The weather last week reminded Dr. Ray Girnys of Sept. 11, 2001.
Crisp, clear, sunny. Perfect for drinking a cup of coffee outside in the morning.
Back then, Girnys would go into work at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn at 5:30 a.m., and after rounds, the surgeon would sip a cup off coffee on the corner with a friend.
Looking up, they could see the sun rise over a cemetery until it illuminated the twin towers of the World Trade Center about three miles away.
Girnys can’t go back to that place today.
He lives and works in Greenwood now, and the New York skyline — and the world — won’t ever be like it was then.
“The best way to describe it is like looking in a mirror that you’re so used to seeing something and then all of a sudden there’s no nose there. You know it’s supposed to be there, but it’s just not,” Girnys said during a solemn interview at his office Thursday. “It is probably one of the reasons why I came here. Just because of the memory of too many people who died that day.”
In New York, 2,750 lost their lives when Muslim extremists hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center. More than 200 more died at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania that day. The attacks led to a prolonged war against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, which continues a decade later.
Today, Girnys plans to go to church and spend the rest of the day in quiet reflection of the worst terror attack in American history. He’ll be thinking about what he calls “the day America grew up.”
“As a parent, when your child realizes that there’s no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, it’s not anything dramatic, but it still is life-altering. And I always tell people that the day that the towers were hit and fell was the day that America lost its innocence,” he said.
Girnys, 55, was chief of staff at Lutheran Medical Center, which is about 100 yards from the river that separates Brooklyn from Lower Manhattan. He had 700 doctors under him, a third of whom were Arabic, at the Level 1 trauma center.
The stoutly built Brooklyn native talks openly about the facts of 9/11 — where he was, his hospital’s actions, etc. — but when it comes to discussing the human response, he chokes up.
“What was the amazing thing about it was that people ...” he said, his voice catching as he closed his eyes tightly, finally looking down at his hands and resuming. “People went out of their way to help each other.
“And it wasn’t necessarily professionals. When you say random acts of kindness ...” he said, a tear rolling down his cheek.
Two tractor trailers came to the hospital from a nearby Costco, without being asked, filled with water, blankets, flashlights, anything needed for an emergency, he said. They parked, and the drivers said to take whatever was needed at the hospital.
Girnys was in a medical executive committee meeting on that Tuesday.
“There was a commotion from one of the administrators who has an in with the fire department. He all of a sudden comes into the room, pulls up the curtains and we see the World Trade Center on fire,” Girnys recalled. “And then, as we’re watching, we see the second plane go in.”
Like the rest of New York and the United States in general, the hospital wasn’t prepared, he said. It entered disaster mode, flying by the seat of its pants.
Nurses sought patients who could be discharged, a blood drive was set up and the hospital delayed elective surgeries.
The hospital was an evacuation route for anyone below the towers, and ferries carried thousands of patients to it.
But only one was injured enough to be admitted.
“We tried to prepare ourselves for an onslaught of mass casualties that never came,” Girnys said. “People came, but they were just dirty and in shock.”
It was the worst part of the tragedy for the surgeon.
“Somebody who works for a living to try and help people, having the worst disaster in American history and not having anything to do and not being able to help, was the one of the most frustrating things that you can do. Being a bystander is not something that we were used to doing.”
Girnys didn’t go home for two days immediately after the attacks, but the effects stayed with him and other New Yorkers much longer.
The church he belonged to, St. Ephrem’s, lost 12 of its members on 9/11.
Girnys’s son had begun his second day of high school on Sept. 11, and many of classmates had parents who were police officers and civil servants.
His brother-in-law was on the 31st floor of the second tower when the planes hit. He was one of the lucky ones who ignored commands to sit tight and instead “ran the hell out of the building,” Girnys said.
Commutes lengthened exponentially. The five-mile drive between the two hospitals where Girnys worked took an hour and a half as security checked every car.
“Every day you were greeted by police in riot gear. Anywhere that you would go you had to show identification,” he said. “It was like any crazy movie you would see where there was a takeover, like an armed occupation.”
Throughout all the reminders of the terror, a horrible smell lingered.
“That soot stayed for at least three months all over the city. Some days when the wind would blow right it just smelled like a slaughterhouse. It was just a horrendous odor of destruction,” Girnys said.
He’s six years removed now from living in New York, but Girnys said it’s very emotionally taxing to visit ground zero. Still, he wants to go when he visits in a month.
He likes the concept of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, saying it will aid healing. His only problem is that the builders are keeping religion out of it.
“In the early days, religion was the only thing that kept the people together. ... In times of disaster, they go looking for spiritual support,” Girnys said.
He has a personal connection to the memorial. His son, who was starting high school in September 2001, is now an electrical engineer.
“For the last two years, his project for the firm he works with is building the memorial,” Girnys said. “That gives me peace.”
• Contact Charlie Smith at csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.
