Glen Mathes was heading to work at about 9 a.m. ET on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
Just like millions of others that day in the New York City metropolitan area.
It was a gorgeous, crisp Tuesday morning and Mathes was on his way to Belmont Park, where he worked at the time as the director of communications for the New York Racing Association. A busy weekend of stakes was upcoming and he was eager to reach his office.
But as he walked through the lobby of his apartment building, he was told some ominous news.
"Someone told me a plane had just hit the World Trade Center," he said.
At the time, Mathes assumed it was a small, private plane that had crashed into the North Tower of the mammoth 110-story towers in Lower Manhattan. So he started driving to work.
Then at 9:03 a.m., while driving on the Southern State Parkway and listening to Don Imus' radio show, he heard the news that shook him to the core.
He listened, almost in disbelief, to news that a second plane, this one a jet, had smashed into the second tower and he—and the rest of the world—knew the first crash was not an accident.
Twenty-five years ago, the United States was under attack Sept. 11 and the business world became the least of anyone's concerns at that moment in time.
Mathes, like everyone else that morning, was trying to process what was happening.
"It was so crazy. I don't know how else to put it," he said. "No one could understand what was happening."
When Mathes arrived at Belmont Park and went inside, it was eerily quiet. He quickly headed up to the top floor, where the press office was located, and then went out to the roof of the track where others had gathered to look on in disbelief at what was unfolding about 23 miles away.
Mathes said Paul Moran, the late Newsday turf writer, was there on the roof and saw the explosion when the second jet hit the South Tower.
Also on the roof was Terry Meyocks, then NYRA's chief operating officer and president.
"It was a dark day with no racing and a security guard told me what happened. I turned on the television and then we went up to the roof," Meyocks said. "It was devastating. It was very shocking and so emotional."
By 10:30 a.m. both towers had crumbled to the ground, killing more than 2,000 people and inflicting the kind of destruction that Baby Boomers had never seen—or could imagine—on American soil.
Streams of gray ash from Ground Zero surged through the streets in an easterly direction toward the other end of Manhattan, where thousands streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge to escape the island.
People emerging from the vicinity and heading north away from the scene were covered with the gray dust as they either ran or walked with a dazed look toward safety.
At Belmont Park, workers and horsemen were spared from the physical consequences of the collapse but, as the day went on, they would see the images of what happened on television and try to come to grips in their own way with what happened.
"When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I can remember the sorrow and shock everyone felt when President Kennedy was assassinated," Mathes said. "I think 9/11 was a lot like that except it was scarier because you didn't know what was next. Were there more jets?"
Like other sporting events, racing was halted immediately after the terrorist attacks and NYRA officials huddled with city and state law enforcement personnel to discuss the risk assessment for resuming racing and allowing fans on the grounds.
During the closure, Belmont Park and Aqueduct Racetrack became a staging area for the vital supplies to help rescue workers at Ground Zero.
"We wanted to do whatever we could to help the community. We all needed to come together and work together to get through it," Meyocks said.
Amid intense safety concerns, racing resumed at Belmont Park Sept. 19, eight days after the attacks, and a crowd of a little more than 5,000 turned out.
"We had to do it at the right time. We had discussions with the trustees and the chairman (Barry K. Schwartz) and then the state to make sure everyone was on the same page," said Meyocks, now the CEO and president of the Jockeys' Guild. "You wanted to make sure you were opening at the right time. And doing the right thing for the country, the city, and the sport. We had to do what we had to do, and do it in a professional manner."
Returning to normalcy in New York after 9/11 was a tedious process, but returning to work and once again being able to go to Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium for games helped baseball fans in the Big Apple move forward. Racing fans found similar comfort in once again being able to spend a fall afternoon at beautiful Belmont Park.
"We knew how important it was for our fans to get back into their normal routines after what happened, but the timing had to be right," Meyocks said. "We had to be sensitive to what was happening around us with so much tragedy. We couldn't start racing that weekend after 9/11. We had to wait and we basically reopened when they resumed playing baseball (Sept. 21)."
On that emotionally charged day, the card started with a moment of silence in the winner's circle for those who lost their lives in the attacks, and there was bugler Sam Grossman playing "America" as an American flag was shown on closed-circuit screens.
Yet for NYRA, the pressures of conducting racing on a Friday afternoon in late September were dwarfed by having the Breeders' Cup scheduled for Belmont Park Oct. 27.
Numerous meetings were held with state and federal officials to determine the risks when the nation was still on a high alert for the possibility of another attack to decide if the event should take place.
Finally, the decision to hold the event was made and Belmont Park was filled that day with a small army of armed police and sharpshooters and bomb-sniffing dogs.
The Breeders' Cup, which was the first international sporting event in the area since 9/11, went off without a security incident and ended with an incredible finish in the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) when America's Tiznow defeated Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (G1) winner Sakhee by a nose after a dramatic stretch duel.
"It was such an emotional event and it was successful," Meyocks said. "I was proud of it and everyone was proud to be a part of it."
Looking back, a saying to arise out of the tragedy was "Never Forget." For some who were born after 2001, that concept may not resonate. But 25 years later, when you ask people such as Meyocks or Mathes or anyone old enough to fully comprehend what was happening in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, and to our way of life, 9/11 is nearly impossible to forget.
"It's hard to believe it happened 25 years ago," Meyocks said. "But there are some parts of it that are so clear in my mind, it's as if it happened yesterday. You can't forget."
