Power Breakfast: Ground Zero

At 7:50 a.m. yesterday morning, I watched commuters stream out of the World Trade Center Path Station in Lower Manhattan. My vantage point was the third floor of 55 Church Street, which houses the Church & Dey Restaurant in the Millenium Hilton.

The view from the bar facing the picture window, where I leafed through a copy of the New York Daily News as I waited for my breakfast mate, was nothing less than extraordinary. There in front of me was the entire site of Ground Zero followed by Battery Park City.

The location is now an active construction site. I could count at least three cranes and saw lots of scaffolding. The Path Station is the most visible sign of the return to life in the wake of the September 11th attacks set amid what was formerly rubble.

I can’t say the room was packed. The buzz was a far cry from what I have experienced at the Regency Hotel in New York or here in Boston. Nevertheless, the mere fact that one can once again have a working breakfast in this site that has been central to so much that has happened over the course of the last 6 1/2 years is a remarkable testament to the resilience of New Yorkers, Americans and all human beings.