story6420.xml

story6420.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

I was working in an outpatient department at Milford Hospital (Milford,CT) on that day. The patients were watching the TV's as they were waiting to complete their procedures. When suddenly, someone yelled for us to look at the screen. What we saw was one of the WTC towers on fire. All of us thought that it had been an accident, but as time went on, we knew that wasn't the case. My daughter attends the Fashion Institute of Technology on 27th St in Manhattan. I was hoping and praying that she was safely asleep in her dorm room that morning. I called my husband at work. He was listening to the days' events on the radio. We, and our other children, and immediate family, tried frantically to call our daughter, but we couldn't get through to Manhattan. One of the patients' had a son at the time who was also attending college in Manhattan. She didn't have anyway she could contact her son. She and I sat together, and prayed for our children. I couldn't concentrate on my work anymore, and just broke down. Finally, around 11:00 a.m., my daughter called from Manhattan. She said she had slept through the attacks (she was app. 3 miles from the WTC). My mother-in-law finally had gotten through to her and told her what was happening around her. She said when she opened her window, all she could hear was people screaming, continous sirens, and the fighter jets flying over the city. She and her friends tried to walk down to Ground Zero, but access was blocked off. She kept in communication with us as much as possible. She knew she couldn't come home as trains were stopped, and I knew I couldn't drive in to get her as traffic into and out of Manhattan was shut down. She finally was able to come home on the train the next day. Her school had bomb threats and evacuations in the 48 hours following the attack. She got off the train, and came over to me, and hugged me tightly and just cried. She said she was so scared. Grand Central Station was empty except for soldiers carrying machine guns. The station was surrounded by police and army vehicles. She had walked off the train with some firefighters from Bridgeport who had just been to the WTC sight. She had listened to their stories of the horrific sights and tasks they had just experienced. She was glad to be home, but she continued to be very worried about her friends that could not get home,and continued to try to stay in contact with them until I drove her back to school that Sunday night. She just kept asking why did this have to happen now, her dream of going to F.I.T. was finally coming true,why?