On 9/11, these New Yorkers were schoolkids living in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn — part of a generation whose innocence was shattered that fateful September morning 13 years ago.
Now in their 20s, they visited the site of the Freedom Tower for the first time since the attacks to share their experiences with their friend, Royal Young, a writer raised on the Lower East Side.
They describe how the terrorist attacks dislocated their childhoods and went on to impact their adult lives.
Royal Young, 29, writer
Lived at Eldridge and Rivington streets
I was 16 and in my junior year at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts when our teacher told us the towers had been bombed. My artist father picked me up two hours later, riding his bike more than 60 blocks to the Upper West Side from our home on the Lower East Side. We walked back downtown together, hand in hand. At home, my family watched TV footage of the planes hitting over and over, until the screen turned to static and the signal cut out.
The next day, Mom and I walked down to Canal Street, surrounded by a suffocating stench — cars were crashed in the middle of the street, tanks patrolled and white dust had settled everywhere. When Mom asked if I was OK, I lied and said: “It doesn’t affect me at all.” But, as a teenager, I was furious at authority, with deep insecurities and doubts about myself. I felt unprotected and angry. I was also mad at my mom, who worked as a psychologist, for prying into my emotions.
For the next two years of high school, my parents insisted I take the bus to school, terrified of anthrax attacks in the subway. I stared out of the bus windows at the makeshift shrines and “missing” posters with people’s faces papering the lampposts, bus stops and buildings.
I turned 17 the following June and, one day, the flowers were swept away, the “missing” posters were gone. New York moved on and I convinced myself I had too. I left the city for a liberal arts college in Vermont, a picturesque natural setting that was as far divorced from the destruction I had witnessed as possible. But I was lonely. After a year of binge drinking, I dropped out of school and returned to Manhattan.
It wasn’t until last week that I went to visit the Freedom Tower with the friends I interviewed for this article. I’d been avoiding the place, not quite ready to deal with the anger and loss I still carried with me. Although I was moved by the tranquility of the memorial, it meant more to stand there surrounded by people who had survived this.
I was touched by what I’d forgotten 9/11 taught me: that experiencing tragedy together and sharing human connections is the ultimate triumph.
Alisha Gerald, 22, educator
Lived at Fulton and Sumpter streets, Brooklyn
I was 9 years old and at PS 3 in Bedford-Stuyvesant. A classmate went to the window and said: “Oh my gosh, what is all that smoke?” A black cloud rose above us.
The teacher turned on the radio and we heard: “The North Tower was just struck.” She started to panic, but we were kids. We took the opportunity to talk and act crazy.
Mom came for me. When we left the building, there was a girl whose mother was wearing a business suit covered in dust. She must have come from downtown Manhattan. Every step they took, the mother would stop and hug and kiss the daughter.
No one wanted to take the train, so the buses and sidewalks were packed. When we got home, we saw the planes on TV flying into the towers and exploding. All the cartoon channels I liked had the news on. I thought the world was ending.
The following week, it was really hard to start again. Everyone had this panic. What if they blow up the train station? What if they blow up school?
It took my innocence. Even now, I catch myself looking at people differently. When adults tell you a certain type of people caused this terrible thing, your outlook changes. I had Muslim friends in school, and after 9/11, I shied away from anyone with a head wrap. Then my teacher said, “Don’t treat people differently. Not everything you hear is true.”
Noah Barrow, 29, filmmaker
Lived at 27th Street and Eighth Avenue
I was 16, on my way to class at LaGuardia High School when a friend said the first plane had hit. We could hear firetrucks going downtown. I was scared because, though I lived in Chelsea with my mom, Dad lived in an apartment complex near the Winter Garden.
Out on the street, after Mom came to pick me up, I felt the difference in the city. It was a pristine day — temperate with blue skies. That was even more scary. How could this atrocity happen on such a beautiful day?
At home, we watched the ticker on CNN saying: “50,000 projected dead.” Thankfully, I later found out my dad was safe.
