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by Joanne Viskup

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As a little girl growing up in Brooklyn, I never thought I lived in "the city." I guess I knew I lived in a city, but to me "the city" was "The City" Manhattan. I never called that borough Manhattan and still don't really. (Only perhaps occaisionally to non-New Yorkers.)

To me The City was taxi cabs and theatres and skyscrapers. We didn't have any of that in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. So, any trip to or even through The City was exciting.

Many weekends my family would take the West Side Highway and head Upstate to see my grandparents. I remember when the Twin Towers were still under construction. I couldn't have been more that four. It was exciting to pass by and see the progress the workers were making. One afternoon we noticed something extraordinary. Someone had spray painted the name "Joanne" on one of the girders. My Dad joked that he had a friend that worked there and he told him to write my name. I knew that wasn't true, but it was still thrilling for me and it became the thing to do when we drove up to Nana and Grandpa's house to check and see if my name was still there.

Work continued of course and eventually my name was covered up as the gleaming Towers were finished, but I knew my name was under there somewhere.

Several years later, I visited the World Trade Center with my sixth grade class. Our teacher, Miss Carvo, had often said that if she had her way she would take us on a trip once a week. She always felt that there was more to learn outside of our school walls than inside them.

The whole sixth grade went on this trip. The excitement started when we realized we that we were taking the subway to The City instead of a school bus. When we entered the lobby of the South Tower I started feeling just how large the place was, like a vertical city within The City.

It was a perfectly beautiful day, but very windy. This meant that we weren't allowed to go to the outside observation deck, but had to settle for the indoor one on the 107th floor. The view took my breath away as I saw what looked like the whole world spread out before me.

The Empire State building looked to be just a few short blocks from where we were although of course it is halfway uptown. "Somehow being up here makes it look that way," our guide told us. And then he showed us something else.

He positioned us in a corner of the South Tower that looked onto the North Tower. He explained that the towers were made to bend and sway in the wind, otherwise, "on a windy day like today they would just crack and break." It was hard to imagine something as massive as the building we were in breaking, but we were able wrap our minds around the science of what he was saying. As we watched the North Tower sway, we realized that we were swaying too. We may have been standing on a floor, but we certainly weren't on the ground. We were in the sky.

After we left the World Trade Center, Miss Carvo decided that it was too beautiful a day to just get right back on the subway. She convinced the other teachers to let us all walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and take the train from there. They agreed.

We started off in our orderly classes, two by two with our teachers leading us. Suddenly, Miss Carvo led us to the left and we began to pass the other classes. One of the boys asked her if we could run and she said yes, as long as we waited for her on the other side. So, the whole sixth grade of P.S. 160 took off running our own mini-marathon across the Brooklyn Bridge. I came in 13th. Out of 90.

A teacher like that, in a city like that, on a day like that? It's something you never forget. It was 1979. I was 11. The World Trade Center was 6.

Learn more about this author, Joanne Viskup.

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