NEW YORK - I woke up the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 giddy, albeit groggy, in anticipation of my first day as an intern at Good Morning America in Times Square. At 5:08 a.m., I rolled out of bed and into the shower before my subway commute to ABC's broadcast studio at 44th Street and Broadway in Manhattan in a place referred to as the "crossroads of America." I had essentially grown up on Good Morning America, a show that was as much a part of my childhood daily routine as Cheerios and milk. Now, some twist of fate had given me the opportunity to work with live guests, countless celebrities and audience members on the show. Besides a near disaster with a swinging camera and getting locked out of the studio, the internship began smoothly. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was the special guest. I was going to meet royalty on my first day of work. It was unreal. And then ABC cut to a special report.
At 8:52 a.m., approximately 10 minutes before the show was supposed to go off the air, the GMA crew heard shouts from the control room that a plane had crashed into a tower of the World Trade Center. Instantly, the cameras switched from that segment to live coverage of the breaking news. Shortly afterward, the audience, anchors and crew watched on monitors as a second jet hit the second tower. Then more screams from the control room. As it began to sink in that a terrorist attack had commenced, I ran upstairs to another studio where Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson were reporting live to get my cell phone and call home. I couldn't do anything but shake uncontrollably. It was horrific to watch as pedestrians on their way to work looked up on the jumbo-tron screen in Times Square and caught their first glimpse of the towers downtown. In the backs of our minds, we knew that we could be next.
I am one of the lucky few individuals who had a working cell phone in the city. At home in Michigan, my mother and grandmother were hysterical but relieved to hear my voice once we finally connected. "I love you" were our final words to each other before we hung up. Shortly afterwards, my supervisor and I left the studios with a cameraman in his car with the intention of driving up to upper Manhattan and then out. We were petrified with the idea that another attack would occur on Times Square.
As the three of us headed uptown, we listened to various New York news radio stations to hear updates of the situation. Tower 2 had collapsed. We turned around at that moment to watch Tower 1 collapse with our own eyes. Tens of thousands of people worked in those buildings, and I had just watched those towers go up in smoke. Somewhere-far, far away-men were popping open champagne bottles and celebrating the fact that thousands of people were dead. More importantly, Manhattan was helpless-the hijacked planes had hit the bulls-eye.
The cameraman who had unselfishly driven me, a complete stranger, away from the disaster had a friend whose wife probably perished in the disaster. Sadly, his friend may have also perished when he decided to go downtown to find his spouse. My supervisor and I listened with tears in our eyes as he frantically dialed each of the three cell phones in the car to get word. Nothing.
While horror after horror unfolded, we spotted a woman who was screaming frantically on the side of the road, failing miserably in her attempt to hail a cab. We stopped temporarily in traffic and discovered that she was an emergency room physician at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Without giving it a second thought, we opened the car door for her and drove her to the place she needed to go.
Once the Manhattan lockdown was announced on the radio, our trio drove around the upper east side aimlessly in search of a place to stay. We finally found a diner open at 89th Street and Second Avenue. The rest of the city had shut down completely-one of the eeriest sights one will ever see. For more than an hour, we picked at scrambled eggs and watched as people flooded north on foot with cell phones clasped to their ears.
About six hours after the initial disaster, we successfully maneuvered our way out of Manhattan via the Triboro Bridge into Queens with two more individuals, one of whom worked on the 78th floor of WTC Tower 2. He had been late for work this morning.
Now, I am staying in Queens with GMA crew members until the time has come to safely re-enter Manhattan. To be honest, I doubt that I will ever feel "safe" entering the borough again. Just two nights ago, I stood on the promenade in Brooklyn, near the St. George residence where the Duke in New York students live, and watched the sun set over lower Manhattan, the East River and the Statue of Liberty. The sky faded from bright blue into yellows, pinks and deep red. In the distance, I watched as distant airliners made their final approach into Newark International Airport in neighboring New Jersey. And in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if one of those planes accidentally went off course and careened into a skyscraper. But things like that don't happen in the United States. Or so I thought.
I encourage you to call your loved ones and friends to share your sentiments over the next few days. Whether we have a personal connection to the disaster or not, each of us has something to mourn.
Liz Prada, Trinity '01, was a senior when she wrote this column. It ran in this upper-right space Sept. 12, 2001.
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