I remember a scene of senators standing outside the Capitol holding hands singing “God Bless America.” It felt insincere. What was happening outside my door was way more real.
When we went outside, neighbors gathered in the street. Without talking about it, everyone held hands in a circle. 9/11 forever shattered the feeling of safety I had during the daylight hours. Night and darkness was always the time to be scared, but that flipped. In the weeks and months that followed, I thanked God when the night came.
Strangely, despite the tragedy, it was also one of the best times to be in New York. You could look at anyone on the street and every person knew exactly what everyone else was going through. People were really together. That doesn’t exist in New York anymore.
Allegra Vera Warsager, 29, bartender and festival organizer
Lived at South End Avenue, Battery Park City
When the first plane hit, I was at my apartment within the closest residential building to the Twin Towers. Running to the window, I saw giant fireballs popping in the air.
A bunch of us ran downstairs. The second plane hit. I looked at our neighbor and saw tears streaming down his face. It was the first time I’d seen a grown man cry.
I looked up and saw things falling from the sky. At first I thought it was office furniture. Then I realized they were people. My stomach dropped. I felt removed. Shut off.
Next, grabbing our dog Cotton, my mom and I cut through the back of our complex onto the Hudson River. We sat on a bench by the water trying to figure out what to do when the first building started to implode. We looked up and saw gray smoke. I couldn’t breathe. Businessmen were taking off their blazers and shirts and giving them to women and children to put over their faces. There was lots of small heroism. I saw people being selfless in ways I haven’t experienced since.
Evacuation boats came in from New Jersey. I turned around and, looking at my city in flames, wondered if it would burn to the ground.
In Jersey, we got a basic hotel room and my dad met us there. We all went to Pizzeria Uno for dinner. The adults had booze. I had pizza.
After that, I remember staying at a friend’s in Brooklyn and people giving me clothes. When we went back to my apartment, everything was covered in asbestos. I was told one of the plane engines was in the building.
I felt completely numb. I was 16 and this was the end of my childhood innocence — the end of American innocence. Our generation had to cope but, like most teenagers, we bottled up our emotions.
Once the neighborhood started changing and Freedom Tower plans were announced, I realized this was part of a past I couldn’t deny. In college I wrote nostalgic vignettes of growing up downtown and living in the shadow of 9/11.
That day affects how I see the world. The World Trade Center was my backyard. All my neighbors moved away. I lost touch with people I had known for years. My community scattered. The city started changing at lightning speed.
It made me angry when people outside NYC put up tons of American flags and thought they were fighting a war. We were fighting a war just living in the city every day.
Amanda Segur, 29, photographer
Lived at Avenue C and 14th Street
A kid with radio headphones in my high school English class stood up and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Everyone in the classroom was confused. It was chaotic.
When I called my mom, she said she couldn’t get to me. We lived in Stuyvesant Town, and she was helping wounded people coming off the FDR Drive.
The school allowed me and three friends to leave together. We walked downtown and saw the giant clouds of smoke. Everyone was walking away from it, but we were walking toward it. As a 16-year-old, curiosity trumped my fear. I was scared but more curious of what it would be like when I got home.
Since they had closed the airspace over Manhattan, there were no planes and it was really silent. But, as we passed through Times Square, a fighter jet plane flew low overhead. Just the act of walking through Times Square felt dangerous.
My friends linked arms and just kept going. It was the first time I had seen men on the street with weapons strapped to their backs.
When I got to my apartment, Mom said, “We have to close the windows.” We knew what that smell was — people in the buildings.
My stepfather went to St. Vincent’s Hospital that night and joined the lines snaking around the block to give blood. They thought there would be lots of survivors who would need it. There weren’t.
I felt like we lost our city that day to everyone else. They weren’t showing it on the news for us. We saw it happen on our doorsteps. It turned into a countrywide tragedy, but New York was left to fend for itself.
