A Quarter of a Century Later, Those Who Were Here Remember
The playwright John Guare once asked, “How do we keep what happens to us? How do we fit it into life?” With that in mind, The Broadsheet asked half a dozen people who lived through the events of September 11, 2001, to share memories and insights on the day and the decades that followed.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
(fourth-grade student at P.S. 89 on September 11, 2001)
I was always late to school, even though we lived in the building above P.S. 89. But that morning I happened to be early. My mom had a meeting uptown, so she walked me to the schoolyard. I watched her cross the West Side Highway, and waved to her through the fence as she disappeared. Then Ronnie Najjar, our school principal, began ringing this large brass bell she carried into the yard each morning, and we all went upstairs.
Earline Thomas Nelson
(teacher at Park Preschool in Tribeca; nanny to the Galloway family in Battery Park City)
It was the first day of the school, so we were doing “phase in.” We had 40 children or more across three classrooms – two in the basement and one upstairs for older kids. They were aged two through four and a half. And our team was eight staff, plus the two owners of the school. The day started out amazingly well – it was a happy morning, calling kids in and joking around in front of this huge bay window that faced Warren Street.
Julie Menin
(Lower Manhattan small business owner in 2001)
I had a busy day in front of me. I owned a restaurant, Vine, on Broad Street, and we were planning to participate in an outdoor restaurant show on the World Trade Center Plaza the next day. And my husband had a meeting scheduled in one of the towers that morning.
Shaul Yamin
(owner of Dick’s Hardware, then located at 205 Pearl Street)
We opened at 7:30 every morning, and several of our regular customers from the neighborhood were stopping by – people we had known for years.
Elizabeth Keim
(first-grade teacher at P.S. 234 in 2001)
It was a beautiful day, with an incredible blue sky and not a cloud to be seen. It was also refreshingly chilly. That was the fourth day of school, and the nice thing for me was that my first graders were almost all students I had taught in kindergarten the year before. So I mostly knew all these families and their children.
Pat Moore
(then and now a resident of 125 Cedar Street)
That was the day of the primary election. In prior years, we had to go to St. Margaret’s House, over in the Seaport neighborhood, to vote. But they had moved the polling site to the high school on Trinity Place, a few steps outside our front door. So on the spur of the moment I stayed home that morning with my husband Andrew. That’s why we were together.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
We were unpacking our book bags and there was a loud sound, like a truck running over a pothole, but bigger. And the building shook slightly. But to kids growing up in the city, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
Elizabeth Keim
We were coming up the stairs from the schoolyard, and I had one little girl who was crying because it was hard to say goodbye to her parents. Then I heard a loud crash, which I assumed was a truck. But within about 90 seconds, parents were running up the stairs behind us, telling me a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
Pat Moore
There was a noise that I was sure had to be somebody’s stove exploding in the apartment above ours, and I looked up, waiting for it to come through our ceiling.
Earline Thomas Nelson
As the kids were getting settled, we suddenly heard a plane flying very low over our building, and then a bang. I said to the school’s owner that it sounded like a plane crash. Then I saw Jeff Galloway outside on Warren Street. He had just dropped off his kids, Kiera and Liam, at P.S. 234. They were recent graduates of the Park Preschool, and I was their nanny in the afternoons. But Jeff was looking up, and when he saw me at the window, he motioned for me to come outside. He said we had to get all of the kids out the school immediately, because a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.
Elizabeth Keim
At first, I had no sense that it was a terrorist attack. I assumed it was a small plane – just a terrible accident. I had been a teacher at P.S. 234 during the 1994 bombing of the World Trade Center, and it had not affected the school very much. Some parents initially wanted to take their kids, but not many. So we went up to the classroom, unpacked, and got ready for the day.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
The window of our classroom looked out at the corner or North End Avenue and Chambers Street, so we couldn’t see the World Trade Center. But there started to be an energy shift in the room. Other teachers kept buzzing in and out, and all the adults started to look scared. Strangely, our first period that day was for recess. So we were supposed to go back out into the schoolyard. But an announcement came that anyone scheduled for recess was to remain in classroom From our window, we started to see crowds of people filling the street, looking up and to the left. People had strange expressions on their faces – standing still and looking dumbfounded. But we couldn’t see what they were looking at.
Shaul Yamin
There was a pizza place in the basement of the building our store was in, and they had a television on. They told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then we saw burning paper in the air, and could smell smoke. Because I grew up in Israel, my first thought was, “this is not an accident.”
Elizabeth Keim
A flurry of announcements came over the public address system. The first was to pull down the shades. I chose not to look at what was happening outside, because I didn’t want my reaction to alarm the children. Next, we were told to move all the students to the auditorium on the second floor. Then we had to go the gym, on the first floor. Finally, an order came to move everybody into the basement.
Julie Menin
My first reaction was frantically trying to find my husband. I couldn’t reach him, but when I got home to our building, on Broad Street, he was there. His appointment in the World Trade Center had been changed. As the air became acrid, we began stuffing wet towels under our windows. The building staff started telling us to evacuate, but my mother had gone out to a doctor’s appointment, and I refused to leave until we found her.
