Personal Accounts
Share your stories and accounts of September 11 and the days
following. What raced through your mind as you witnessed our country being
brought to its knees by sheer cowardice? If you would like to share
your story, email me at americaon911@yahoo.com.
MICHELLE WILEY
52, Musician
"I thought I was dead because everything went black."
The day was very bright and very clear. Paul left early that morning, probably on the last train out. We live in an apartment in Gateway Plaza, a block over from the World Trade Center. Normally I’m up with him and dressed. But I sort of stayed in my nightgown and shower shoes and decided I would practice on the piano. I often play "Autumn Leaves" in all twelve keys, just to get my head going. The piano (actually a Kurzweil synthesizer/sequencer in the body of a small baby grand) is in a studio which looks out at the World Trade Center. My dad was an old air force lifer, so I know planes. I’ve been around them since I was little. I think I was in the second chorus of "Autumn Leaves" when I paused, just to stretch. I stood up by the window looking out at the Center when I see this plane flying very low, but very steady, toward the World Trade. I immediately said to myself, "This plane is going to hit it. It’s not spiraling, it’s not smoking, it doesn’t look out of control." I picked up the phone and dialed 911. I don’t know why. I said, "There’s a plane flying into the World Trade Center." And the operator said, "My God, I didn’t know that." By the time I finished the sentence, the plane was through the building. And she just sort of yelled at me, because I guess maybe someone else had gotten a call next to her, and she said, "Please stay on the phone." Then she said, "No, don’t stay on the phone," and suddenly the phone went dead.
I got a couple of phone calls from friends, you know, "Are you all right?" "We heard that the plane hit the Trade Center." And I said, "Yeah, I’m fine. People are panicked and running around. I’m not going to go outside." So I’m watching and I can’t believe it. It reminded me of the movie The Towering Inferno. There’s a building and the top of it is burning, like a huge candle. I turned on the television, and then I got another call from a DJ in Detroit. I coach professional singers and one of my students in the Detroit area had been trying to reach me and couldn’t. So she called a DJ friend, Johnny Burke, and he got through. He asked me to describe the scene, and I described what I saw. I could see people jumping from the building. I don’t know how many, but it was more than two, I know that. Some things I don’t remember. Some things I just block out. But I knew things were escalating. I saw people leaning out of the tower. They were waving towels, trying to get the smoke out or trying to signal people. I thought about trying to run to the place where our car was parked, and just get in and drive out, but thank God I didn’t because that’s when the second plane hit. Now I was conflicted about what to do. Then the South Tower collapsed. I remember standing in front of the window and feeling the ground start to vibrate. It was as though someone had just put a huge sock over our entire building. I mean, it went from that bright crisp morning to just total blackness, and then it felt like an earthquake. I thought I was dead because everything went black inside my apartment. My phone went out, the TV went out, and I was just sort of floating in the room, suspended there. I didn’t feel my body or anything. I think I was in shock.
I started to shake, and I just fell to the floor and began crawling to my front door in my nightgown. Paul’s leather jacket was hanging on the hook by the door. I knew I had to get out of the building at that point. I pulled the jacket on me. I felt along a corner of the floor for a pair of sneakers by the front door. And I put them on because I thought, Well, there is going to be glass and stuff down there. But in my haste and being so nervous, I guess, I still had the pair of shower shoes in my hand. I held onto them and I opened the door. I found my purse, but I couldn’t find my cell phone. This is all happening in a matter of seconds. When I got outside the door, my next-door neighbor was standing pinned against the wall. She just was frozen there, a young lady. We didn’t really know each other that well, but I walked over to her and I took her arm and I said, "I want you to come with me." And we went down the stairwell. We could hear people from above and below, you know, falling down the steps because it was totally black. I didn’t know if the building had been hit, or if it was on fire. The door to the lobby was jammed, but a man kicked it open. There were maybe fifty to one hundred people in the lobby and everyone started running outside. The air was cool and debris was everywhere. It looked like the surface of Mars, all this white sediment and piles of computer paper and pieces of desks and more paper just falling through the air. I kept walking toward the front gate, and there was a very badly wounded policewoman standing there trying to get people to go back. But people panicked and kept running. I guess they thought they were going to try to get to the subway. But if you looked down that way, there were cars that were already all crunched up. I don’t know why, but something told me to run back through the crowd. The door to an adjacent building was open and another door inside led out to the gate that leads to the promenade toward the river. I guess I thought I was going to swim.
There was a stench outside. I could feel something very itchy all over me. I pulled my coat over my nose. The air wasn’t black anymore, but it was like a very heavy white fog. I turned right on the esplanade and starting running toward the right. I saw a group of men maybe one hundred yards down. They were loading injured firemen onto a tugboat that had pulled up next to the wall. There was one very badly wounded fireman that they couldn’t move. I still see his face. I still have nightmares. His face still visits me. He was in so much pain. Every time they tried to pick him up, he just collapsed back down. I made it onto the boat. There were other civilians on it. There was a hysterical woman next to me, I think she was Spanish. They gave us life vests and told us to stand toward the center of the boat or the boat would tip over. I tried to calm her down. I said, "Look, we’re going to New Jersey. It’s okay. We’re lucky. We got out." Then I looked to my right. There was another woman crying. Her legs were all cut up. She had run out of her shoes. So I handed her the shower shoes, the ones I had been carrying all this time, and I said, "You know something, I’ve been carrying these around. I guess they were for you."
Excerpted from "Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001" by Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias. Copyright © 2002 by Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias. Published by Regan Books a division of Harper Collins, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.
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This is great that you've used your skills to build this! This was a real tragic event and will always be remembered.
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When it happened I could hardly believe what my eyes were seeing. I just sat in complete silence praying that this was just a really bad dream. I did not lose anyone in the attacks, but my heart is broken for the thousands of families hurting from these events.
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Very nice slide show. It did a great job capturing the moments of that day and is does a tremendous job of remembering the lives lost.
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I remember that Tuesday morning
when I woke up to my alarm clock which was tuned to 87.7 FM - ABC's Good Morning
America. On Tuesdays I usually slept in since my first class only began
at 3:00 pm. Half awake I heard the faint voices from the radio announcing
something about the World Trade Towers and a plane. When under this
semi-comatose state I usually ignored all the news and listen for the local
weather. That day the last thing I would care about was the weather!
For some reason it caught my attention and bolting out of bed I charged
downstairs to the television. Turning on the TV and adjusting the rabbit
ears antenna I see the clip of what appeared to be a fuzzy dot ramming into some
tall building and a resulting large explosion. It must have been a false
alarm or some sort of sick joke! Dad must have seen it on TV...he's been
awake since 6:30 am... he would have woke me if it was anything serious.
Nevertheless, I called my parents whose days were already in full swing.
The three of us sat in front of the television in complete awe and
silence.
Who? What? When? Why? How? These questions ran through the eerily
quiet living room.
I still did not understand what had happened! We sat in front of the
TV, and for nearly an hour I stared at the TV but didn't realize the immense
death toll! For hours I didn't realize that extremity of the entire situation.
It was when that south tower collapsed that it really hit! The building
with people was no longer there...in it's place a large plume of smoke!
The rest of day was spent in front of the television as reality began to sink in
and we realized that America was under ATTACK!
