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Six blocks away--another 'shot' heard 'round the world
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
SEPTEMBER 11 was to be another day in the continuing progress
of the precious-to-me Pee Wee Reese-Jackie Robinson statue.
The project to erect a statue honoring the great Dodgers, Reese
and Robinson, stemmed from a suggestion I had made when I spoke
at memorial to Reese in Brooklyn shortly after he died two years
ago. I suggested commemorating the great moment before a game
when Robinson, the first black man in baseball, was being vilified
by Cincinnati players and fans, and Reese, a southerner, walked
over to Robinson and put his arm around him, quelling the vitriol.
Reese is remembered for this as much as his career as an outstanding
shortstop and Dodger leader. It says so on his Hall of Fame plaque
at Cooperstown.
The statue idea took hold with the help of the urging of columnist
Jack Newfield and became part of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s project
to renovate Coney Island. Money has been raised and sculptors
were selected to compete for the assignment of creating the statue
that will stand outside the new Steeplechase Park minor league
stadium in Brooklyn. This led to the Sept. 11 early morning meeting
at City Hall where judges were getting their first look at the
five maquettes (small versions of statues) submitted by sculptors.
City Hall is six blocks from the World Trade Center. After some
25 people had been looking at the maquettes, Tamra Lhota, the
woman spearheading the selection process, suddenly stopped the
proceedings and haltingly relayed a report about a plane hitting
the World Trade Center. She was so moved about it that we didn’t
quite understand what she was saying and asked her to repeat
herself. At that point, about 9 a.m., we heard, and the building
shook from, a loud boom. That, we soon enough found out, was
the sound of the second plane smashing into the other World Trade
Center tower.
Mrs. Jackie Robinson, who had just arrived at the meeting said,
“I heard an earlier boom when the car bringing me here was
going under the trestle at the World Trade Center.”
We were told to remain at City Hall because it is one of the
most secure buildings in the city; security entrances screen
arrivals. We moved into an office and watched the re-runs of
the plane crashes on a small television set. After awhile my
wife and I went out to the front steps of City Hall and saw the
smoke gushing from the towers six blocks away and watched people,
some in a panic, rushing north past City Hall away from the World
Trade Center.
I could not help but recall a time some 29 years earlier when
I was a sports reporter for Newsday covering the 1972 Olympics
in Munich. In the early morning of Sept. 4, 1972, when Arab terrorists
invaded the athletes' village and took hostages at the Israeli
compound, I was asleep in one of the large apartment complexes
lodging the press. It was only a few hundred yards from the Israeli
compound. I was told about the terrorists while walking down
for breakfast. I headed to press headquarters where we were informed
that some Israelis had been killed and nine were being held hostage.
I had chatted with some Israeli athletes and officials on a visit
to the athletes' village two days earlier. I wondered if one
of them was one of the wrestlers who were among the hostages.
I spent the rest of the day shuttling between press headquarters
and a gate outside the compound interviewing bystanders and athletes
coming out of the village. At press headquarters I watched, like
the rest of the world, the hooded terrorist on the Israeli compound
balcony peeking out at the world.
It all ended, of course,with the botched rescue attempt at an
airport outside of Munich and the death of 11 Israelis and some
of the terrorists. A few of the terrorists were captured, soon
given their freedom in exchange for German hostages. The Israeli
hit squad then hunted down and murdered all but one of them.
He is living in Africa and recently gave inside details of the
Olympic hostage operation in a documentary released two years
ago.
On Tuesday, after waiting at City Hall for almost an hour, my
wife and I made our way over to a subway two blocks west on Chambers
Street. On the way we walked among crowds at corners looking
up at the twin towers. On the north tower we saw a ribbon of
fire several yards across and a huge hole high up in the building.
We never dreamed those towers would collapse. We rode one of
the last subway trains uptown, and when Penn Station was shut
down, spent the next hour in the garment center offices of a
friend on West 34th Street. We were stunned to hear on a radio
report the collapse of the buildings.
On that subway ride uptown from lower Manhattan strangers talked
to each other, relating where they had been, what they had seen.
In the street people listened to radios from newstands and parked
trucks. There was a oneness among people not unlike what we heard
about Londoners during World War II bombing.
At the end of that awful Tuesday I was struck by an odd thought.
At the time of the first plane hitting a tower and then when
we heard the huge boom of the second plane crash into a tower,
I was talking to one of the people who would help select the
winning entry for the Reese-Robinson statue: he was Ralph Branca,
the man who had thrown the pitch that Bobby Thomson hit for a
home run in the 1951 playoffs that has since been known as “The
Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. The illustration is © 2001 by
Jim Hummel.
You
can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email
to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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