Pat Moore
A blizzard of flaming debris started falling. Andrew said, “we have to get out of here, because that building is going to collapse.” I told there was no way it was going to fall down. Our friends always joked that I never listened to him. But I did that day, and if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
Kids in my class started getting curious, asking to go to bathroom, because that would mean a trip to the side of the building where the windows faced West Street. The teachers kept saying they had to hold it. Then we all started asking why we weren’t doing the lessons on the board, and other kids picked up on the adults’ energy, and started crying. That’s when my step-dad, Pete, burst into the classroom. He didn’t acknowledge the teacher or anybody else. He just looked at me and told me to get my bag, because we had to go. A few seconds later, several other parents showed up at the classroom and began grabbing their kids.
Earline Thomas Nelson
We took all the children to the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and waited while the school owners began calling parents. Then things appeared to calm down, so we walked all the children back to Warren Street, where parents were already arriving to pick them up. Within an hour, all of the children had been taken by parents or relatives or nannies.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
The school security guard at the front desk insisted that Pete sign me out, and they tried to stop us from leaving, but Pete just ignored them and pulled me outside. By that time, the second plane had hit, and as we faced the soccer field, I looked up and saw that the Twin Towers were on fire.
Shaul Yamin
After the second plane hit, the streets were packed with people streaming away from towers. Most of them planned to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, but they were disoriented in the confusion and kept asking for directions. People who had worked downtown for 20 years were suddenly lost. Almost all the phones died immediately, but for some reason, the one in our store kept working. A line began to form out the door, for people asking to use it. I had to ask them to limit each call to a few words, so that others could take their turn. My mother in Israel tried to get through, but kept getting a busy signal.
Pat Moore
We ran to the apartment of friends who lived at Nassau and Beekman Streets. That was only a few blocks father away from the World Trade Center, so I’m not sure why we thought we’d be any safer there. But they had a direct view onto the Twin Towers. All of our group was in their kitchen, making coffee. But I stood at the window, watching. That’s when I saw the top of the South Tower shimmer in the sunlight, as it began to sway. Then it leaned over, and started to sink into itself.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
While I waited in the lobby of our building, Pete went upstairs to get my baby sister, Rhys, and his mother, who took care of her. I was staring at the World Trade Center, and could see people jumping out. In my nine-year old brain, I didn’t know what I was seeing. I described to my parents as crosses falling from the sky.
The plan was to get to my grandmother’s apartment on Delancey Street. I could see the panic on my grandmother’s face. She began to cry and pray. The sky was turning gray and we could smell smoke and then taste it.
A few seconds later, I felt ground shake and heard a loud rumble, as everybody yelled “it’s coming down!” And I thought that when tall buildings fall, they must topple over sideways. But the height of the World Trade Center was bigger than our distance from it. So I was sure that we were going to be crushed and killed. Pete grabbed me under one arm, and Rhys under the other, and started running as he carried us. He kept shouting, “we have to keep moving!”
Elizabeth Keim
As we were moving from the gym to the basement, the lights briefly flickered and went out, then came back on. That was the moment when the first tower fell. Parents kept showing up and taking their children home. Some of the them told me that people were jumping from the towers. By the time we were in the basement, I had only five kids left from my class.
Pat Moore
The apartment where we had taken shelter overlooked a parking lot. It was filled with cars painted in bright, primary colors. Then the parking lot disappeared behind this fast-moving cloud. And when the dust started to clear, the cars were all the same color – gray. That was the dust that is now killing us all.
Shaul Yamin
The streets were blacked out by debris. You could not see a hand in front of your face. We knew many local police officers, and they started running into the store, saying they needed supplies. I told them to take whatever would help. They came back multiple times, and finally pulled a van up out front. They loaded up on light bulbs, ropes, extension cords, wires, dust masks, shovels, and everything else that might be of use. They took half the store, with my encouragement.
Julie Menin
News reports started saying that the New York Stock Exchange, across from our building was the next target. Then police knocked on our door and said that the building next to ours was swaying, so we had to get out. But I refused to leave until I knew where my mother was. Hours later, she finally made it back to our apartment. Nobody had tried to stop her. For those first few days, the borders around site were mostly open.
Earline Thomas Nelson
After we locked the school, we started walking uptown via Greenwich Street. Just as we got to Murray, a horrible sound and vibration caught up with us. Everybody started running, and a debris cloud caught up with me at Duane Street. I started to collapse, but two young men scooped me up and carried me into a restaurant. I had no way of knowing whether Mr. or Mrs. Galloway, or Liam and Kiera, were okay.
Elizabeth Keim
The last two children in my class were picked up by a parent of one, who also had permission to take the other. So I went upstairs to see how I could help. In front of the school, I met a police officer who was also a P.S. 234 parent. He told me to get everyone out of the building, through the rear exit, which opened onto Chambers Street. He said once we exited there, we should head uptown and run.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
Once we got to my grandmother’s apartment, I felt less afraid, but not completely safe. And I started to get more frightened, because I didn’t know where my mother was. When she finally came through door, she fell to her knees holding me and my sister. We were all sobbing and shaking. I was also worried about my best friend, Taylor, who lived in Gateway Plaza, facing the World Trade Center. I thought she and her family had to be dead.
