Remembering New York City years before and days after 9/11

The family legend was that we visited New York City when I was a fat little kid. Included in this tale was that my mother and older brother were injured to a degree in an accident caused by a risk-taking cab driver.

There also was photographic evidence of my father being in the company of Jack Dempsey at the boxing champion's restaurant in Manhattan.

Must have been quite an adventure for this family unit from Fulda, Minn., although being granted the Twins beat for the St. Paul newspapers 25 years later, in 1974, was my first true look at this amazing megalopolis.

Frank Quilici's Twins made their first visit over the weekend of June 7-9. Bert Blyleven beat the Yanks, 3-2, with a complete game and that lowered his ERA to 2.88 and raised his record to 5-7.

In retrospect, the young Dutchman had a legitimate complaint about owner Calvin Griffith making contract offers based on wins-losses during his first five full seasons (1971-75).

He averaged 289 innings, 238 strikeouts, had a 2.74 ERA, and was a bedeviled 85-76 in wins and losses.

Sorry, Bert. Like Calvin with dollars, I should have judged your talent more generously with sentences in St. Paul.

I was young and thirsty when making that initial visit on an expense account to Gotham. Other sportswriters and members of the Twins' traveling party shared that thirst. We did our best to challenge New York's reputation as "The City That Never Sleeps.''

Manhattan was supposed to be a dangerous place in the '70s. Admittedly, the Times Square area was a bit funky, but our hotel was 10 to 12 blocks from there and the nearby bars were perfectly safe to fill up on gin until 4 a.m.

I dried out for 30 days at St. Mary's Rehabilitation Center, being sprung on Memorial Day weekend in 1981. The first strenuous test came during the first World Series that I covered: Dodgers and Yankees in October of that year.

Games 1, 2 and 6 were played in Yankee Stadium. I got through those without a gin and tonic. I flew out of LaGuardia on Oct. 29 saying, "If you make it sober in New York, you can make it sober anywhere.''

Twenty years after that World Series, starring George Steinbrenner in full-Bossness, my wife, Katy, and I were at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. We were going through one of those two-day checkups where Mayo makes you visit a room full of vampires numerous times to provide blood samples.

It was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and word spread that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Thirty of us crowded around a small TV in a waiting room and then a second plane hit the other tower.

A significant share of Mayo Clinic's clientele were Middle Easterners, including members of the Jordanian military. We were mingled together, watching the TV, and when the second plane hit, the strong suspicion of an unthinkable terrorist attack turned to certainty.

I recall those Middle Eastern guys, looking in horror, looking sick, fearing not only all the death but what would be revealed as the source.

That was my "where were you when it happened?'' moment.

Tom Thibodeau's was at the New York Knicks' practice location at a college facility in Purchase, N.Y., 30 miles north of Manhattan. He was entering his sixth season as an assistant to Knicks head coach Jeff Van Gundy.

"We were told that a plane had hit one of the towers,'' Thibodeau said Thursday. "Once in a while, you hear about a smaller plane hitting a building. You wondered if that was it? Then, we saw the second plane hit, and soon a tower collapsed …''

Thibodeau paused and said: "It was shocking for the whole country, the whole world, but here in New York, on the East Coast, it was devastating emotionally.

"I'll always remember the first Knicks exhibition game, they came out with a flag that covered the whole court, and started reading off the numbers of the ladders that had lost firefighters.''

The coach called "Thibs'' paused again and said: "It hit very close to home for us immediately. Jeff Van Gundy's college roommate, Farrell Lynch, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the stock firm at the top of the North Tower.

"Jeff was calling Farrell's cell phone every two minutes. [Assistant] Andy Greer was also calling. No answer, of course. No answer.''

There were 960 Cantor Fitzgerald employees, and Lynch died with a total of 658 employees that morning. No one working on the 101^st to 105^th floors of the North Tower that morning survived.

Van Gundy resigned in midseason, saying he had "lost focus'' as a coach. He has paid for a practice locker room at his alma mater, Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., and done other charitable acts in Lynch's name.

Thibodeau is entering his second season as Knicks head coach, Greer is an assistant, and Van Gundy is a terrific TV analyst on NBA telecasts.

Jean Stehle was in her second day as a fifth-grade teacher at PS 158 on Manhattan's East Side on 9/11. It was her first full-time teaching job, after graduating from Ithaca College and then a master's degree at Columbia.

"Everyone says this, but it's true,'' Stehle said. "The gorgeousness of the blue sky over Manhattan that morning was startling. We were all commenting about it when we got to school.

"The students had to be in the room by 8:40 a.m. Parents couldn't come directly to the room. If they wanted to see a child, the student was told over the intercom to come to the office.

"The first message came in after about 15 minutes: 'Miss Stehle, send Jackie to the office.' And then those messages kept coming.

"Finally, another teacher knocked on the door, and told me what had happened. I had this horrible knot in my stomach. Your No. 1 duty as a teacher is to make sure your students feel safe. This was my second day, and the students knew something was going on.''

School was dismissed early. "I went outside to walk home,'' she said. "York Avenue would be chaos at that time every other day … buses, cars honking.

"Instead, it was silent, with people walking in the middle of the street in fancy work clothes, completely silent. I tried calling my family in various places around the country.''

Those included Glenn Caruso, an assistant football coach at North Dakota State in Fargo. The three Stehle daughters and the four Carusos (two boys, two girls) had blended into a family.

Frank Caruso's wife had died and Mary Stehle was divorced. They were married in 1989, and suddenly there were seven kids sharing space in the home of Frank, a successful lawyer in Greenwich, Conn.

Jean is now a head librarian at a middle school in Newton, Mass., married to Josh Roy with two children. Glenn is the football coach at the University of St. Thomas.

"Glenn and I were in the middle of the blended family,'' Jean said. "We took a lot of trips into the city. Go to a show, for dinner … any excuse. We had a train stop a quarter-mile away.

"To see the armed guards everywhere for weeks after the attack was shocking. I also believe that, after that unspeakable tragedy, the people of New York City demonstrated remarkable grit and resilience before those words became popular in our vernacular.

"I believe New York City was never a kinder place to live than following the attack. We were looking out for each other.

"It really was a beautiful thing.''