We asked readers to offer their perspectives as we mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks. Here is a sampling from the hundreds of responses.
To the Editor:
As I was rushing toward the World Trade Center to catch the PATH train to Newark, my eye caught what appeared to be a small fragment of debris gently falling through the crystal morning air. My mind then lurched violently in the sudden gut-wrenching realization that the speck was a woman, as she fell some 100 stories to earth.
In that instant of life-altering imagery, the deafening blast of the second jet, filled with human life, crushing into the south tower rattled the century-old buildings all around me. Somehow I made it home, but just in time to witness through my living room window, in irreconcilable juxtaposition, the towers, and those trapped in them, collapsing into a trail of shapeless, indistinguishable dust, just beyond my view of my wife, who sat peacefully, lovingly nursing our 3-week-old son, oblivious to the grotesque demonstration of unrestrained bitterness, violence, hate and revenge that, after 20 years, I still struggle to fully comprehend.
I witnessed the searing destructiveness of naked hate that day, and vowed to work to eliminate it from my own heart, and to teach my children to understand the dynamics of hate and how to temper it within them.
Mark Bierman
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, I was involved in the management of the World Trade Center, with an office on the 86th floor of the north tower. Fortunately, thanks to a number of factors, mostly including luck, I was not in my office when the attacks occurred.
Instead I experienced much of the aftermath just outside the walls of the north tower. The many horrific events of that day are indelibly seared in my mind. The following day, I was tasked with placing phone calls from the Port Authority’s emergency offices to determine which of our World Trade Department staff were still missing.
On one call, a female associate related the incredible story of four associates who, instead of fleeing the north tower when they could, banded together to search for people who might have been trapped. Her prophetic last words were, “John, I don’t think they got out alive.”
I’m frequently reminded of the incredible acts of heroism performed that day by so many first responders. But this time each year, I especially remember this small band of civilian volunteers — my colleagues — whose compassionate efforts that day saved the lives of at least 70 people.
I’m regularly compelled to wonder whether, if I had been sitting at my desk that morning, I would have been brave enough to participate in the many courageous rescues that cost these heroes their lives.
John L. Mauk
Garden City, N.Y.
To the Editor:
The 9/11 attacks taught me, in the words of Fred Rogers, to “look for the helpers.” As planes hit the twin towers, my husband and I were living in the shadow of the World Trade Center and he had just arrived at work in a building adjacent to it. As we found each other and escaped together up the West Side Highway, me seven months pregnant with our first child, I was struck by the kindness within the chaos.
Someone was sitting on top of his van near 12th Street, shouting out news he heard from his radio. As we turned to watch one tower slowly disintegrate into the ground in front of our eyes — and realized that the tower behind it was also gone — we shared tears, hugs, water, socks and shoes with total strangers.
Running further up the West Side Highway, we heard shouts from Chelsea Piers: “We have a boat!” Across the Hudson, strangers drove us to Hoboken. There, a woman, seeing I was pregnant, yelled from her balcony that we should come up to use her bathroom.
The acts of kindness continued all day. With eternal gratitude, I will forever continue to pay them forward.
Candice Braun
New York
To the Editor:
I was 8 years old when my mom and I were driving to school and heard the news of the first plane hitting the twin towers. I was getting out of the minivan but she told me to wait. Then the second plane hit. I could see the look of horror in my mom’s eyes, but all I could think to ask was if I could go to class. Instead, we drove home.
When we got home and saw my dad on the couch, hands over his mouth and whispering a prayer, the gravity of the attack finally hit me. I’m Egyptian from his side and grew up Muslim. Later on I could hear my parents talking and arguing.
“What do you think will happen?”
“I don’t know. This isn’t good. You know they’ll declare war. Inshallah we’ll be OK.” (“Inshallah” is “God willing” in Arabic.)
Then came the death threats over the phone. Someone shouted at us from a car, “You people should be in camps!” My parents were harassed at work, and I was called a terrorist at school.
From 9/11 on I knew I would never be seen as fully American in many people’s eyes. That feeling hasn’t changed.
Youssef Shokry
San Francisco
To the Editor:
My then 2-year-old son, Max, was in his day care center a few blocks from the White House the morning of 9/11. When I heard that another hijacked plane was on a path to the White House, I thought I would lose him.
I drove from my office to his day care, but the area was already barricaded off and the police wouldn’t let me through. One officer took pity on me and waved her gun in the direction of where she had seen day care workers taking a line of kids earlier. I drove frantically looking for Max while scanning through my sunroof for the incoming plane.
When the radio announced that the passengers had brought down the plane in Pennsylvania before it could get to D.C., I pulled over crying and cheering in my car, knowing Max was safe. I am ashamed to this day that I was exuberant at the moment the moms of the heroes on Flight 93 lost their sons and daughters.
