He had a younger sister, Kerri, who-like all little sisters-was a pain in the ass, but you could hear the affection and love he held for her.Īs with all of us, occasional storm clouds invaded Kyle’s sky. He had a tough but loving father, a Lieutenant with the NYPD’s Joint Terrorist Task Force His mother was kind, a trust-fund baby, which is how they could afford the family’s nice Brooklyn apartment. He was a gifted student at Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School. Until 9/11, Kyle’s life-like that morning’s sky-had been pretty clear. He even did his best to clean the dust and ash from the wings. He found some clean clothes that would probably fit her well-enough, and guided her to the bathroom so she could shower. The girl was filthy, covered in the very ash that blanketed Manhattan.

She couldn’t answer the most basic questions-where do you live? Are you hurt? What should I call you? Left with no other option, Kyle led her home to his family’s comfortable apartment-if nothing else, the skies were still clear over Brooklyn, while the world to their backs lay beneath hellish clouds of smoke and ash and debris. It was obvious the girl was in some sort of trouble. He got her to her feet, and guided her back into the crowd heading toward Brooklyn. The girl was definitely not a bird, those wings were definitely not made for flying, and she was most definitely pondering the waters of the East River below–she was about to jump. It was a girl about his age, wearing a pair of costume wings-the type you might wear in a play or to a Halloween party. When he finally reached the bird, he saw what it truly was. He turned back, fighting his way through the crowd. He kept walking, then something told him to go back. Kyle was concentrating on the task at hand-keeping his feet moving-when he noticed something in his peripheral vision: a giant bird. Everybody knew they needed to evacuate to Brooklyn, where hopefully they’d be safe. The crowd was nervous, but strangely calm. On 9/11, sixteen-year-old Kyle Donahue was among the throngs walking away from the wreckage in Manhattan after the planes struck and the Twin Towers collapsed.

Nobody would want to see tomorrow, not that horrible morning. Some pilots joke that these skies are so clear you can see tomorrow. September 11th, 2001, dawned with New York skies exemplifying what pilots refer to as “severe clear”: unlimited ceiling, unlimited visibility. When the space shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after launch, it was one of the deepest blue skies I’ve ever seen, so clear that I could clearly see that horrible plume all the way from Tallahassee. In documentaries about the JFK assassination, a morning shower had stopped, leaving behind beautiful blue skies. Such an ominous sounding term for a perfect sky.īut somehow, when tragedy strikes, people remember the sky.

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner