story11539.xml

story11539.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-06-21

This really isn't my story at all. It is my mother's. But yoiu'll never hear her tell it. She is a survivor of 9/11. It scares me to say that. I almost lost the single most important person in my life at the time. My grandmother and I were in Phoenix, AZ we were awaiting the arrival of movers who would be there in a few days to pack our things in a big moving truck. We were moving to NYC. My mother recieved a great job offer in NYC in the World Trade Center. She had to start early. She flew to NYC and started working the week before. She would call every day and tell how beautiful it was to see the Statue of Liberty from her office and how she could see practically the entire city from one side from her building. On September 11, 2001 I woke up at 6 am to get ready for school. My grandmother is normally already up and watching the TV. I turned the radio on to listen to the morning news before school. "Breaking News", the radio announcer said, "the World Trade Center is on fire!" I ran out of my room and out into the living room where I expected to see it on tv but for some reason my grandmother didn't have the tv on. I screamed "TURN THE TV ON!!!!!!" She didn't know and was worried. There is was, smoke arising from one of the buildings. We didn'd know which building my Mother was in. Then a few moments later we saw the second plane coming for the second tower. When it hit my grandmother dropped on the couch and started to cry. We tryed calling my Mother but all the lines were dead. Then, what seemed to be a few minutes later, the second tower fell. Then the first, and still no word from my Mother. Finally the phone rang, but it was just people calling worried about Mom. My friend came from school and spent the day with me. Four hours later, a phone call from my hysterical Mother broke my solid grandmother into tears. My mother's building started to be evacuated when the first tower was hit but then they told the people inside that it as okay to go back to their offices. My mother, a smoker, decided to go have a cigarette. On her way down the 2nd set of elevators her floor was hit by a plane flown by a mad terrorist. She was in shoke and some people she had just met a week earlier had died. This haunts my Mother to this day and I have never again said anything negative about her smoking.