story3744.xml
Title
story3744.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-11
911DA Story: Story
I was getting the kids ready for school when the phone rang. It was my sister, Rachael who also lives in Denver. A red flag was raised in my mind - she never called in the morning before... She asked if I had heard yet and I didn't know what she was talking about. She simply said, "Turn on the news." And there it was, that image of the first tower smoking. I couldn't wrap my head around what I was seeing - how the heck could some idiot run a plane into the Twin Towers in broad daylight?? And on such a clear day...
Moments passed before the horror of what I was seeing actually sunk in - it is rush hour there - oh my God - so many people -
I woke my husband and hung up with my sister. Jerry is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. We had moved to Denver the year before. His whole family lived there and my brother and his family lived there. As we watched, as the whole world watched, the second plane hit and we immediately knew that we were under attack. Where is everyone?? Is my mom in NY on business this week? My brother works just a couple blocks from there, so does Jerry's uncle. His sister lives down there, and where does his other sister work? His oldest daughter used to work in the WTC... We desperately started calling, somehow we got through to Bobby's office - someone answered - he wasn't there yet. That was it - we couldn't get through to anyone else.
So we waited and watched the terror unfold on our TV. The buildings fell and we sobbed, unbelieving that this could be happening.
I actually took the kids to school and went to work. I am a family doctor and figured my patients might need me. At the office we put TVs in the nursing stations and we all sat around them just watching. I kept making frantic phone calls and eventually found out that somehow we had been blessed - Our family members were okay. As I would hear over the next weeks it was close for several, but everyone was out and physically unscathed.
None of us escaped emotionally unscathed.
Moments passed before the horror of what I was seeing actually sunk in - it is rush hour there - oh my God - so many people -
I woke my husband and hung up with my sister. Jerry is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. We had moved to Denver the year before. His whole family lived there and my brother and his family lived there. As we watched, as the whole world watched, the second plane hit and we immediately knew that we were under attack. Where is everyone?? Is my mom in NY on business this week? My brother works just a couple blocks from there, so does Jerry's uncle. His sister lives down there, and where does his other sister work? His oldest daughter used to work in the WTC... We desperately started calling, somehow we got through to Bobby's office - someone answered - he wasn't there yet. That was it - we couldn't get through to anyone else.
So we waited and watched the terror unfold on our TV. The buildings fell and we sobbed, unbelieving that this could be happening.
I actually took the kids to school and went to work. I am a family doctor and figured my patients might need me. At the office we put TVs in the nursing stations and we all sat around them just watching. I kept making frantic phone calls and eventually found out that somehow we had been blessed - Our family members were okay. As I would hear over the next weeks it was close for several, but everyone was out and physically unscathed.
None of us escaped emotionally unscathed.
Collection
Citation
“story3744.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed April 9, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/6748.