nmah6546.xml

nmah6546.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-06-23

Living in Atlanta I didn't witness September 11th in person, but feel I was there. Literally a week prior to the day I had been in New York on business and spent the evening with my friends whom I had known in Columbus, Ohio. That evening we had dinner and took the train to the Trade Center station. I remember standing at the base of the towers looking up in sheer awe at the clean lines and gleaming buildings at dusk. I remember discussing with Dwayne and Stephen the events years earlier when the parking garage was bombed, and the desired effect from that attack of bringing the towers down, discussing what a tragedy. When the first plane struck, I remember thinking what a horrible accident, never imagining that it was a passenger jet. I called my parents in Parkersburg, WV to see what was on TV about the accident. As we were talking, the second plane struck the complex. Immediately the realization hit that neither was an accident. The morning was chaotic, with me making several phone calls to Mom and Dad to find out what was going on. I once again was on the phone with them when the first tower collapsed. And, I was on the phone with friends trying to find out about Dwayne and Stephen. They lived a few blocks from the complex, and Dwayne worked in an adjacent building. Dwayne's routine was to stop at the Trade Center for coffee each morning and then head to the office by 9. For some reason, he had gone to the office first and was just walking out of his building when the first plane hit the tower. It wasn't until the next day that our close circle of friends finally found out that both he and Stephen were okay.

Dustin Hughes