Lynn Mento
McLean, Va.
To the Editor:
I was a principal of a high school in Riverdale in the Bronx on 9/11. When the second plane hit the towers, the faculty and staff sprang into action. Parents began to arrive and took their children and others home with them. The bridge to Manhattan was closed, so Bronx families opened their homes to Manhattan students.
I asked the students whose parents worked in the World Trade Center to wait in my office. Twelve of them watched the news with their faculty advisers for hours. We had to remind them to eat. They trickled out, one by one, as a relative arrived to assure them that all was well and took them home.
Three waited with me until nighttime, for news that never came.
For 20 years, as a history teacher, I had taught students about the causes and strategies leading to war, the treaties and alliances, the heroism, the casualties, how to analyze and interpret events.
As the day wore on, the meaning I had spent years constructing to help children make sense of the world had left me. All I knew was what a child’s face looks like as it falls.
Rachel Friis Stettler
Portland, Maine
To the Editor:
My travel agent saved my life. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was booked on the flight from Newark to San Francisco at 8 a.m. Around 10 o’clock the night before, my wonderful travel agent called me to wish me a nice holiday. I thanked her and then said, “If I’m going to the West Coast on vacation, why do I have to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning to catch the flight?” She replied: “Good point. I’ll take you off the 8 o’clock and put you on the 10 o’clock.”
That’s what saved my life. I would have been on Flight 93.
Ray Bengen
New York
To the Editor:
I am a three-time cancer patient, but Sept. 11, 2001, was the day I became a survivor.
I worked for Oppenheimer Funds on the 32nd floor of the south tower, witnessed a huge fireball fly past the windows when the first plane hit the north tower, walked down to the mezzanine level, saw people jumping out of the north tower and got pushed down an up escalator to the concourse level.
As I put my foot on the first step of the staircase to go up to the street and escape, the second plane smashed into the south tower. The earth shook as fire and debris blocked the exit. I made it to the street, and I will never forget the firefighters running past me.
Time can attempt to heal all wounds, but 20 years later the tears still come unexpectedly and the smell of jet fuel lingers.
Please do not forget what happened to America on that day and the people who were lost forever.
Joan Shea
Jensen Beach, Fla.
To the Editor:
As the wife of a funeral director, I’ve seen my husband handle many tragedies, but 9/11 didn’t follow the usual systems of death: wake, service, burial. Funerals continued for years after, and continue still.
I remember distinctly a day in 2008 when he came home from the medical examiner, after picking up the body of the first man he ever memorialized in 2001. The body was intact, still, seven years later. My husband was white and pasty. I’d never seen him like that.
He’s always been able to handle any situation, but this struck him hard. “They’ll have to mourn all over again,” he’d said.
We’ve all listened to the stories of that day, but the funeral director’s story is one that isn’t often told, or told enough. At the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, my husband can point to the portraits of 32 souls. He can tell you their names and talk about their families. He can still sit and cry.
Today I honor him, his service and his heart.
Jackie Moloney
New York
To the Editor:
In my life there have been many emotionally charged events like 9/11 that produced immutable memories. The palpable fear I felt in 1962 when the Cuban missile crisis threatened my future. The darkness of 1963 when my teenage hopes were dashed after our young president was shot. In 1968 the horror of watching police brutality during the Democratic convention and the deaths of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The sorrow following the 1970 Kent State massacre. “Four dead in Ohio.” The tragedy of our multiple school shootings.
The aftermath of 9/11 similarly has challenged my perspective on American life. Are we, and our country, cursed? Can I, or any American, feel safe from violence and terror? How to balance hope versus fear?
Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” It’s unfortunate that now describes my view of America in the 20 years since 9/11.
Donald Shifrin
Mercer Island, Wash.
To the Editor:
I was ready for my morning walk across Santa Monica Canyon when a friend called. My husband and I stood transfixed in front of our television as smoke poured from a gaping hole in the north tower. As we watched confused, the south tower was hit. It dawned on us: This was a coordinated attack on the United States. We stood stunned, unable to move, as the savagery of this relentless day unfolded.
For months, as I looked up at Los Angeles’s cloudless cerulean sky, it was impossible not to replay the unimaginable horror of that day in Manhattan. Now, as I drove up Wilshire or Sunset, I was haunted by visions of the surrounding buildings pancaking — floor by floor — to the ground.
The terror was omnipresent — a free-floating, below the surface, simmering panic. And the loss was profound, paralyzing. Not only did we lose so many unsuspecting, innocent people, we lost our collective naïveté — the belief that we were untouchable.
I am a New Yorker. I had been living and working in L.A. for almost 30 years. After 9/11, it was time to go home. I needed to be with my family. My feeling: If New York was going down, I was going down with it.
We have been back for almost 20 years.
Annette Chandler
Sag Harbor, N.Y.
