matt

I originally posted this in my old blog but since that's dead, I thought I'd migrate it over here.....

I've decided to write some of my memoirs in here. I know I'm only 23 but hey, it's never too early to write some of these stories down. I figured I'd write my most vivid and asked about story, my 9/11 experience. I heard a bit on the Bob Edwards show the other morning on XM about 9/11 stories so I felt this might be a good one to start off with. I'll be posting a number of different stories that comprise of my memoirs in the near future.

That day began pretty normally. I didn't have class until sometime later in the afternoon but I had volunteered to help with a recruiting table for my fraternity so I had to be at school at 9. At the time, I lived in a single dorm in Brooklyn Heights. For those who aren't familiar with NY/Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights is the "first" section of Brooklyn when you take the subway into Brooklyn from Manhattan and it's about a 10-15 minute ride. So I got up a little after 8, got dressed and what have you and was watching TV like I do every morning. I do recall that I was wearing my gray TKE shirt that was my "crossover" shirt (the shirt I got when I become a brother in the fraternity).

So I was watching the Today Show and at 8:30 I figured it was time to leave so I turned the TV off and headed to the subway. Between me leaving my room and getting to the city, nothing was different. I didn't hear anything about anything and it was pretty normal. So I took the 2 train into the city and got off at the Nassau/Broadway station. The exit I took put me right on Fulton street and it was about 8:50 at this point. As I got out of the station, I noticed a large crowd of people there but the day before there was a street festival on Fulton so I figured it was going on again this morning. So I pushed my way past people, getting annoyed at people just standing in the middle of the street. I noticed everyone looking at the sky so I looked up and saw a large plume of smoke coming from one of the World Trade Center towers (to this day I still don't know which was the north or south tower). I overheard someone say a plane had crashed into it but thought to myself, "Oh, wow a plane crashed. Oh well, it's probably a dinky plane and there'll be a fire but nothing big." Anyway, I called my friend in the fraternity because I had to meet him for the table recruiting and to ask him if he heard anything. My call woke him and everyone up so I headed to his building to come see them. His dorm was about 200 feet from me and was called the William Street dorms.

I took the elevator up this apartment where I saw him and all his roomates looking out the window. We all decided to go to the building's roof to get a better view. His building is about 3 blocks or so from the WTC. As we opened the door to the roof we heard a really loud crash sound. There were others on the building and someone said that another plane had crashed into the other tower. At this point I realized that this wasn't a freak accident but some sort of planned attack. I stood there on the roof and watched as the flames come out of the building and there was also quite a bit of debris flying around, mostly paper. After maybe 10 or 15 minutes we headed back to Rich's dorm, because the RA told us to leave the roof.

As we got back to his room I called my parents(using my student account which I never paid off I might add). They were livid and were happy to hear I was allright because at this point, no one really knew what was going on. Cell phones by this point were really useless as everyone was using it so I used Rich's landline to call home. My dad's sister from Israel had called them allready and my dad was telling me to go home. I told him that it'd be allright and I was fine. I really had no idea what was in store. I told them I'd be allright and I'ld talk to them later because I wanted to go to Pace to see if classes were cancelled or not. I suppose at this point my biggest problem was seeing if I had class or not that day.

I left their dorm and headed to Pace to see what was going on there. Pace is about 3-4 blocks from WTC so it's not a far walk. In front I met up with two of my fraternity brothers, Joe and "Bowser". We were trying to figure out what was going on and I thought about calling my parents again. As I tried to play with my cell phone to get it to work, we heard a sound I will never forget; it was a deep rumbling sound that started off with a "thud-thud-thud-thud" type sound. Later I would figure out that the thud-thud-thud sound was the floors of the first tower collapsing on each other. The thud-thud sound quickened until it was just a really loud crash sound and then for a moment, it was quiet. Everyone just looked in the direction of the sound.

Then we heard women and people in general screaming and the next sight scared the living shit out of me. In front of us are a bunch of different buildings that are between the school and WTC. So the WTC is partially obstructed by these buildings. At any rate, after the screams we saw a large cloud of smoke rising above these buildings and heading my way in a hurry. At this point, I dropped my cell phone and I honestly thought to myself, "I'm going to die". That perhaps is the most frightening thing you can think of because at that very moment I thought that was it. I was going to die. Somehow, someway, I was about to die. I didn't know the building had collapsed downward; I thought maybe it had fallen on its side and other buildings were falling.

I gathered my wits quickly and me and Joe and Bowser, along with everyone in the front ran inside of Pace. We ran inside with hundreds of other people and after a few seconds, they closed the doors to help stop the smoke cloud from getting inside, as it was about to hit. I still remember the look on the faces of the people who were outside that were pounding on the windows to let them in. Anyway, we kept running towards the back of the building. We ran down a flight of stairs and to the lowest level we could get to and then the sunlight dissapeared and the building shook from being hit.

After some time, I dont know if it was 2, 5 or 10 minutes, but soon enough light started to come back and it looked like outside that it had snowed an ash colored snow. At this point me and Joe and Bowser decided it was time to get out of Dodge, so to speak. There really was no one from the school or police or anyone telling us what to do. We figured we should take our chances and go to Brooklyn over the Brooklyn Bridge. This was really a dangerous idea at the time because we had no idea if maybe next the Brooklyn Bridge would be attacked. So we went outside and walked with thousands over the bridge. We met up with a friend of ours, Leslie, who looked really lost. So she joined us on our walk to Brooklyn. As we got about halfway over the bridge, we heard anothe loud rumbling and turned around to see the second tower collapse. At the time Joe yelled at people who were taking pictures and he was right; this wasn't a tourist attraction.

We got to Brooklyn and back to my dorm, since it was the closest. We went up to my room, except for Leslie who went to be with a friend of hers. We turned on the TV and saw what exactly was going on. We also used my land line to call home and say we're okay. After a few hours we decided to go to the store across the street and buy some beers because we really felt like we needed it.

Somehow, I dont remember how exactly, someone at NBC learned that Bowser had a good video of the planes crashing and what-not. So we got an invite to go to NBC to go show the tape. Joe decided to go home and although my dad told me not to go, I went to NBC with Bowser. We got there, showed them the tape and although the tape never was shown to my knowledge, it was a pretty cool experience. They brought us to the tape room to see what we had and the tape was really chilling. He had taped alot from the roof of the William Street roof and at one point there was a couple who jumped from the tower holding hands. It was really sad. And what I found the most bizzare was that these people, who were on the 70th floor or so had to decide things were so bad inside that their best option was to jump out of their building. I can't wrap my mind around that.

By nightfall we were done with NBC and I just wanted to go back to my dorm. I called home and told them I was going home. They were upset I had gone but happy to know I was fine. I don't remember what I did when I got home but that was one day I will never forget. I really don't like talking about it but I felt I should write this all down to make sure I never forget all the details of that day that happened some 3 years ago.