nmah106.xml

nmah106.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-02

I watched the towers fall from my window at Montclair State University. I had placed a television set under the window and divided my time between watching reports on the tv and the smoking towers outside. When the first tower fell, I vividly remember being very concerned about the life of a news reporter I had just seen standing by the lobby of one of the buildings. The magnitude of what had happened had not yet sunk in. I remember looking out of my window and seeing Manhattan blanketed in smoke and dust. You didn't see roads or cars or life. What you saw was a cloud of black smoke, soot, and ash with the tops of skyscrapers sticking through. All news cameras had gone dead. I remember saying out loud that no one could be alive in that.
When I went to bed at night that semester, I always looked at the magificent view of the New York skyline before I went to sleep. That night, when I looked out of the window before closing my eyes, the towers weren't there.
-David Cohen
21 yrs old on Sept. 11, 2001