmas party. Each year, Santa would put in a cameo from aboard a window washer's hoist. 

The Museum's collection houses a number of Windows on the World relics like matchboxes, dishes and silverware, and souvenirs, all capturing a little bit of the glamorous restaurant's essence. These Christmas menus - from 1986 and 1997 - are themselves "windows" into the past. May they serve this holiday season as a nostalgic reminder of those we lost - while also inspiring us to look hopefully in all directions, including forward. 

By 9/11 Memorial Staff

A co-worker and I were assigned to videotape famed author David Halberstam at his Manhattan studio in the later part of October 2001, while he was working on an article for Vanity Fair about an FDNY firehouse which lost several men on September 11, 2001. The B-roll footage we captured was used for a future program on BookTV titled, “In Depth with David Halberstam,” about the life and writing career of Halberstam. For three hours, C-SPAN’s Susan Swain spoke with him. 

We got shots of him writing, typing, checking his notes, contemplating what he was going to type next and shots of his studio - his desk, typewriter, shelves of books he wrote and read, and any mementos or statues he might possess. The program aired beginning on November 4, 2001. It was also a call-in show. 

Halberstam is known for his powerful journalist coverage of the Vietnam War, received a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of the war as a New York Times staff reporter, and wrote dozens of books. 

Because there was no program available, I secured his autograph on a video label.