A Witness
September 11, 2001
My story is simple. I was a sophomore college student, entering my final season as a Division I athlete. I was mentally and verbally abused by the new coach who took over the university's basketball program shortly after my freshman season ended. He tried to make me quit so he could have my scholarship for one of his own. So I dreaded going to individual/group workouts because of this mistreatment.
On September 11th I was scheduled for a group workout at 1:00pm. My stomach was turning the whole morning. I attended my morning class and then returned to my dorm. I turned on the TV and saw the top part of the towers smoking. My stomach turned faster, then dropped to the floor when I heard that people were jumping from the top floors.
Shortly thereafter I received a phone call telling me that my afternoon group workout was cancelled. Yet my stomach still continued turning because it didn't matter that I was fighting for my scholarship anymore--there were people fighting for their lives.
Brooklyn
A Participant
September 11, 2001
I moved to NYC on 8/26/01, my apartment was three blocks from the WTC. It was a great place to be: the incredible energy, thousands of people rushing by every day with a sense of urgency and optimism. The towers were so tall you had to bend back to see them. It was weird and made you a bit dizzy. They looked surreal: so straight & tall.
On 9/11 my roommate’s alarm went off. I was grouchy, I didn't have class that morning. Soon we heard a loud noise. The sequence of events gets confusing now, but I remember rushing to the window: smoke was coming from one of the towers and bright confetti –paper?— falling from it. Turned on the TV: a plane crashed into one of the towers. How could that happen? Was the pilot drunk? (Thoughts don't make much sense when you're waking up to something so new.) I remembered some pilot that had landed in Red Square.
My mom called me from Venezuela: looks like a terrorist attack. I got on MSN and started messaging with people back in the newsroom at El Universal. They said: go outside, take a picture! I tried to go outside but the doorman didn't let me so I went back upstairs. The second tower was hit. Looked out the window and saw people running like in a Japanese monster movie. A huge cloud of smoke and debris seemed to be chasing after them. I shut the window and it was immediately covered in black dust. The room was dark.
We went down to the basement where other people were gathered watching the news. Giuliani called for New Yorkers to give blood. My Catholic education kicked in: when in doubt find some way to help. Actions always calm me. A group of us decided to go to the nearest hospital. Walking out of the building we were hit by direct sunlight. Our building had been in the shade of the towers that were no longer there. For some reason I remembered the last line of “Paradise Lost” when Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise and they look back before walking ahead.
Everything was covered with dust. There were high-heeled shoes everywhere and paper, stuff people keep on their desks, printed out emails, notes. A therapist later told me I must have blocked out some of the things I saw, I don’t remember anything gruesome. A moonscape of dust and office supplies.
At the hospital they said they couldn’t take our blood, they had too many donors and had run out of supplies. We had no place to go, so we headed over to our school. They gave us a Red Cross disaster package with a gray blanket and some toiletries. That’s when I realized I was a “victim.” I kept trying to clear things up: “I just want to give blood, nothing happened to me!” Then I realized I had no place to sleep, our building was below 14th St.
Isabel