skindberg@post-journal.com
The trip to New York City had been just shy of a year in the making.
The brainchild of my son, Matthew, the August weekend was my 2020 Christmas gift from him, an opportunity to see my beloved Yankees play at the ballpark in the Bronx for the first time.
Although we had tickets for two games, we were only able to see the first one because Hurricane Henri was forecast to hit the Big Apple that weekend, meaning that there was a very real possibility that our return flight to Buffalo would be canceled. The prospect of being stranded at John F. Kennedy International Airport was not something Matthew and I wanted to chance, so it was a rather easy decision to forgo the Yankees’ Saturday game and head for home via Amtrak that afternoon instead.
But before we arrived at Penn Station to board the train, I had one place I HAD to pay homage. It was Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center, which terrorists destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001. So Matthew and I took an Uber to lower Manhattan. Upon arrival, we had to wait for the memorial to open to the public. Once it was, Matthew — a frequent visitor to the Big Apple — knew exactly where to go, making a beeline to the perimeter of the South Pool where he found the name we were looking for — Celoron native Amy King, a flight attendant on the doomed United Airlines Flight 175 that was flown into the South Tower.
I took a moment to bow my head to honor her memory.