There is a time in everyone's life where you can remember with perfect recall where you were, what the weather was like, how the sights and sounds around you were. The day George Bush came to Ground Zero in NYC, I was there. When this famous photo was taken, I was to his left and rear. It was the most memorable day of my life. A sad day, but a proud day, a day of esperanza, "hope."

Here is my experience: "Two F-15 fighter planes buzzed the New York sky, and a few minutes later three helicopters came flying over one at a time. I knew that two were dummies, and one was the president, as this is standard practice. I went back to the staging area near ground zero, and there hundreds of us waited for the president. The secret service arrived a few minutes later and climbed up on trucks so that they could watch the windows of the buildings (the ones effected by the blast) for snipers. Once they thought it was safe, the president came by. Bush walked around the huge crowd of rescue workers. I was standing on a 5 gallon bucket which gave me a better vantage point. When he came by, I stuck out my hand, and he shook it. I yelled out, "when are we gonna start bombing" and the crowd roared in agreement to my words. After the president was Mayor Guiliani, then the Governor. Then came former Mayor Ed Koch who seemed very sad. Koch shook my hand as well. The Mayors were followed by the Greek Patriarch, a Priest, and a couple of Rabbis. George was standing with a retired firefighter, and was talking to everyone. I was on his left as were the guys on a dump truck who shouted to him "we can't hear" you. He responded with "I can hear you, and the people of New York can hear you-and soon the people who did this to these buildings will hear you!" The crowd screamed with excitement, then burst out into God Bless America, it was quite emotional, and there was not a dry eye for 1000 feet. After that the president left, and the work a ground zero once again started up. The digging by hand was as fierce as ever; the men were really charged up by the president's visit."

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CNN Wrote: "NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush arrived on the southern tip of Manhattan on Friday afternoon to see for himself the almost unimaginable devastation meted out upon New York's financial district, when two 767 jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center's landmark twin towers during Tuesday's morning rush. There, he was greeted by a raucous crowd of construction workers and rescue personnel, all of whom seemed recharged by the president's visit after more than three days of backbreaking work, removing chunks of concrete and mangled steel, and looking for survivors. Grabbing a bullhorn, Bush told the chanting, cheering crowd, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon." "The nation sends its love and compassion to everybody who's here. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud, and may God bless America," Bush added, raising his arm. The workers responded with an resounding, energetic chant of "USA, USA!"

"The president put it on the line" when on September 14 he climbed atop the rubble left by the collapse of the two skyscrapers after terrorists flew two hijacked passenger airliners into them, collapsing both and entombing almost 3,000 people...The area "was still smoking and pretty toxic," the firefighter added. "Also, from a security standpoint someone could have had a flashlight bomb and done some damage. But there he [Bush] was and I can tell you that was really a shot in the arm for rescuers," whom, he said, were literally clawing at the debris looking for survivors, including 343 fellow firefighters who turned up missing and are now presumed dead." --New York Fire Department Captain Daniel Daly

Note: You can hear the audio or watch the video of this highly emotional moment on the White House website here. I had a tape recorder in my pocket that day, and it was on. When I find the tape, I will post it here. It recorded more than what the White House has available.

“You couldn’t brief me, you couldn’t brief anybody on ground zero until you saw it. It was like – it was ghostly. Like you’re having a bad dream and you’re walking through the dream.” --President George Bush

Here are pictures I took a few minutes after his speech.

This is after I shook his hand, I turned to the right and grabbed this shot. Governor Pataki is the man in the hat to his left. I was standing on a gallon bucket, and tapped the guy in front of me to duck when I snapped the picture.

Picture I took while we waited for the President to arrive. It was a truly miserable day. The men who yelled "we can't hear you" are on a dump truck. You can see them, above the crowd, not the man in the GREEN JACKET and red hat in the middle of the photo. I was originally on that truck, but when the crowd started to build, I got off because the truck was wet and slippery, and the crowd was pushing in to see the President. Where I ended up standing actually was a more interesting location.

Newspapers from that week.

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