story5482.xml

story5482.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

Only Deb & I were in the office. Suddenly she came scooting into the kitchen, saying, "Dianne just called from her car. The WTC's been hit by 2 planes!" She flicked on the TV.

We saw the first tower already aflame, then the ghastly, unimaginable, sight of the 2nd plane ploughing through the other tower. My first thought was, "Dear God, what's gone wrong with the traffic control system!", but Deb immediately said, "Well if this ain't some goddamned terrorist shit, I don't know what is." I was stunned again.

I then realized that both my mom and sister were in the city that day (My whole family lives in the NY metropolitan area), and I didn't know if my brother was there too.

I dialed and dialed. Finally, I reached my dad in NJ. "Just spoke to your mother and she's fine. She's heading uptown to meet up with your sister at a friend's house."

Then my sister got through to me. "Jen, NY is shut down. I can't get out, and I know that Denis (her husband) is stuck somewhere on the road in CT. Here are the numbers of all our neighbors. Please call until you find someone to pick up the kids from school."

I dialed for 3 hours and finally got through to a fella who'd gotten the last PATH train out of the city. When I said I was Cindy's sister he almost lost it. "My God, is she okay?" I said, "She's fine, but could you get the kids from school?" He was glad to, but then told me how he worked down the block from WTC.

"When the 1st plane hit, my boss told everyone to stay calm and go back to work, but when that 2nd plane hit, he yelled, "Everybody! Get the F**K OUTTA HERE! So I ran. I saw people jumping to get away from the building. I can't believe what I've just seen!"

I felt very lucky as my husband, my daughter and I had just flown out of Newark to come back to Chicago 36 hours before the attacks. I was pointing out the towers to Lily, my 2 1/2 year old, and telling her how, "That's how you can tell it's NY. There's the Empire State Bldg midtown, and the Twin Towers all the way down to the right." Then I realized that my cousin, Patriece, and her 2 girls were due to come back around today. I called her.

"We're home and fine, but we don't know about David Jefferds." David was our cousin who we'd just seen 3 days before at my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and I hadn't even thought about him. He worked in Tower One!!!

Several hours later, David emailed another cousin to let us all know that he got out safe.

I felt so helpless. I felt so guilty for not being there, with my family. It took days to track down all our friends.

All in all, from my home county in New Jersey, we lost 150 souls that day.

Everything had changed. It's up to us all, as to how we handle that change, and I fervently pray that it's a change to more tolerance, more communication, and not a change towards isolationism.