I was scheduled to work in my office on the 64th floor at 1 WTC. Two of my staff had called out sick at the Tech Center, so I stopped at the shop before going into the city. While checking in with my staff, John Zelensky came running in, saying a plane had hit the Trade Center.
At first, I thought it was a little single-engine plane. It wasn't until I went outside and watched from the corner that I realized how wrong I was. We could see the Towers clearly from the Tech Center.
I became obsessed with counting floors. I knew where the 78th-floor Sky Lobby was because you could see the change in the architecture. So I counted until I reached the 86th floor.
That was where so many of my best friends and colleagues worked—people I had known and worked with for 15 years.
Then the Towers disappeared into a cloud of dust.
It didn't seem possible.
Back inside, I began raiding supply closets, collecting pens, markers, pencils, pads of paper, easels, and flip charts. Port Authority staff started arriving at the Tech Center covered in soot and in shock. I took three women into the bathroom and helped them wash their hands and faces and wipe down their clothes and shoes. We didn't know each other, and very few words were spoken.
Later, I wished I had gotten them bottles of water instead of all the pens and paper that would record the names of the missing.
I didn't go home that night. It wasn't until the following night that I returned to my husband and two small boys. At dawn the next morning, I drove back to Jersey City. Coming down the Turnpike ramp, I cried at the empty horizon. The Twin Towers were gone.
There were barriers around the Tech Center and fully armed National Guardsmen everywhere. I helped relocate employees into available offices and set them up with computers and phones.
Everyone went back to work.
It was a sight to see—everyone channeling their grief into determination. To do something. To do anything. The Towers had fallen, but the region still had to run.
Working in General Services, my group of graphic designers and print production staff produced signs and informational materials for first responders at the site and for Port Authority employees. We also prepared cards and posters for funerals and memorial services—too many to count.
When Rescue and Recovery became Remember and Rebuild, our main contact at the Site was Bob Shutz, a WTC Department locksmith. Nearly all his colleagues and best friends had died on September 11. We both struggled in the months that followed, connected, I believe, by survivor's guilt.
Eventually, I was able to pull myself out of that darkness, but Bob was determined to die in that hole, continuing to struggle with the guilt, anger, loneliness, and lasting horror of 9/11.
His loss was another painful reminder that, for many of us, September 11 did not end when the Towers fell.
