story8970.xml
Title
story8970.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-01-17
911DA Story: Story
My name is Linda Brown and I live in Wichita, Kansas. September 11th started out just like any other Tuesday. My two oldest kids drove themselves to school, and my eleven year old son decided he was going to ride his bike. I started getting ready for work when I heard the devistating news about one of the towers getting hit. My sister called me on the phone, and we watched the news together in disbelief. She was so frightened about what was happening. She kept saying she wanted to go to school and get her little boy. I kept telling her he'll be fine and I finally convinced her to leave him there.
It was about 3:30 that afternoon, my son's school was letting out. I work across the street from his school and on the other side of the intersection is a gasoline station. The traffic was horrible, the gas lines were about twenty cars deep. Everyone thought gasoline was going to skyrocket in price. I went out to the intersection to help the children get across the street safely. Then I went back to work. It wasn't five minutes later when my son's friend came running into the shop, yelling Joseph has(my son) been hit by a truck on his bike. It was total chaos, Joseph was rushed to the hospital by ambulance as a level one head trauma.
Later that night, the man driving the truck came to the hospital. He told us he had never driven on that street before. He was just trying to avoid the gasoline station.
Joseph spent two days in intensive care. He fractured his skull, broke his nose and orbit bones in four places. Along with alot of road rash.
If I would have listened to my sister,and taken him out of school that would'nt have happened. I can look back at it now and say we were the lucky ones. A lot of people were not.
It was about 3:30 that afternoon, my son's school was letting out. I work across the street from his school and on the other side of the intersection is a gasoline station. The traffic was horrible, the gas lines were about twenty cars deep. Everyone thought gasoline was going to skyrocket in price. I went out to the intersection to help the children get across the street safely. Then I went back to work. It wasn't five minutes later when my son's friend came running into the shop, yelling Joseph has(my son) been hit by a truck on his bike. It was total chaos, Joseph was rushed to the hospital by ambulance as a level one head trauma.
Later that night, the man driving the truck came to the hospital. He told us he had never driven on that street before. He was just trying to avoid the gasoline station.
Joseph spent two days in intensive care. He fractured his skull, broke his nose and orbit bones in four places. Along with alot of road rash.
If I would have listened to my sister,and taken him out of school that would'nt have happened. I can look back at it now and say we were the lucky ones. A lot of people were not.
Collection
Citation
“story8970.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 20, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/15313.