story1609.xml

story1609.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-31

I was watching the morning news at home in Houston when the first images came from New York. My FIRST reaction was terrorism,just then the phone rang and it was my 25 year old son who had just moved back to New York that weekend,he grew up in Houston but was born in New York and wanted to move back. He was at the corner of Broadway & Cedar sts. in lower Manhattan a block away from the towers,where he went for a job interview, he asked if I knew what was happening and I told him that the networks were already saying that it was a hijacked airliner and there was more coming,I told him to tell everybody there what was happeng and to run away from the site.The next time he called was from the Brooklyn Bridge and he described a scene from hell,he saw the dying,and the firemen going in,and the collapse of the first tower wich he was injured in,[he was under that black cloud that he described as the blackest darkness he had ever seen].I found out later that my brother-in-law who is a New York Fireman was also badley injured in the collapse of the second tower,my son and brother in law were only a block apart. Anytime anyone asks me where I was on 9-11 I'll tell them about the surreal scene of watching someone trying to murder my loved ones and thousands of others,1.800 miles away on CNN. Paul Werner. ...Houston,Tx.