September 11 Ocean City NJ: An Unforgettable 9/11

September 11 Ocean City NJ is a memory I will never forget—not only because of what happened that morning, but because of exactly where I was when the world changed.

For me, September 11, 2001 began with the surf.

The waves in Ocean City were enormous that morning. I remember faces approaching ten feet on some of the bigger sets—three or four feet overhead. After more than twenty years I won’t pretend I remember the exact measurements, but I remember the size. Hurricane Erin was offshore, and the National Hurricane Center was warning that large swells from the storm were affecting the East Coast.

It was exactly the kind of September morning surfers in Ocean City waited for all year.

At the time, Kendra and I lived in a tiny converted garage I’d bought for about $35,000. It couldn’t have been more than 450 square feet, but it was ours. Years later, I’d sell that little place for $115,000, which still makes me laugh when I think about it.

Anyway, our son hadn’t been born yet. I was still in my twenties, and that morning I had exactly one thing on my mind: getting in the water.

I wanted to surf.

My friends were already in the water.

September 11 Ocean City NJ — The Morning Everything Changed

I had to take Kendra to work first, and somewhere along the way we heard something on the radio about a small plane hitting the World Trade Center.

At first, it sounded like an accident.

Then it wasn’t a small plane.

The timeline has faded for me after all these years. I don’t remember precisely when I learned each detail, and I don’t want to pretend that I do. What I remember clearly is realizing that my friends were still out surfing and probably had no idea what was happening.

So I went to the beach.

They were still in the water.

I stood there trying to get their attention, waving them in from some of the best waves we’d seen in a long time. Eventually they paddled back to shore, probably wondering what the hell I wanted.

I told them what had happened.

The waves suddenly didn’t matter.

We rushed back to my tiny condo, crowded around the television, and watched the world change.

One of my friends had just joined the Coast Guard. None of us knew what was coming next, but for him there was another level of uncertainty. This wasn’t something happening on television anymore. He had just signed up to serve the country that was apparently under attack.

He would go on to make a career of it. More than two decades later, he retired from the Coast Guard and eventually moved to Florida.

But that morning, he was just my friend sitting in a tiny condo in Ocean City with the rest of us, watching television and wondering what was going to happen next.

The Days After

The next few days blur together.

I remember wanting to do something.

Computers and communications were already a big part of my life, so I tried putting together some kind of communications center using modems and telephone lines. The idea was to give people another way to communicate or find information.

It never really worked.

But sitting here all these years later, I think the attempt says something about what those days felt like. Nobody knew exactly what to do. We just knew we wanted to help.

And then there was the silence.

No airplanes.

Growing up near the Jersey Shore, aircraft were simply part of the background. You rarely thought about them.

Until they disappeared.

I’d look toward the sky and there would be nothing.

It was eerie.

The Bagpipes

A few days later, we went surfing again.

The ocean was still there. The waves were still coming. Eventually you had to return to the ordinary pieces of life, even though nothing felt ordinary anymore.

And then someone started playing bagpipes.

A man was standing out on the jetty, playing while we surfed.

I don’t know who he was.

I don’t know whether he had lost someone.

I don’t even remember exactly what he played.

I just remember being in the water, hearing those bagpipes carrying across the ocean, and knowing exactly why he was there.

He was paying tribute to the people who had died.

For all the things I’ve forgotten about September 2001, I’ve never forgotten that.

The ocean.

The empty sky.

The waves breaking.

And bagpipes coming from the jetty.

For a little while after September 11, people seemed closer. Strangers talked to each other. Flags appeared everywhere. Whatever our differences had been the week before suddenly seemed very small.

I wish that part had lasted longer.

When I think back on September 11 Ocean City NJ is forever part of that memory for me—the surf, my friends, our tiny condo, and the realization that the world had just changed.

More than twenty years later, people remember September 11 through photographs of New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Those are the places where the history happened.

But millions of us experienced that history somewhere else.

For me, it happened in Ocean City.

It started with some of the biggest waves I can remember, friends sitting in a 450-square-foot converted garage staring at a television, and the realization that the world outside our little island had suddenly become a very different place.

And a few days later, while paddling through the warm September water, I heard a man standing on a jetty playing bagpipes for people he’d probably never met.

That’s my September 11 in Ocean City.

That’s the part I don’t want to forget.