Reply #158: In my office in mid-town Manhattan [View All]

[MANative]

at the corner of 7th Ave and 32nd St - across the street from Madison Square Garden. I was preparing for a meeting at 9:00 when my secretary came running into my office saying that a plane had hit one of the Trade Towers. Early rumors in the city said that it was a small private plane, so I didn't initially get too worried - thought it was horrible and told her to keep me updated if she heard anything new. The company I was working for occupied 7 floors of that building and had over 800 employees. Believe it or not, I had one of only 5 radios amongst that entire population. I told her she could hang out in my office and listen while I went to my meeting.

When I got to the office of the person I was going to be meeting with, she wasn't in yet, so I left her a note and headed back to my office. By the time I got there, Cindy (sec'y) told me that a second plane had hit. That's when we finally started to understand that this was no accident. We were listening to WCBS880 - an all news station based in Manhattan in the CBS building, and they were relaying what they knew along with the numerous rumors that were flying throughout that morning - the Justice bldg bombed, the Mall on fire, etc.

I tried to call my husband in CT, and was able to get through once. He was frantic - getting no real news as he was in his small drugstore with no radio/TV- just people coming in that fed him little bits of info. Called my parents in MA - and found out that my brother who worked for the DoD was scheduled to leave Dulles that morning for a trip to CA. Turns out that he was supposed to be on Flight 77, and 2 of his subordinates were on the plane. 2 more co-workers were killed in the Pentagon. He had been called in to a meeting at Pax River NAS, so had to change his travel plans. We didn't know that until about 9:00pm that night - unable to reach him or his wife (also DoD) all day. Until then, we were pretty sure he was gone.

I remember very vividly hearing about the 1st Tower falling, and that my reaction was to bury my face in my hands and cry. A few minutes later, it dawned on me that the woman I was supposed to be meeting that morning lived in Battery Park City. We heard from her several hours later. She had been injured by falling debris and was trying to get out of lower Manhattan. Took her a couple of hours to get to NJ - if I recall correctly, she got on some ferry boat, and was treated at a hospital there.

Phones, including cells, went down pretty quickly and the only thing we had internally was email - Internet was VERY sluggish - was able to stay in contact with my parents for awhile that way. Since they shut down all train service - in and out - we were stuck in the city for several hours. Finally heard around 3pm that they were getting Metro North up to get people out to CT. They were just herding people onto any train - stuffed like subway cars. Made every stop all the way up the line. Took over 2 hours to get home - usually a 35 minute trip. Met at every station by State Troopers with heavy weapons. Have no specific memory of how I got home from the train station that day.