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The events of 9/11 still echo 20 years later
Neil Lucente ’97 was on an elevator on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center when the plane hit his building. Rich Fields ’03 was the president of Clark Student Council, struggling to find the words to ease the fear and sadness of his classmates. Faith Duggan ’23 was only fourth months old, yet…
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Candles in September
My mother’s birthday is Sept. 11 and I was across the street at the pharmacy buying her a belated birthday card when I heard that American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the World Trade Center. I returned to my dorm, Sanford Hall, and went down to one of the common suites on my floor…
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Dan Trant ‘never backed down’
Wally Halas wasn’t just Dan Trant’s basketball coach. He was also a fan. “I loved the way he played the game,” Halas says. “He was bold, he was skilled, and he challenged everybody. If Dan could have played 10 hours a day, he would have.” Halas was far from alone in his assessment. In…
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‘It felt like a giant shaking a tin can’
Neil Lucente ’97 works on the sixth floor of a 10-story building, and it’s unlikely he’ll choose to travel any more vertically than that for a job. His sole reminder of his time in a high-rise is the bathroom key from the 81st floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower that he keeps…
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My father. My hero.
On a perfect late-summer morning, New York firefighter Salvatore Torcivia declined an overtime shift so that he could accompany his 3-year-old daughter, Mariah, to her first day of preschool at a YMCA near their Staten Island home. Not long after they arrived, a thick plume of dark smoke rose over the city. It was…
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A New Yorker never forgets
This essay appeared in the Oct. 2019 issue of the Clark English Department newsletter, The Next Chapter. This is the first day in 18 years that I didn’t spend 9/11 in New York City. It was the first time nothing took place at my school. The first time people didn’t even bring it up.…
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