9/11 etched into people’s minds 25 years later

Ask someone who was in New York on 11 September 2001 where they were when the first plane struck the World Trade Center and chances are they won’t have to think for long. 

Twenty-five years later, the details of that morning remain etched in the memories of those who witnessed a day that changed New York, and the world, forever. 

Cindy Eden, who was working in New York at the time and watched from a rooftop as the towers fell, says she can’t forget the times she spent in the buildings, or all the people who were lost. 

“I spent a fair amount of time at the World Trade Center. On the 107th floor of the North Tower was Windows on the World and a bar known as ‘the greatest bar on earth’. Thursday nights were salsa nights, and we danced there more than once, a hundred storeys above the city. Knowing what that room became on 11 September, and that so many people who worked or simply happened to be there never came down, is a grief that hasn’t gone away. It becomes something you carry,” she said. 

“I was about to become a mother for the first time when the towers fell. I remember feeling the strangeness of carrying a future on a day that felt like an ending. What I remember most 25 years later isn’t the smoke or the fear – it’s the quiet that followed, the kindness that showed up inside it, and knowing exactly which room, on which floor, I used to dance in.” 

Elise Jankelowitz was in the United States for her elder brother’s wedding in Chicago and was spending a few days in New York. She was staying at the Marriott Hotel in the World Trade Center when everything changed. She is still haunted by the memory of her and her brother running for their lives. After waking to the first plane hitting the first tower, they were initially told to remain in their hotel room before being ordered to evacuate. They ran down 15 flights of stairs and, once outside, witnessed the second plane hit. 

Fearing the towers would collapse, they headed towards Battery Park and the Hudson River, where they were engulfed in thick dust and sheltered near the water. Eventually, they escaped Manhattan by ferry to Staten Island, passing firefighters heading in the opposite direction, an image that’s remained with her ever since. 

“We could hear planes above us and taxi drivers shouting that there were still aircraft unaccounted for and that Manhattan was under attack. At that point, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, this is it. This is the end of our lives’,” said Jankelowitz. 

Graphic designer Caren Green, who was living in New York at the time, was on her way to work when she heard on the radio that a plane had just flown into the Twin Towers. She said that day was one of the catalysts that led her to return to South Africa in 2003. 

“I just realised that the world wasn’t as safe as you thought it was. People would say, ‘Oh, South Africa, you could get shot’, but in some ways I felt safer in South Africa because it felt like something you could control. In New York, there was this overwhelming sense of having no control. Wherever there were large groups of people, you wondered whether there could be a bomb or some kind of terrorist activity. It just felt very, very different,” she said. 

Green joined her colleagues at work watching the unfolding attack on television before going to the roof with her boss, where they witnessed the second plane hit the Twin Towers. She described the moment as surreal, “almost like watching a movie”. 

Tami Morris started a new job on 11 September in New York. While getting ready, she turned on the TV as she did every day to check the weather, and suddenly saw the Twin Towers being attacked. 

“It was my first day of work, and I didn’t want to be late, so I got dressed and started walking to the office. As I walked, there was this strange feeling on the streets and a sense of panic beginning to set in,” she said. “As I got closer to my office in the Meatpacking District, I could see more chaos unfolding.” 

She arrived at work and didn’t know what to do with herself, and neither did anyone else. 

“We eventually walked towards the Hudson River, trying to find somewhere we could see the towers from. From there, we could see them and I actually watched the towers come down. We were standing on the edge of Manhattan looking at the towers when it happened,” she said. 

“What I find particularly striking now is how much the world has changed. 9/11 was an enormous global event and afterwards there was a very real fear and understanding of terrorism. For my generation, it became part of our history because we lived through it,” she said. 

Dina Diamond, who was working at a real estate development firm in New York at the time, remembers walking out of the subway and thinking what a beautiful day it was. She arrived at her office, on the 40th floor at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan, to find colleagues gathered at the windows. From the office, which had a clear view downtown, they could see smoke pouring from one of the Twin Towers and were told that a plane had struck it. 

“As we were looking out the window, we saw the second plane fly into the second tower. And it looked like glitter falling off the building, but it was glass. We just saw stuff and people falling off the building and the plane exploding into the building, which was a crazy, surreal thing to see.” 

Diamond said that seeing the events unfold took away the rose-coloured glasses she had for New York and New Yorkers. 

“New York was always seen as this powerhouse, almost an indestructible entity and the centre of the universe. But I think that was shattered forever on that day. After 9/11, travel changed, security requirements changed, and there was this realisation that nowhere is truly safe. We had seen things happening in Israel and South Africa, but you never imagined something like this could happen in New York City,” she said. 

“It was a huge lesson that nowhere is untouched. There are forces that will try to do terrible things, but at the same time, people come together to do good. So many people lost their lives that day, and it reminded me that you have to live each day, appreciate what you have, and help others when there is a crisis.”