11 September 2026
9/11: 25 Years Later Brant Thomas, Cold Spring Bettyann Lopate, Beacon John Plummer, Cold Spring Mary Anne Myers, Nelsonville Anthony Napoli, Beacon David Fodor, Philipstown Jupiter Yambem, Beacon Allan Simmons, Philipstown Fran Murphy, Cold Spring Julia Cohen, Beacon Priscilla Goldfarb, Cold Spring Donna Minkowitz, Beacon Cali Gorevic, Philipstown Wayne Theiss, Beacon Alan Brownstein, Philipstown The Rev. Frank Geer, Philipstown Trisha Alcock, Beacon Gwendolyn Bounds, Garrison Racine Berkow, Beacon Frank Ortega, Philipstown Alexa Devin, Beacon Enrique Sevilla, Cold Spring Jofeliny Franco, Fishkill David North, Philipstown Donna Anderson, Philipstown Deborah Davidovits, Beacon Joe Sciabica, Beacon Ron Horning, Beacon Lynnette Rajala, Philipstown Matt Donachie, Cold Spring Bill Braine, Cornwall-on-Hudson Mitch Dul, Philipstown Amy Dul, Philipstown Tess Dul, Philipstown Alex Thew, Garrison
Highlands Current Audio Stories
About
I was at my desk at Police Headquarters, eating a bagel with coffee. I heard the explosion, and I said to myself: That's the real thing. I got back to my desk days later, and my breakfast was right where I left it. But everything else had changed.
It was my second day at a new job, teaching at an elementary school in the South Bronx, one that Jonathan Kozol describes in his book, Savage Inequalities. Parents began turning up to take their children home, but none of them could tell me exactly why. Someone said, "They bombed the Pentagon." The administrators wouldn't give us any information, although they must have known because they were listening to the radio.
With no phone for teachers and no cellphone, I bought a phone card and called my husband from a bodega. He was on a business trip in Denmark, watching it all on TV. Subway service was disrupted, so it took me four hours to get home to Chelsea, which was 2 miles north of the Trade Center. The smell of smoke and burned bodies was chokingly strong, and looking south along Eighth Avenue, I could see plumes of smoke still rising. The streets were full of people, in shock, some of them weeping.
I recall vividly my wife Maia and I dropping our son Charlie at his first day of preschool and weeping and embracing in the hallway because he was growing up and we were ready but we weren't. I remember going to the polls to vote for Mark Greene for mayor.
I remember my train down to work in Union Square being stopped due to an incident at the World Trade Center and I remember remembering an incident there before, a thwarted bombing, and a pit in my stomach which only grew when I asked the subway conductor what happened and he said a plane hit one of the buildings, and I ascended out of the station in time to see the smoke pouring out of the tower and I remember stopping to chant "nam myoho renge kyo" as I walked to work to use the phone to call my wife, chanting for all the people in danger and all the people who had just died and for more people to wake up and stop using violence as a political weapon and I remember ending up walking 23 blocks back uptown until I caught a bus and finally got back to the preschool only to learn that my wife had heard the news and picked Charlie up and was at our apartment and walked there and we embraced and wept for so much more than our son's first day of school.
I had returned the night before from Buffalo, where I was taking care of my aging parents, who were having a difficult time. The radio signal went out. We turned on the television and saw the plane hit the first tower. My fiancé, now husband, said, "That was no accident." He went to work at a large insurance company a few blocks away. I returned to my home office. I turned on the TV, but it went out. I went into a neighbor's apartment, where they were standing on the terrace, and I watched the towers fall. I was worried about my sister, who had flown in from Boston the night before. She had been at Logan Airport at the same time as the attackers.
Hourly, we heard the sirens coming up First Avenue, bringing remains to the morgue. It was just an oppressive time of fear and sadness. Later, I taught freshman writing at Fordham and asked the students to write about the first event that hit them outside their family. I encouraged them to choose topics other than 9/11 because I just didn't want to read the essays. But 13 of the 16 wrote about that day, when they were 9 years old, and it was startling how much they remembered: what they were wearing, where they were standing, whom they were speaking to and how the adults lied to them, for their own protection, of course. They were told that a pesticide had been sprayed on the grass, and that's why they had to come in from the playground, or that there was a problem with the air conditioning, so their parents had to pick them up. The essays conveyed a sense of betrayal, which I think the country felt to some degree.
Mary Anne Myers and her husban...
It was my second day at a new job, teaching at an elementary school in the South Bronx, one that Jonathan Kozol describes in his book, Savage Inequalities. Parents began turning up to take their children home, but none of them could tell me exactly why. Someone said, "They bombed the Pentagon." The administrators wouldn't give us any information, although they must have known because they were listening to the radio.
With no phone for teachers and no cellphone, I bought a phone card and called my husband from a bodega. He was on a business trip in Denmark, watching it all on TV. Subway service was disrupted, so it took me four hours to get home to Chelsea, which was 2 miles north of the Trade Center. The smell of smoke and burned bodies was chokingly strong, and looking south along Eighth Avenue, I could see plumes of smoke still rising. The streets were full of people, in shock, some of them weeping.
I recall vividly my wife Maia and I dropping our son Charlie at his first day of preschool and weeping and embracing in the hallway because he was growing up and we were ready but we weren't. I remember going to the polls to vote for Mark Greene for mayor.
I remember my train down to work in Union Square being stopped due to an incident at the World Trade Center and I remember remembering an incident there before, a thwarted bombing, and a pit in my stomach which only grew when I asked the subway conductor what happened and he said a plane hit one of the buildings, and I ascended out of the station in time to see the smoke pouring out of the tower and I remember stopping to chant "nam myoho renge kyo" as I walked to work to use the phone to call my wife, chanting for all the people in danger and all the people who had just died and for more people to wake up and stop using violence as a political weapon and I remember ending up walking 23 blocks back uptown until I caught a bus and finally got back to the preschool only to learn that my wife had heard the news and picked Charlie up and was at our apartment and walked there and we embraced and wept for so much more than our son's first day of school.
I had returned the night before from Buffalo, where I was taking care of my aging parents, who were having a difficult time. The radio signal went out. We turned on the television and saw the plane hit the first tower. My fiancé, now husband, said, "That was no accident." He went to work at a large insurance company a few blocks away. I returned to my home office. I turned on the TV, but it went out. I went into a neighbor's apartment, where they were standing on the terrace, and I watched the towers fall. I was worried about my sister, who had flown in from Boston the night before. She had been at Logan Airport at the same time as the attackers.
Hourly, we heard the sirens coming up First Avenue, bringing remains to the morgue. It was just an oppressive time of fear and sadness. Later, I taught freshman writing at Fordham and asked the students to write about the first event that hit them outside their family. I encouraged them to choose topics other than 9/11 because I just didn't want to read the essays. But 13 of the 16 wrote about that day, when they were 9 years old, and it was startling how much they remembered: what they were wearing, where they were standing, whom they were speaking to and how the adults lied to them, for their own protection, of course. They were told that a pesticide had been sprayed on the grass, and that's why they had to come in from the playground, or that there was a problem with the air conditioning, so their parents had to pick them up. The essays conveyed a sense of betrayal, which I think the country felt to some degree.
Mary Anne Myers and her husban...