The next day, the street artist Chico started painting his mural of the World Trade Center on a Lower East Side block. We all stood and watched him paint the memorial and I took photos of the crowd.
Being behind the camera was a way of emotionally distancing myself from what was happening. I was too young to deal with a tragedy like 9/11. I don’t think anyone really realized what it was doing to kids and teenagers — we got lost in the mix.
Before September 11, whenever I heard trucks backfire, it was just white noise, part of the city. Today, if I hear a loud bang or too many sirens at one time, I get on edge. I immediately search Twitter to see if anything is going on.
Meanwhile, I tend to photograph a lot of older buildings now. I’m more appreciative of them. I don’t have a lot of pictures of the World Trade Center. I never thought it would be something I would lose.
Stella Bouzakis, 28, fashion buyer
Lived at Abingdon Road and Lefferts Boulevard, Queens
I was in art class at LaGuardia High School listening to my Walkman when I heard a news report that a missile had hit one of the Twin Towers. I didn’t know how to react.
Minutes later, an announcement told us to gather in the cafeteria. Kids crowded around a radio, and there was chaos as they tried to reach their families. I had to wait until 4 p.m. for my father to come into the city from our home in Queens.
We took the subway since we were going uptown and they were still running. It took us two hours to get back. It was solemn and quiet on the train, but jam-packed. I didn’t hear anyone speak. I remember holding the pole and looking up at Dad, so thankful he was there.
It took me a long time to register what had happened. I didn’t cry till years later. I hadn’t realized what I had on my doorstep until it was taken away.
In our lifetime, we had never been blatantly attacked on our land. There was so much noise, prejudice and conspiracies. What sticks with me still is how divided the country got. People who weren’t even in New York were the angriest.
Instead of figuring out why it happened, we went to war. We stuck American flags on everything and changed french fries to freedom fries, like that was going to fix my broken city.
I’m Greek. My parents are from Crete. My father has olive skin and a dark mustache and, after 9/11, he would always get stopped at the airport. I had two friends in high school of Middle Eastern descent who got angry looks on the street, like they had family in the Taliban. These were two innocent, young girls.
Queens is one of the most diverse places in the world. I had friends of all races growing up. I never thought about prejudice until 9/11, when I realized that hate was still so strong.
Now I live downtown and I see the Freedom Tower from my block every day. The graveyard for those thousands of lives lost is a tourist attraction. I’m always getting asked, “How can I get to 9/11?” when I’m on the E train.
I wonder what we are trying to show the rest of the world. That by building a bigger building we are free?
Erik Erikson, 27, Web designer
Lived at Allen and Canal streets
I was 15 and in high school when they told us there had been a weird accident, that it wasn’t a big deal. But by the next period, an announcement came over the intercom that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.
It was strange to be trapped in my school near Columbus Circle, watching on the TV news what was happening in your own city. Kids were randomly guessing about who could be doing this.
Walking downtown was surreal. I didn’t even know if my home on Canal Street was still there.
Except for occasional cries, shouts or mutters from passing people, the city was really quiet. Downtown, there were military blockades. My stepmom met me. We were able to get back in our apartment and the smell was everywhere. At first I didn’t realize that it was burning flesh.
That night, the trucks came back to the firehouse directly next door. It was one of the few companies where no one had died. I had never really thought about firefighters and how they go headfirst into completely calamitous situations. It wasn’t about patriotism or power, they just wanted to save people.
The next day there was no school, and it was the first time in my life I remember not being happy to get a day off. I felt like I wanted to do something, but, as a kid and a civilian, I was completely powerless. I didn’t know whom to be angry at. I lost my faith in government, and it dawned on me that the adults in charge didn’t really know what was going on.
But 9/11 changed New York City from a place where I felt like an interloper — a kid from South Carolina who had been dragged to live here a year earlier because of my dad’s job — to a place that had changed me in a way that no other city could ever have. I had a shared connection with the people of the city and the skyline itself.