Elizabeth Keim
I paired off with a kindergarten teacher who still had one student that had not been picked up. We took turns carrying the child, and running. When the second tower fell, we were close enough to see the avalanche of debris headed our way, but far enough away that it ran out of momentum before it reached us. Another teacher said, “they’re gone.” I didn’t know what she was talking about until I looked back, and there was a hole in the skyline, an empty space where the Twin Towers had been, with smoke rising out of the ground. As we walked up the West Side Highway, I heard the sounds of very powerful jet engines, which was upsetting. But these turned out to be U.S. Air Force fighters flying up the Hudson.
Earline Thomas Nelson
I eventually learned that Kiera and Liam and their parents were not injured. But we lost three of our parents at Park Preschool. One mom picked up two kids from this family, but their dad worked at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center and did not survive. He and his father and two brothers all died that day. Another student had a father who worked at the World Trade Center and never came out. This time of year always make me sad to my bones.
Elizabeth Keim
Somehow, we got word that the Department of Education wanted us to gather at P.S. 41, in Greenwich Village. It turned out that every parent from the P.S. 234 community survived. But our school was in the “frozen zone,” surrounded by barbed wire for months. It was used as a dormitory for rescue and recovery workers. The Department of Education arranged for us to use an empty Catholic school until we returned to Tribeca, the following March.
Pat Moore
In our apartment, the debris was a foot and a half deep. All 17 windows were blasted out. There were boulders and pieces of steel. And a dinner check from Windows on the World. We were inside cleaning out our home when President Bush visited the site, as we watched through a window. Police were scrambling over a nearby rooftop, yelling at us to get inside or else we would be shot by snipers. I yelled back that they should go ahead and shoot, because nobody was helping us.
Julie Menin
We came back as soon as they cleared us to return. The Daily News printed a photo of my husband and me wheeling a suitcase out of the Bowling Green subway station. I didn’t want to leave in the first place. A few weeks later, I founded a new organization, Wall Street Rising, to collaborate with neighbors on how to come together, help local small businesses, and rebuild the community.
Shaul Yamin
The police came back around 5pm and told us to lock up and go home. I was allowed back in three or four days later, and we started giving more equipment to responders, while we mopped and cleaned the store.
We were later reimbursed for some of what we had given – about $20,000 of compensation. The police later told me they had taken more than $200,000 worth of supplies, and offered to testify about this. I told them that this was not a time to make money, but a time to help. Part of why the store is here is to help, not just to earn a living. As we saw other people returning to neighborhood, it felt like being reunited with family.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
For me, the questions started almost immediately: Who did this? And why? We spent months displaced, staying with relatives and friends, then in the Chelsea Hotel. We never moved back to Battery Park City. A therapist later asked me to write a letter to the version of myself that had existed the day before September 11. I told that version of me to cuddle with her parents and sister on the couch the night before, to enjoy that last night, and don’t be scared.
Sometimes I wonder what I would write to the other little girl, whose existence began the day after September 11. I think I would tell her, it’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be okay. I might not share that the routine and the life she had before were over, or that it’s going to be a really, really hard road. But I would want her to know that her friend was safe, and she was not going to lose anyone.
Pat Moore
I lost my husband, Andrew, to a September 11-related pancreatic cancer 15 years ago. In my building, half of us who were here that day have died.
Julie Menin
My mother, who was covered in dust when she got to our door on Broad Street that day, died about 15 years later from a September 11-related cancer.
Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers
To this day, I struggle. I want to be in control of all things all the time, because everything was so out of control that day. Looking back, I have huge empathy for my parents, who were faced with the impossible task of trying to explain these events to a child. The experience has created an intimacy and immediacy with my family, and I can’t be angry about that. But maybe it would have been like that anyway; I just don’t know. There are also ripple effects: survivor’s guilt, post-traumatic stress, sounds I hear that remind me of New York, dreams that I still have.
Pat Moore
After 25 years, we’re still here. And we’re still fighting.
Editor’s note: Ashlie Triolo-Dekkers is now a marketing project manager in Austin, Texas. Julie Menin went on to serve as chair of Community Board 1 for six years, and is now Speaker of the New York City Council. Pat Moore joined Community Board 1, where she chairs the Quality of Life Committee. Earline Thomas Nelson (also known to local families as “Emmaline”) retired from teaching in 2018. Elizabeth Keim retired from the New York City public school system in 2015, and is now a reading teacher in Westchester. Shaul Yamin was faced in December with the prospect of having to close Dick’s Hardware, which has served the Lower Manhattan community since 1956. But a few months ago, he was able to negotiate a new lease, which will enable this family-owned business to remain for another 18 years. He now hopes to pass Dick’s Hardware on to his daughter, Daniella, who has worked there for more than a decade.