story1595.xml

story1595.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-30

I had booted up my computer and signed on to the internet around 8:30 am that morning. I left the computer to sit out on the front porch with my husband, who was waiting for someone to pick him up. He left and I returned to the computer about 9:20 and saw an IM message from my cousin in NY saying........turn on the TV a plane has hit the WTC. By that time, the second plane had hit and when I turned the TV on, the images were something out of Dante's inferno.
My first thoughts were for my son who works on Wall St and who frequently visits clients at WTC, and also for my son in law who works in midtown Manhattan, but who also frequently has appointments at WTC. I was able to contact my daughter in New Jersey, who had just received a cell phone call from her husband........he was on the approach ramp to the Holland Tunnel......saw smoke coming from one of the towers and called his office.......as he was talking to someone there, he heard the noise of a very low flying plane.......looked up and witnessed the horror of the second plane slamming into the building. He was able to turn around and head back home safely. Meanwhile, I tried frantically to reach my son's wife by calling his home in LI, but was unable to get through. Phone lines were jammed for several hours.......It wasn't until five hours later that I learned my son had spent the night at a friend's condo in Hoboken NJ.......overslept until 8:45 and called his Wall St. office to say he'd be a little late. He walked out onto the terrace and saw the smoke and flames from the first tower........stood there in absolute disbelief.......ran into the apartment to get his friend and a camera and within several minutes, he saw and heard the second plane slam into the second tower........the view from the 19th floor of a building directly opposite the World Trade Center, was devastingly awesome......he saw debris flying everywhere and imagined that body parts were part of that debris. The photos he took are incredible. My story has a happy ending.....no one in my family was directly affected but one of my childrens' childhood friends, died in the holocaust at Cantor Fitzgerald. A few people we knew, were able to escape the building, one of whom had a close call when the first tower collapsed. It was indeed a Day of Infamy, one which far exceeds the horror of Pearl Harbor. May God Bless all the victims and their families........our hearts are with you.