"I proposed on Sept. 16, 2001," Scott Honig recalls.
It was just days after the horrific attacks on the US that stunned the nation and made everyone numb.
But for Scott, it was a call to action and he popped the question to the surprise of his now-wife and her parents, who were literally speechless for 30 seconds when he told them about his plans and formally asked for their blessing.
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The moment in which the critical mass had formed and made him pivot to this momentous decision was not the actual attack or the iconic images of the burning towers that we all remember. In fact, it was something much more deep.
It was the sense of helplessness he saw in one man he saw on TV and who wasn't even supposed to be in the camera's frame. When he saw that man on the screen searching for his girlfriend who was in one of the Twin Towers, Scott realized that the marriage proposal plan he had already begun to formulate could no longer wait; there was simply no time for a calculated, well-thought-out move that would culminate with a marriage proposal. Such a timetable had to be tossed out the window. Now was the moment.
"Steph and I had been dating at that point for just over a year. Seriously dating just over a year. Which for me was probably a little bit soon. I wasn't ready to propose, but I think she and I both knew that this was it, that this was going to lead to marriage. So I had it in my head that maybe December (2001), maybe the spring (2002). I was toying with the ideas of when and how and all of that," Scott explained in a phone interview.
"At the time that this happened, Steph had just graduated from college, from Binghamton University, which is where we met, and she was then living in the city in the Upper West Side with some friends," Scott said, explaining that the couple was maintaining a long-distance relationship.
"Steph was about to start graduate school at Queens College. I was finishing up my last semester of my master's degree at Binghamton. So we were not together geographically at that point. And I was starting my student teaching, and finishing up my classes, and I was set to graduate that December, which I did."
When he first heard the news on Tuesday, September 11, Scott and many of his coworkers could not imagine the scope of the attack, let alone that their lives would change forever.
"So it was maybe my second week of student teaching when 9/11 happened. I was at a high school in Binghamton and somebody came into the office and said that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. And like most people, we thought, what a horrible accident. And somebody in the school where I was in actually set up a TV on a rolling cart and put on the news so people were watching the coverage. I watched live as the second plane hit," he said about how the day's events unfolded in upstate New York. "It was in an office that a bunch of the teachers shared. We weren't showing it to the students. It was for the staff, because this was big, so on their off period teachers wanted to watch the news. I remember everybody thinking as soon as the second plane hit, 'this is not an accident.' Because we were not in the NYC area school just sort of continued as normal, but for somebody who lived down-state I found it very difficult to do my job that day, knowing what had just happened."
Q: Did anyone else beside the teaching staff know about it?
"A little while after the plane had hit, I think the school made an announcement along the lines of 'planes had hit the World Trade Center and that we don't know the details, everybody continue on as usual and if there is something that needs to be updated we will update you.' So the students then knew, and I remember I had a senior, 12th-grade class. I had given them a creative writing prompt, where they had to use like a couple of random words to create a story and it was like 'beach ball,' 'spatula' and stuff like that. And one of the kids wrote a story where a plane flew into a building because the passengers were hitting a beach ball back and forth and got into a cockpit and distracted the pilot and the plane crashed. According to his story they had to pick all the people up off the street with a spatula. I was so horrified that they could joke about this thing that had just happened before we even really knew. But they were just kids, they hadn't put together that this wasn't more than an accident."
Q: Was there a collective gasp when the second plane hit?
"Oh yeah, absolutely. And silence. People were sort of talking before that, and when the second plane hit the room went absolutely silent, I mean absolutely silent. And everybody sort of exchanged knowing glances because we knew this could not have been an accident. So I finished teaching at about noon and the first thing I needed to do was call Steph because although she didn't live or work or go to school in lower Manhattan I didn't know what her plans were that day, I didn't know if she was doing sightseeing the World Trade Center, or visiting friends downtown. And of course, you couldn't get a hold of anyone. The whole country lost cell connectivity. My father has also been on a business trip to North Carolina and he was supposed to be flying home that day. So I am trying to get a hold of him and Steph at the same time. He ended up renting a car because all flights had been grounded, but I didn't know that at the time."
Q: How long before you made contact with her?
"It was a few hours. Maybe 3 or 4 p.m. when I finally got a hold of everybody. And I knew that everybody whom I could think of was safe. And then for the rest of that day, and well into the night, I was glued to the news. We were trying to figure out what happened. I had some friends coming over to my apartment and we just sat and stared and cried and hugged. It was an awful day as you know."
Scott didn't know that this rather trivial gathering of people to watch the news and keep up with the latest on the tragedy would set in motion a chain of events that would have him engaged just five days later.
