Never Forget: February 26, 1993

Today is a very sad memorial, as on this day in 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time, as a bomb left in a van by Islamic terrorists exploded in an underground parking garage, killing six people and injuring over 1,000.

The bomb exploded at 12:18 PM that day. I was working at the Tower Records store in Greenwich Village, for the TRIP company. I'll never forget going to lunch that afternoon and hearing the alarms from the fire trucks and ambulances that were racing to the scene, and I remember seeing smoke in the sky on Broadway to the south. I put on the radio to discover their was an explosion at the World Trade Center, and it turned out it was deliberately done by Islamic extremists who hoped to collapse one the towers into the other. I will also remember seeing those people who worked in the World Trade Center leaving the buildings with soot covering their faces, and an unbelievable scene of carnage down in the garage where the bomb went off.

Six people died that day:

John DiGiovanni, 45, Dental equipment salesman
Robert Kirkpatrick, 61, Port Authority Senior Maintenance Supervisor
Steve Knapp, 48, Port Authority Mechanical Supervisor
Monica Rodriguez Smith, 34, Port Authority Office Assistant
William Macko, 57, Port Authority Mechanical Supervisor
Wilfredo Mercado, 37, Purchasing Agent for Windows On The World

A memorial to those victims was dedicated in the rotunda of the World Trade Center (pictured top right). But the memorial was destroyed on September 11, 2001. Only one small piece of the entire memorial survived, and it had the name "John" on it (from 1993 victim John DiGiovanni, pictured top left). At times these 1993 victims have been overlooked since 9/11, but please say a prayer for all six of these victims today.

They will never be forgotten, nor will that terrible day in 1993.