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After years of empty sky, a new view is welcome
After years of empty sky, a new view is welcome
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2012
By MIKE KELLY
RECORD COLUMNIST
Ray Cilli waited 11 years to see the gap filled in the Manhattan skyline.
“Finally, there is something there,” Cilli said Monday, as he squinted into the morning sun and took in the new World Trade Center in the distance from the Department of Public Works lot in Little Ferry, where he drives a street sweeper.
“We’ve needed this.”
It’s been 11 years since we lost 2,750 innocent souls and two majestic towers in lower Manhattan. And for 10 of those years, as we mourned the dead and wondered what had become of our supposedly safe world, more than a few of us also lamented the absence of the Twin Towers and what they symbolized.
It was as if a communal lodestone was missing for the region — a guidepost for turnpike truckers as they approached New York City, a compass point for disoriented commuters as they ascended to the Manhattan streetscape from the subway, a peaceful sight from North Jersey on those clear winter afternoons when the setting sun seemed to turn the glass towers into orange Popsicles.
But this 9/11 anniversary is different.