"I remember some point in the evening, after the initial wave of horror and fear and past the news coverage shifted in its tone to speculating on why this happened and who was responsible, and the recovery effort of trying to get close enough to ground zero to start looking for survivors. There was a female news reporter standing on a street somewhere close enough to ground zero but far enough where she wasn't in danger or covered in smoke. And more interesting to me was what was happening behind her: A man walked into the shot and he was holding a little piece of paper which I later figured out was a photograph, and the reporter's microphone picked up his voice just enough for me to hear him say to other people who were just sort of in the background, 'Have you seen this woman?; this is my girlfriend, she worked in Tower 2, has anybody seen her?' and then he said 'I was supposed to propose to her tonight.' And it broke me. That moment broke me.
"I knew from everything I had watched on the news that the likelihood that he was going to find her alive was small. For the most part if by that evening you hadn't heard from a person or you haven't seen them it wasn't looking good. So when I heard that man say that, it sort of immediately clicked. What am I waiting for? Anything could happen at any moment, so if I know that this is the person I want to be with and spend a life with, why am I waiting until December, why until spring? I am going to do this. And I started making the plan."
Q: So in the span of less than a week you had it all figured out with the ring and all?
"So I immediately called my parents and I said that I was going to come home this weekend, that I am going to bring Steph with me and that I am going to ask her to marry me. They were thrilled and all that. The plan was that I was going to leave Binghamton after work on Friday, drive through the city, grab Steph and drive to my parents' home, which was weird because they had literally just moved two weeks before."
Q: You weren't concerned that she would pick up that something was off?
"I think she saw it as my way of reacting to the devastating thing that happened, and I was terrified she and my father were in some sort of danger and I wanted to see them and hug them. So I don't think it registered to her that she was going to get engaged that weekend. So I picked her and I drove to my parents' new house, so I needed directions to get to my parents' house because I had no idea where it was.
"So the next day, they were still unpacking and they were going to be painting the kitchen cabinet white. Steph actually had some experience, so it worked out well. So she and I got started helping them to paint, and then I had to intentionally anger her, by telling her that my grandparents had called and they needed my help, which was a complete lie."
Scott explained that this charade resulted in Steph staying alone for most of the day with his parents and it was obvious that this move left her perplexed because after all, he was the one who insisted on going to visit them.
"So I left her alone with my parents painting cabinets, and as I walked out the door, she shot me this death look, like I can't believe you are leaving me to do this," he recalled. To his relief, despite Steph being outraged, it was safe to assume at this point that she was not suspecting that this was a ruse for a marriage proposal.
"And so, I did not go and see my parents, at least not yet. I drove to Stony Brook, I called her parents Joyce and Marty on the way, and I said, 'Are you home, I want to come see you.' And they said, 'Oh, you and Steph are going to come see us.' And I said, 'No no, just me'. They thought it was weird but it did not dawn on them what was happening. So we were sitting on their back patio, and I said some nice things about Steph, and I didn't tell them the whole Sept. 11 story [about the man searching for his girlfriend), I just didn't want it to be a downer. I ended it by saying 'So I am here to ask your permission to ask her to marry me.'
"Their jaw dropped open, I can't imagine how they didn't figure out why I was there, but they didn't and we sat in silence for probably about 30 seconds. They were just in shock, and thank goodness for my darling brother-in-law that I love dearly because he broke the silence by saying 'Well, I'm in.' And we all laughed and cried and hugged."
"So I left there with their blessing and with an engagement ring [an heirloom from Steph's mother that has been passed down from generation to generation in the family]. I knew that I wanted Steph to have something that was from me. Since the ring wasn't from me, that's when I drove to Valley Stream where I grew up and picked up my grandparents and they helped me shop for a pair of diamond earrings. We spent a few hours finding the right pair of hearings. Steph is not a flashy or showy person, so we got a pair of diamond studs that she wears to this day, she never takes them out, I then dropped my grandparents' home and came back to my parent's house in Plainview and I walked in and I got an even fiercer death stare from Steph because it had been four hours and the cabinets were painted and I didn't do any of it. Rightfully so [referring to her anger].
Scott explained that despite Steph's anger all-too apparent, she kept her cool, and eventually he managed to explain away his absence in a convincing manner.
"I made up a story about how my grandparents needed help, it was all a lie, and she bought it. And later that night, Steph and I were just watching TV in my parents' basement, we were in our pajamas and I had the diamond ring in one pocket and a pair of diamond earrings in the other pocket. Eventually, I just decided at around 10:30 at night, I asked her to get off the couch and walk over to a different part of the basement and she said, 'Why what are you doing?' And I said,' Nothing, just come with me.'
"We walked over and took her hand and said nice things about her and about our relationship and all of this. I didn't bring up Sept. 11 because I didn't want it to be a downer, but I told her at a later date [that this was the trigger]. I got down on one knee and I started reaching into my pocket, and she looked down and said, 'What are you doing? What are you doing?' and I asked her if she would marry me. She started tearing up and hugged me and I put the ring on her and she was just hugging and crying. I whispered in her ear, 'You haven't answered the question yet.' And she responded, 'Yes!!!' We ran upstairs, she threw open my parents' bedroom door, dove into the bed between them, and shouted: 'I am going to be your daughter.'"
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