At 5 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, my manager informed me by phone that she would miss a review deadline critical to my work. She rhetorically asked if that was OK. Of course it wasn’t, but through gritted teeth I replied, “Sure, what difference does a day make?”

 

The next morning, I awoke early to vote in New York City’s mayoral primary. Because there had been no line at Norwood’s Mosholu Montefiore Community Center polling location, I arrived at my desk on the 32nd floor of 3 World Financial Center, the iconic Lower Manhattan building with the green pyramid on top, about 15 minutes earlier than usual.

 

As I waited for my computer to start, I turned toward my north-facing window. It was a picture-perfect view broken by the sight of an American Airlines jet, silver with red, white and blue stripes, flying down the middle of Manhattan toward the World Trade Center, directly across West Street from where I stood.

 

The plane was high enough to clear my 52-story building, so I felt no immediate danger. Its wings rocked up and down and I assumed the pilot was fighting mechanical trouble. Years later, I learned that motion was likely the struggle to control the aircraft through the dense air of low altitude. When the plane drifted to its right, I thought the pilot was aiming to ditch in the Hudson River. Then it banked hard left and up. I held my breath, knowing it had to clear the Twin Towers. After what felt like minutes, not seconds, I heard the crash.

 

It wasn’t like a movie explosion. It sounded like a locomotive slamming into a mountain, muffled by more than 50 floors between me and the impact. In that instant, my body reacted before my brain could catch up and I was soaked with sweat. I called my parents, still in bed at Knox Place in Norwood.

 

When my mother answered, groggy with sleep, I said with no further explanation, “Turn on the TV and just know that I’m all right.” Then I left a friend a message: “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. A passenger jet just hit the World Trade Center. Hundreds of people on the plane and in the building are dead. This is going to be the worst thing that ever happened. I’ve got to go.”

 

I ran to the northeast windows and looked down at the World Trade Center plaza, expecting wreckage. Instead, everything was gray and still. The only motion was paper, what seemed like all the paper in the world, floating down from above. I saw a wheel from the landing gear, but I did not yet know that a colleague who sat nearby was beneath it. Miraculously, she survived. When I looked up, I expected to see the plane’s tail. There was nothing but a massive scar across the side of the building, pouring flames and smoke into the sky.

 

A colleague asked what had happened. When I told her, she said, “You mean a private plane? A prop plane?” Nearly losing patience, I pointed out the window and said, “You think a prop plane did that? It was an American Airlines jet.” Minutes later, a public-address announcement told us the events across the street did not affect us and we should shelter in place. Then I heard a real explosion. A visible shockwave rolled through our building. I thought a fuel tank had blown inside the North Tower. Someone ran from the southeast side of the floor and said another jet just hit the South Tower. In that moment, we knew our city was under attack.

After a brief phone outage, I reached my sister who saw from the caller ID that I was still at my desk. She ordered me to “get out of there!” Simultaneously, another announcement told us to remain inside. I listened to my sister. I took the elevator down, exited onto Vesey Street, and was directed toward North End Avenue.

 

I found members of our chairman’s office in the crowd. We watched people high above us at the Windows on the World restaurant waving tablecloths toward hovering helicopters. Part of my mind still tried to make the day normal. I wondered how they would repair damage that high in the sky and how many days it would be before we returned to work.

 

Then, a person fell from more than 100 floors up. A collective gasp rose from the crowd. Then it happened again, and again. We realized people were actually jumping. We wondered how terrible it was inside if that was the better choice. Only the four lanes of West Street separated us from people who, just like me, had gone to work expecting an ordinary day. Later, watching the news, I understood that television viewers had been spared much of the horror we witnessed from the ground.

 

When I saw what looked like pieces of the South Tower’s roof shooting downward, I knew I didn’t want to be there when the antenna atop the North Tower became a giant javelin. I started the 17-mile walk home to Norwood, where I still live. No one had to tell me the subways would not be running. I had reached 23rd Street before I turned back and saw, in total disbelief, a giant smoke cloud where the Twin Towers had stood.

Now, 25 years later, when social media-driven conspiracy theories travel around the world in seconds, I feel a responsibility to say what I saw. I was there. I saw the plane. I heard the crash. I saw the papers fall, the towers burn, and people make impossible choices in the sky above New York. I carry that day with me because I lived it, and because the truth of what happened must be told by those who were there.

 

Cynthia Tuohy, 68, is a life-long resident of Knox Place, Norwood, The Bronx. She still works at the World Financial Center, now known as Brookfield Place.