story4877.xml

story4877.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I'm a Benedictine Sister in Elizabeth, NJ, about 10-12 miles from Manhattan. I always loved the fact that my room was the only one in the monastery to have a view of the Twin Towers. I loved to look east on clear winter nights, when the trees were bare, and see the towers glimmering in the distance. I've always loved New York and the Towers were always a precious part of my life. From this area, there were so many places where one could catch sight of them, and I loved that!

On September 11, 2001, as I was working in my office, I heard a sort of sudden slamming sound that caught my attention. I noticed it, but didn't think anything of it. A few minutes later one of the Sisters called me on the intercom and asked if I'd heard that the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. I went up to the roof of the tallest building in the monastery complex, but couldn't see anything. The smoke was blowing east, so it wasn't visible here. When I heard that there had been a second impact, I knew that this was no accident.

Because I had to run an errand across town with another Sister that morning, we kept the radio on in the car and heard a horrified WINS reporter, with an obvious catch in her throat, suddenly begin to sob that one of the towers was falling. At that point I began to cry myself. And for a long time after, I found myself in tears at some point every day, mourning the loss of life (even though I didn't personally lose anyone in the attacks) and the loss of my beloved Twin Towers.

Driving back to the monastery, we saw people in different parts of town obviously just wanting to be with others: in one section, a group of elderly men were going into a neighborhood Italian club, no doubt to watch the news together rather than alone. Taking a longer route home,
near the Goethals Bridge we saw enormous billows of white smoke to the east. The Bridge itself, normally loaded with traffic, was empty, almost ghostly.

It was only later on that I remembered hearing that slamming sound, and I suppose I'll always wonder if it was some sort of back-echo of the first impact. A year later, living so close to the scene of such horror, I still find myself looking east out my window, hoping once again to see the Towers. My heart always soared with them, and I pray that someday a beautiful memorial will include some sort of structure that once again takes the spirit aloft!