Michael Cody is a Vietnam War veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart medal. His patriotism and love of country prompted him to set up a week-long exhibit of photos from the September 11 World Trade Center attacks.
Cody happened to be in Manhattan on that day at the VA hospital and when the commotion first occurred, he ran over to the site, bought a disposal camera and began taking pictures. “I didn’t know what I was taking at the time,” he told MidHudsonNews.com.
Some of those photos were quite graphic – he caught one of the planes crashing into a tower, the towers in flames, and victims jumping to their deaths from floors above where the planes struck.
“It’s a horrible experience, but you had to be in the war and you also had to be there to understand what this is all about,” he said. “You have to educate the younger generation because people just forgot.”
Cody, who developed veterans’ parks in several locations in Wallkill, bought an estimated 80 disposal cameras during the first two weeks after the attacks to capture the images of the tragedy.
He even returned to attend a great many of the funerals of the first responders who rushed to the World Trade Center after the planes crashed into the buildings.
