story1549.xml
Title
story1549.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-08-29
911DA Story: Story
Though my home is Manhattan, I was attending the Texas Travel Industry Association conference in Austin, TX, and preparing to fly to Tacoma, WA early that morning, so I'd not turned on my TV.
A colleague called my room to alert me, and commiserate: when I called my husband in NY - 2 blocks from the Empire State Building - he knew only that a plane had struck the WTC: how odd it felt to be telling this news to someone barely two miles from the site of the tragedy itself.
My taxi was waiting, so we drove to the airport, since flights had not yet been grounded. En route, we heard of the Pentagon strike, and then the Pennsylvania crash. By the time we arrived at the airport, it was closed down, so I returned to my hotel and the conference, where there was a great sense of community and support for the two New Yorkers in their midst.
Several days later, my colleague and I drove East: whenever we stopped for food, we would meet others crossing the country in the opposite direction, heading home, too, and share stories. During daylight hours, simple sights were comforting: cows grazing placidly on a hillside; the sunshine and blue sky that marked that week.
I was lucky that the one friend who worked in the WTC - and who had experienced the 1993 bombing and survived a subsequent bout with breast cancer - had succeeded in walking down from the 66th floor. Her two grown children, both of whom work in the area, were sure she had perished, until later in the day when they made contact.
Several weeks later, I retrieved a roll of photos from a conference in Bermuda in early Septemebr, to which my husband and I had cruised from NY: and there, taken on September 1, was my last photo of the Twin Towers.
A colleague called my room to alert me, and commiserate: when I called my husband in NY - 2 blocks from the Empire State Building - he knew only that a plane had struck the WTC: how odd it felt to be telling this news to someone barely two miles from the site of the tragedy itself.
My taxi was waiting, so we drove to the airport, since flights had not yet been grounded. En route, we heard of the Pentagon strike, and then the Pennsylvania crash. By the time we arrived at the airport, it was closed down, so I returned to my hotel and the conference, where there was a great sense of community and support for the two New Yorkers in their midst.
Several days later, my colleague and I drove East: whenever we stopped for food, we would meet others crossing the country in the opposite direction, heading home, too, and share stories. During daylight hours, simple sights were comforting: cows grazing placidly on a hillside; the sunshine and blue sky that marked that week.
I was lucky that the one friend who worked in the WTC - and who had experienced the 1993 bombing and survived a subsequent bout with breast cancer - had succeeded in walking down from the 66th floor. Her two grown children, both of whom work in the area, were sure she had perished, until later in the day when they made contact.
Several weeks later, I retrieved a roll of photos from a conference in Bermuda in early Septemebr, to which my husband and I had cruised from NY: and there, taken on September 1, was my last photo of the Twin Towers.
Collection
Citation
“story1549.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 23, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/13979.