"Teachers were crying hysterically"

The Jersey Journal By The Jersey Journal The Jersey Journal
on September 10, 2011 at 6:45 AM
lady.jpgView full size

These are some memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Adrion from Bayonne
In Jersey City when moms started picking up their children, that was normal, but soon it became weird. Dismissal was hours from 9 in the morning. When my mom brought me to my home, right next to the NJ Turnpike, she put on the news. As she ran around the house to find the camcorder to film the view of the Twin Towers with her pregnant belly slowing her down. I mimicked the Twin Towers with toy blocks. My dad worked at the Twin Towers for the Port Authority, but fortunately he was promoted to Newark Airport.

I was young then, not older than 3 or 4. Only now do I understand the magnitude of these attacks, and how badly I would like to go to the Twin Towers one last time...


I worked at Harmon Meadow Plaza in Secaucus: got to work early the morning of Sept 11th and looked up through the remarkably clear and dry sky to the southeast to see one tower on fire, and recalled the previous attempt to destroy it with a car bomb. I guessed immediately that it was another terrorist attack. I went inside only to be told that both towers were burning.

We worked in a daze that morning, looking out the windows and glued to internet news as the worst got worse.Later that afternoon my son and daughter told me of the perfect view they had from their classroom windows of the two hour horror show.

The kids were stunned, but their grade school teachers were crying hysterically and soon the kids followed suit. One teacher tried to close the blinds but they fell down. Classes from the other side of the Lincoln School Annex in Harrison rushed in and were escorted out and let out early.

Everyone was asked if their relatives worked downtown. My uncle was on the PATH as always going to the Liberty Building across from World Trade 2 when the first plane hit. He ran up the stairs in the WTC station to see glass, desks, papers and then people fluttering down. He retreated to near the Battery in shock and disbelief.

He was one of many that were evacuated from behind the Coast Guard building near the ferry by tugboat and taken around to Jersey City to get home. We were petrified for him until we heard him call from Exchange Place to check in.

I had worked nearby and my family had worked in and around the towers since they were built and had taken my German grandmother to the Observation deck and Windows of the World late in her life to wonder at the view. I lost several friends in the collapse. My own world was changed on 9/11 but my view of America as a city on a hill deserving better than she often gets remains unshaken.


Like many others, it will be one day I will never forget. I was 8 months pregnant with my first child and working across the street from the North Tower. After hearing the first plane (I was in a pedestrian bridge connecting the North Tower to the WFC) and hearing people screaming and running towards me from the North Tower, I knew something was terribly wrong. I caught up with a friend and co-worker. We went outside....only to see the 2nd plane hit the south tower. I will never forget the weather that day, the sound of that 2nd plane, the fire ball after it hit the south tower, and my exact words when it happened.

Ten years later, I have a soon to be 10-year-old awesome son and a beautiful 6 year old daughter. This day will always be etched in my memory and I will always think of those that didn't make it. Please never forget.


I know everybody in America has a 911 story. As for me that day is the day my life changed forever. I was only 14 when it happened but i remember it like it happened 10 minutes ago. I live in Jersey City, NJ and unfortunately I got a first hand look at the attacks. Just the sound of planes hitting i will never forget. when I was younger i remember cutting school just to go to the Towers to read. They were my safe place. Whenever it would rain or get foggy and i couldn't see the skyline I would get on the PATH to WTC just to make sure the towers were still there.

I wish they would just build them back. This is the poem I wrote when I was 14 on September 12,2001..

T is for that terrible Tuesday when everything went down

W is for all the warnings that never made a sound

I is for the ignorant terrorist who had nothing better to do

N is for a nation's confusion and didn't know who to blame

T is for the thousands of people who didn't make it that day

O is for all the officers who help but didn't ask for pay

W is for withstanding my own as well as others' tears

E is for the everlasting pain we'll feel for many many years

R is for all the rescuers who didn't give up ever

S is for all the survivors who will remember that day forever