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'This isn't about me - it's about all of us' By LAUREL NAVERSEN I was inside a voting booth on New York's Upper East Side, just four miles from the World Trade Center when United Flight 11 careened into its north tower. As I pulled the lever to cast my vote for the city's next mayor, I couldn't hear the explosions or smell the smoke just to the south. By the time United Flight 175 hit Two World Trade Center, I was deep underneath Manhattan, riding the subway toward my office in Times Square. There, I work on the 10th floor of an elegant, glass high-rise - a building not unlike the twin towers - as a writer and editor for Allure magazine. Work is the reason that a 1993 South Medford grad who grew up in Jacksonville (population 2,000), moved three years ago to this heaving, eastern metropolis (population eight million). New York is simply the place where magazines are made. And while I've come to love this city, Southern Oregon is undoubtedly my home. Jacksonville is where I learned to do fractions, had my first kiss, and nearly mowed over the swingset when I first attempted to drive. It's the place I return every Christmas, and where my parents and the dogs still live. But when I did on Tuesday what I now do every day - ascend the subway escalator, pass through the turnstile, and step out onto 42nd street - the city where I've transplanted myself had changed. Dozens of people had stopped in their tracks (an unusual sight, even for Times Square, where the unusual is known to be rather usual) to stare up at the news ticker overhead. I began to overhear the people around me, all saying the same thing, with the same strange intonation: "The World Trade Center has been hit?" I hurried upstairs to my office, joined coworkers gathered around a television, and was able to see, for the first time, the images of my city under attack. My reaction - a blend of disbelief, horror, nausea, and fear for the dozen or so friends who work in those buildings - must have been similar to what most Americans felt. But one other thought passed through my mind: Times Square could be next. Petrified, I fled the building and headed back home, catching the first, and possibly last, train out. Two stops later, all subway service throughout the city came to a halt; I stepped outside again and began the two-and-a-half mile walk home. The streets of New York were filled with people like me who were walking, trying to catch a bus or hail a cab, scared but calm, unsure of quite what was going on. On any other day, I might've been thinking what a bitch it is to walk in heels. Instead, I was wondering if another plane was about to crash down on top of us. Just after I'd entered my neighborhood, a white-haired woman coming out of a Subway sandwich shop stopped, looked at me blankly and said, "The twin towers just collapsed." If my tears hadn't started overflowing before that moment (and I honestly am not sure), they did then. Five messages were waiting for me at my apartment. I called my family and all of my close friends, relieved to hear they, at least, were okay. My mom, perhaps feeling even more unnerved than I was, told me to put on athletic shoes and run to New Jersey. (Had the situation been less frightening and uncertain, this would be a highly comical notion.) I joined the rest of America in front of the television, glued to the horror. By mid-afternoon, four friends had convened at my apartment; we weren't sure if it was over, and none of us could stand to be alone. One quick glance down the East River (one block east of my apartment) or Second Avenue (one block to the west), and we could see the cloud of smoke and debris billowing up from ground zero. As workers desperately began to search for survivors downtown, other striking scenes unfolded elsewhere in New York. Within two hours of the first explosion, the lines of people waiting to donate at blood banks wrapped around entire city blocks. By late afternoon, the Upper East Side had almost come to feel almost like a national holiday: The weather was glorious and the streets were filled with people pushing strollers, walking their dogs, dining in cafes. They were doing just what I was-venturing out for a short break when we couldn't stand to see the devastating images of our city on television any more. Very few cars were allowed on the streets, which made the city seem eerily and uncharacteristically peaceful. When an ambulance or a police car would race by, everyone would stop and watch. By Thursday, Mayor Rudy Guiliani urged those of us who could to return to work. I was trying to concentrate during an editorial meeting, just after 11 a.m., when Allure's editor-in-chief ran into the room and said, "There are three bombs in our building. Go, now." Running down 10 flights in a staircase packed with hundreds of people (with only the sounds of hundreds of shuffling feet, it seemed too calm, too quiet), I had a vague sense of what thousands in the twin towers must've felt: a desperate feeling of uncertainty, entrapment and helplessness. I shook all over. After exiting the building, too shaken to feel relieved, I just kept running to the north, to the east. But people coming toward me were shouting, "Don't come this way! There's a bomb in Grand Central!" Standing there in the middle of a canyon of hulking buildings, many of them rumored to contain bombs, I had felt totally at a loss about where to go or what to do. I didn't have my wallet or my apartment keys - only a clipboard, a pencil, and paper, which I'd been clutching tightly since the meeting. I found a payphone and dialed every number I could think of, but phone service throughout New York continues to be patchy; I got only busy signals. There, leaning up against the outside of the phone booth, just across from St. Patrick's Cathedral and Saks Fifth Avenue, I lost it and started crying, really crying. Within seconds, a woman approached me to ask if I was okay, touching my arm and asking what she could do. Seconds later, another woman gave me a tissue and refused to leave my side. New Yorkers were unwilling to let each other go through this alone. Soon, I was calmer, and I began the two-and-a-half mile walk home (again). I would later learn that there were more than 90 bomb threats in New York that day, all terrifying hoaxes that traumatized thousands in a city already hanging on tenterhooks. I know this isn't about me - it's about all of us, the fear and sadness we feel, and above all, those who have lost loved ones or lost their own lives. Every New Yorker knows someone. For me, there are four, at least. Rich, a charming, 32-year-old bond trader who went to my college, used to take me out on his boat off the coast of Long Island. Andy, 33, his hilarious friend and coworker, had been a competitive swimmer in college, just like me. I saw a picture of Kevin, 25, whom I dated two years ago, on the local news Wednesday. The photo was held up by his fianc�, who was desperately searching for him. Even now-nothing. And as I write this, I am on my way to Boston to attend a memorial service for Jean, a warm, funny, 24-year-old flight attendant who was working on United Flight 11. The fact that it was my city that was attacked makes me - a displaced Oregonian who has sometimes felt like a fish out water among Gotham's hordes of kawfee-tawkahs - feel like a true New Yorker. Meanwhile, the steady stream of phone calls and e-mails I've received from fellow Oregonians makes me feel more tied to my home state than ever. I almost want to move home, where I can kiss my parents every day (please do it for me, if you see them) and feel far away from the locus of this maelstrom. In another, more defiant sense, I want to remain in New York indefinitely, because to leave would be to let them win. But one thing is certain: New Yorkers can palpably feel the people of Oregon and the rest of America standing solidly behind us. For that, we cannot thank you enough. While I feel like I've aged years in a week, and while I desperately wish that "ground zero" had never entered the American vernacular, I have never been so proud to call southern Oregon, New York City and the United States my home. And honestly, I can't wait for my next chance to step inside a voting booth. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.