story8161.xml
Title
story8161.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-27
911DA Story: Story
On September 11th, 2001, I was running about 30 minutes late for work.
I had to do the weekly laundry that morning, which required taking the bags down around the corner onto Smith Street to the Smith Laundry. Since I was up early, and would already be a little late to work, I decided to bring my two sons (who at the time were both homeschooling) with me so we could play in the Carroll park. I think we had a soccer ball and were going to kick it around in the back playing field.
The first plane hit while I was in the very back of the laundromat, putting the laundry into the dryers. The kids were back tehre too, hassling each other and getting into trouble. I did not hear the first plane hit, becaiuse of the rumble of the dryers.
So we went back across the street to the Park, and went back to playing soccer in the back of the park.
When we came into the clearing in back, I looked up, and there was a huge plume of smoke overhead, covering a large swath of sky. I noticed that the entire sky was glittering. It was very strange. I wondered what it was, and then as the smoke drifted wider and lower in the sky, the glitter got bigger and bigger, until I could make out that it was individual piceces of office paper. The reason why it looked like it was glittering was that the papers spin and flip and roll as they float through the sky.
Within just a few minutes, the paper was snowing down on the park. There were lots that were round or oval shaped, since they had burned their way in from the edges. I saw scraps of paper from Customs Department training manuals, legal invoices, memos, and I picked up some pieces to see what they were. I kept a few pieces of paper.They all had some trace of smoke or burned at the edges. One which was mostly intact, with just some scorching, was a databse schema, with names and recent dates on it, and I folded them into my pocket, knowing that something bad was happening.
The source of the smoke was not visible from the park, so I could not yet know what was going on, but it was eery: my first idea was that possibly a semi-truck full of recylcling paper had caught fire on the BQE, which is a few block away. This would have been a manageble local catastrophy, and was the best theoretical explanation my mind could come up with.
When the second plane hit, it was a MASSIVE sound- a solid, and hollow BOOOOOMMMM, and the sound bounced off of the buildings all around us. There was a woman nearby, and she looked at me as the sound rolled out. I sadi " That does not sound good." I knew that something huge was happening, and immmedidately grabbed the kids hands, went into battle mode, and got out of there.
I called my wife on the cell as we hustled back to the house and she was watching the news, and said the WTC had been hit by a plane. The news hadn't yet registered the second plane, so I figured it was probably just a Cessna, a Piper Cub or something, an accident.
I work on Fulton street- only a few blocks from the WTC. If I had gone to work that day, I might have gotten off the subway up at Broadway, and things might have been very different for our family that morning.
I have vowed to be late to work as often as possible from now on.
Noel Suthers
I had to do the weekly laundry that morning, which required taking the bags down around the corner onto Smith Street to the Smith Laundry. Since I was up early, and would already be a little late to work, I decided to bring my two sons (who at the time were both homeschooling) with me so we could play in the Carroll park. I think we had a soccer ball and were going to kick it around in the back playing field.
The first plane hit while I was in the very back of the laundromat, putting the laundry into the dryers. The kids were back tehre too, hassling each other and getting into trouble. I did not hear the first plane hit, becaiuse of the rumble of the dryers.
So we went back across the street to the Park, and went back to playing soccer in the back of the park.
When we came into the clearing in back, I looked up, and there was a huge plume of smoke overhead, covering a large swath of sky. I noticed that the entire sky was glittering. It was very strange. I wondered what it was, and then as the smoke drifted wider and lower in the sky, the glitter got bigger and bigger, until I could make out that it was individual piceces of office paper. The reason why it looked like it was glittering was that the papers spin and flip and roll as they float through the sky.
Within just a few minutes, the paper was snowing down on the park. There were lots that were round or oval shaped, since they had burned their way in from the edges. I saw scraps of paper from Customs Department training manuals, legal invoices, memos, and I picked up some pieces to see what they were. I kept a few pieces of paper.They all had some trace of smoke or burned at the edges. One which was mostly intact, with just some scorching, was a databse schema, with names and recent dates on it, and I folded them into my pocket, knowing that something bad was happening.
The source of the smoke was not visible from the park, so I could not yet know what was going on, but it was eery: my first idea was that possibly a semi-truck full of recylcling paper had caught fire on the BQE, which is a few block away. This would have been a manageble local catastrophy, and was the best theoretical explanation my mind could come up with.
When the second plane hit, it was a MASSIVE sound- a solid, and hollow BOOOOOMMMM, and the sound bounced off of the buildings all around us. There was a woman nearby, and she looked at me as the sound rolled out. I sadi " That does not sound good." I knew that something huge was happening, and immmedidately grabbed the kids hands, went into battle mode, and got out of there.
I called my wife on the cell as we hustled back to the house and she was watching the news, and said the WTC had been hit by a plane. The news hadn't yet registered the second plane, so I figured it was probably just a Cessna, a Piper Cub or something, an accident.
I work on Fulton street- only a few blocks from the WTC. If I had gone to work that day, I might have gotten off the subway up at Broadway, and things might have been very different for our family that morning.
I have vowed to be late to work as often as possible from now on.
Noel Suthers
Collection
Citation
“story8161.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 12, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/6791.