To the Editor:
I remember watching TV that morning as I was getting ready for work in California. When the first tower collapsed, I turned to my then-husband and said, “I think the world as we know it has just ended.”
Truly, nothing has been the same since, and I am so sad that this is the only world that our children have ever known.
Julie Sanchez
Orcutt, Calif.
To the Editor:
That terrible smell — that’s what springs to mind. On 9/11, my wife and I were driving from Boston to Washington, D.C., where I was scheduled to speak at a medical conference. All along the highway, we saw signs flashing: “Turn back! Major National Incident!”
But we checked with the conference organizers, and the meeting was on, with 300 or more physicians sheltering in place and having nowhere to go. We decided to push on, with no idea of what dangers we might be facing.
Our hotel was less than a mile from the Pentagon, and the acrid smell of smoke from the crash site reached us, even as we sat in our hotel room. It seemed the whole world had changed — and that death-laden odor will always remain nested in my brain.
Ronald W. Pies
Lexington, Mass.
To the Editor:
My reflections on 9/11 are not of the vivid memories of seeing the second plane hitting the World Trade Center but of a recurring dream I had weeks after the tragedy that occasionally still creeps into my dreams today.
At the time I commuted by train into New York City. My dream starts as a normal day and I’m sitting on the aisle of a three-seat row with no one next to me and a well-dressed man sitting next to the window. He is reading his New York Times, slowly turning the pages, but we never make eye contact.
As the train pulls into the tunnel I finally turn to see his face, and it’s a skeleton wearing a suit and tie smiling at me. I realized then that he was a ghost and that 9/11 — that day that started like any other day — I might have been next to a person who didn’t come home on the train that day.
It changed my life with the realization that life is precious and each day is a gift. I had taken life for granted, and that never happened again.
Matt Piselli
New York
To the Editor:
On Sept. 9, my partner and I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon at the Borders bookstore at 5 World Trade Center.
The following Tuesday morning, at our Brooklyn apartment, we awoke to the voice of our friend screaming from the street: “We’re under attack, turn on the TV!”
Bleary-eyed and frightened, we watched the news in horror and then rushed to the roof. Within minutes, we witnessed the north tower collapse. The collapse was hauntingly quiet. Shock and grief filled the void it left. Dusted and shellshocked humans poured across the Williamsburg Bridge. We tried desperately to reach our families.
We cried all day — not only for the devastating loss of life, but also for the vitriol and hatred that the United States had ignited through our foreign policies. We cried for what hawkish elected officials would do in response to the terrorist attacks, and we cried for how it could perpetuate that very anti-American sentiment, perhaps with graver consequences.
All cried out, we went to a bar and began the process of slowly stitching our belief in humanity back together.
Sergio Medina
San Francisco
To the Editor:
I had just pulled into my parking space at the Maine State House, where I served as Gov. Angus King’s communications director, when my wife called to tell me about the first plane. Not long after, I watched on television as the second plane slammed into the tower. Shortly after that I joined the governor and his staff in a nearby bunker.
We knew.
The fact that two of the terrorists carried out their ghastly mission after spending the night in Maine made the coming weeks even more challenging, more personal. As a Navy reservist, I was deeply angry and I pushed hard to deploy. By Sept. 11, 2013, I was finally on the ground in Kabul, Afghanistan.
In many ways, 20 years is too early to comprehend the implications, especially as we’ve just recently left Afghanistan.
Am I still angry? Yes. Am I still sad? Absolutely. But in the years since, particularly during my deployment, I learned the extent to which humans can be cruel to one another.
As I am a Navy public affairs officer, it’s my job to respond to questions. But, 20 years on, I don’t have any personal answers to this one.
John Ripley
South Portland, Me.
To the Editor:
My 70-year-old father was three blocks away from the south tower when it collapsed. Caught in the cloud of debris, he navigated along the facades of unseeable buildings to get to safety. For a time that day, when my father was unreachable as he fled Lower Manhattan, there was the very alarming prospect that we had lost him to the conflagration.
That evening, my wife and I walked with our 3-year-old daughter along the streets of Mamaroneck, N.Y. Fighter jets were flying combat air patrols overhead. If there was one hope, it was that our child should live in a world better than this.
9/11 created a heightened awareness of personal vulnerability and brought forth a new, searing comprehension of intercultural conflicts globally and locally. The events of the day threatened to create — physically on the ground and emotionally in our hearts — an immense well of enmity.
We were presented individually and collectively with one of the most difficult of choices. What would define our way out of this tragedy: hate multiplied, a desire to find greater peace and understanding, a need for retribution or some combination of these and other factors?
Thomas Blum
Rye Brook, N.Y.
To the Editor:
How did 9/11 affect me directly?
I cry a lot easier now.
Jim Fischer
Jersey City, N.J.
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