The Heart of New York City

Twenty-five years later, Bruce Burke reflects on a morning that changed his life and what it taught him about New Yorkers

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Bruce Burke was supposed to be downtown.

Living on Long Island, Bruce planned to catch a train that would get him to Manhattan around 9 a.m., leaving enough time for coffee before a 10 a.m. meeting in a building next to the World Trade Center. He missed that train and caught the next one.

Approaching Jamaica, passengers began hearing scattered reports of an accident downtown. Then someone ran through the train shouting that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers. Looking out the window, Bruce could see dark smoke rising from Lower Manhattan.

“There were no cell phones such as we have today, so any information was in bits and pieces,” Bruce recalled.

When the train reached Penn Station, Bruce walked into chaos. People were running, police officers were shouting instructions, and train service was shutting down. He managed to get onto one of the last trains back to Long Island.

In the hours that followed, Bruce called friends and anyone he thought might have been near the World Trade Center. His phone kept ringing too, as people checked on him.

That is what he remembers most.

“Everyone was acting just as a family member would in a time of crisis, checking in, making sure you were OK.”

Over the past 25 years, Bruce has sometimes thought about the train he missed and how differently that morning could have unfolded. But he also thinks about what the day revealed about his city.

Today, his work at PEU gives him another opportunity to see that New York up close.

“New Yorkers DO take care of one another,” Bruce said. “I see it and feel it every time I go out on a canvass assignment, or we put up a table to share information about City services.”

He sees it in strangers helping carry a mother’s stroller up subway stairs. He hears it in the bodega clerk who hands someone their change and says, “Take care, brother.” And he feels it when PEU helps a New Yorker facing a difficult moment.

For Bruce, those small gestures are not small at all. They are reminders of what he witnessed 25 years ago: when New Yorkers need one another, they show up.

Buildings change. Neighborhoods change. Generations come and go. But Bruce still recognizes the New York he saw on September 11, 2001, in the everyday moments when one New Yorker simply decides to take care of another.