story20648.xml
Title
story20648.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2006-09-11
911DA Story: Story
In the early morning of 9/11/01 I was working as a publicist at a conference in New Jersey sponsored by a large real estate firm. They were presenting western brokerage practices to a small group of political officials from the People's Republic of China. Chinas government needed to investigate policies for buying and selling of property because home ownership and residential real estate sales were still revolutionary concepts in a country where the state previously owned everything.
Just before 9:00 AM I got a call from the home office saying that I shouldn't expect any press at the event because a plane had hit one of the towers. The conference was in full swing and there no reason to make an announcement because I thought it was just a terrible accident. However moments later, after the second plane hit I got another message from my office that the country was under terrorist attack. I then interrupted the conference and informed the CEOs who quickly left the building leaving me with the Chinese officials and one translator. Our cell phones were not working but the Chinese could call Beijing and update us with news they were receiving in China.
The Minister of Land Reform then insisted on seeing the news on a TV. So after a few minutes of scrambling around a quickly evacuating building, I found the company gym. It was there, on the monitors above the stationary bikes where ten Chinese business men in black suits and me, a native New York artist-cum-publicist all watched as the buildings fell down.
After assuring them of their safety and passing my charges over to a hotel manager in Jersey I headed back to Brooklyn via Westchester and down over the Whitestone Bridge to the fine white ash that covered Carroll Gardens and that tinted the hues of the rest of our lives.
Just before 9:00 AM I got a call from the home office saying that I shouldn't expect any press at the event because a plane had hit one of the towers. The conference was in full swing and there no reason to make an announcement because I thought it was just a terrible accident. However moments later, after the second plane hit I got another message from my office that the country was under terrorist attack. I then interrupted the conference and informed the CEOs who quickly left the building leaving me with the Chinese officials and one translator. Our cell phones were not working but the Chinese could call Beijing and update us with news they were receiving in China.
The Minister of Land Reform then insisted on seeing the news on a TV. So after a few minutes of scrambling around a quickly evacuating building, I found the company gym. It was there, on the monitors above the stationary bikes where ten Chinese business men in black suits and me, a native New York artist-cum-publicist all watched as the buildings fell down.
After assuring them of their safety and passing my charges over to a hotel manager in Jersey I headed back to Brooklyn via Westchester and down over the Whitestone Bridge to the fine white ash that covered Carroll Gardens and that tinted the hues of the rest of our lives.
Collection
Citation
“story20648.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 25, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/19149.