The Sky and the Silence

My personal 911 experience in NYC

I Remember. I Was There.

A reflection on memory, loss, and beginning again.

September 11, 1955.

Not the date that immediately comes to mind, is it?

It is my birthday. Today, I am 71 years old. For twenty-four years, every September 11, I have sat down to write some version of this story. For many years, Manhattan was my home, and on September 11, 2001, life as I knew it changed irrevocably.

Certain moments in human life slice clean through time, creating a permanent boundary between before and after. We rarely choose what happens in those moments. What we do eventually choose is how we live from there.

This is what I remember.

The Sky and the Silence

I remember standing on the roof of our apartment building on the Upper West Side, looking south. Heavy, dark pillars of smoke were rising, defacing an otherwise pristine, brilliant blue September sky.

Looking down at the avenue below, I saw something almost unthinkable for Manhattan: empty streets. No pedestrians walking. No yellow cabs rushing down the avenue. Nothing. For a city fueled by relentless momentum, that profound silence was deeply unsettling.

We lived about four miles north of the World Trade Center, so we couldn’t see the towers directly from our roof. We spent the morning in a frantic rhythm—running downstairs to watch the television coverage, then racing back upstairs to stare toward downtown.

We watched the second plane strike live on screen.

Within minutes, my husband said, “Grab the small suitcases. We’re going to the grocery stores.”

Because nearly everything consumed in Manhattan arrives by bridge or tunnel, those supply lines were shut down almost instantly. By the time we reached the neighborhood markets, over sixty percent of the shelves across three different stores were already bare. Slowly, imperceptibly, the eerie feeling of living in an active war zone began to sink in.

A City in Lockout

Yet life’s smaller obligations continued. My little dog, Sassy, still needed to go outside—dogs have no understanding of history unfolding.

So I took her to the park.

That remains one of my sharpest memories: walking a tiny dog through a quiet Manhattan park while F-15 fighter jets screamed low overhead.

Those military air patrols continued for weeks. Sometimes we could see the metallic glint of the planes; other times, we only heard the roar. At night, they occasionally dropped low over the city. The sound was so immense and sudden that, for a split second, my heart would leap, expecting an explosion outside our window.

In those first hours, communication crumbled. One of my daughters managed to reach me just before the second tower collapsed. After that, cell service died. For days, those of us trapped on the island felt entirely cut off from the rest of the world.

And then, amid the isolation, something remarkable began to happen.

People stopped.

Neighbors who had passed one another for years without more than a polite nod began gathering on street corners to check on one another. Small groups formed on almost every block. People stood together and spoke quietly. There was nowhere to hurry, nothing to accomplish. We simply needed to stand beside another human being and know we were still here.

The Mirror and the Loss

A few days later, I saw my next-door neighbor’s parents in the hallway. They had come to clear out their daughter’s apartment.

She had died in the second tower.

Before they left for the last time, they handed me her small wall mirror—the mirror she had looked into that morning to check her hair before leaving for work.

I still remember holding that mirror.

As the days wore on and the initial shock began to settle into reality, I realized my business was gone, too. I held contracts with several major companies based in the World Trade Center. Standing in the quiet aftermath, terror gripped me: How am I going to make a living?

Then, a quiet calm took over. I knew, instinctively, that another way forward would appear. It did. But the industry I had known never fully recovered; that part of my professional life vanished along with so much else that morning.

Yet losing business was secondary. Sixty-six of my business associates died in the towers. These were not abstract names on a corporate roster. They were people I had worked with for years. We exchanged holiday cards, shared personal milestones, and celebrated at company events. Sixty-six people I knew were suddenly gone. That scope of loss took years to fully comprehend.

Rewiring a Life

Perhaps that loss is why I continue to write about September 11 every year.

So much of my work today centers on rewiring life—guiding women through moments when the life they expected is suddenly no longer the life standing in front of them. Sometimes that shift comes through retirement or divorce. Sometimes through death, empty nests, illness, or financial upheaval.

And sometimes, history itself walks through the front door and rewrites everything.

What September 11, 2001, taught me is that moving forward does not require forgetting what came before. We carry these moments with us:

• A small wall mirror saved from a neighbor’s apartment.

• The low rumble of fighter jets through a quiet night.

• The names of colleagues who are gone.

• The memory of who we were before the world changed.

And still, life insists on continuing.

I have lived another quarter-century since that birthday. I have lost things I thought I could never survive without. I have had to rebuild and start over more times than I ever anticipated. Along the way, I have discovered resilient versions of myself that the woman standing on that Manhattan rooftop could never have imagined.

Today, I am 71. And that, too, is part of the story.

Life changes. We grieve what was. We remember. And then, somehow, we begin again.

I remember. I was there. And I will never forget.