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Being there...
Editors note: The following is a first-hand account from Trena Madison, a cousin of Alan Yungclas of Webster City and Leah Maass of Ellsworth. Trena was living in New York on September 11, 2001. Trena is a descendant of Trena Thorson Madison, whose sister Talitha Thorson, who was the grandmother of the Webster City Yungclas family. Al's father, Bruce Yungclas and Phyllis Thorson (Madison) were close, and their families spent a lot of time together in the Webster City area. Today, Trena lives in Minneapolis, moving from New York about a decade ago. She shared this account of her experience that day with Al, who has shared it with the Daily Freeman Journal.
It was a stormy downpour of an evening as I arrived at Rockefeller Center to take my advanced French studies final in preparation for my interviews with the Paris office of the magazine I’d worked for during the previous few years, Mademoiselle at Condè Nast. I was excited to build my career with an assignment in Paris. After class, some friends and I dashed over to the Chelsea Piers on the Hudson River to enjoy the kickoff party of the first fashion show of New York Fashion Week – Marc Jacobs, a great friend from the beginning of my career in the fashion community since my arrival in New York City. After the party, several of my work colleagues and I were able to take a limo home to Brooklyn (*a great perk of our job as fashion editors at Condè Nast!) and as always, we requested that the driver take the upper deck of the bridge to Brooklyn so we could enjoy the amazing lights of the city and the Twin Towers…we always felt like that was a magical movie moment just for us, to remind us what we really loved about our jobs and our lives.
That next morning was so cool and crisp, the promise of autumn in New York. I had a full schedule of fashion shows in the tents in Bryant Park, so as I drank my coffee on the fire escape of my Brooklyn flat, I thought I’d head in early to savor the excitement of watching the celebrities arrive.
Just another day of fashion, I picked an embroidered shoe with no back and a small pointy heel, since I would just be sitting all day. I hopped on the “R” train, packed with the usual Wall Street employees, students, fast food workers and healthcare professionals. As we slid into the Trade Center stop around 8:45, we saw emergency lights flashing and the sirens. The doors didn’t open. People started removing their headphones and looking up from their newspapers and books. Wall Streeters were demanding to be let out.
Garbled announcements barely heard from the combined pandemonium of alarm sirens/flashing lights/pounding fists on closed doors, people telling the “pounders” to shut the hell up.
After some indeterminate amount of time, the train lurched forward and raced to the Canal Street stop and we were instructed over a garbled loudspeaker, that all passengers must exit quickly, no further trains would arrive and we must leave the station.
I clattered up the steps in the stupid fashion slippers, thinking what a drag to walk 40 blocks uptown to the Times Square office. As we stepped onto the sidewalk, we had a beautiful view of the Twin Towers against the blue blue sky.
My co-workers, Joshua, Ira and I were able to catch a cab uptown, got to work to find our publishers crowded around a TV with a helicopter shot of the Trade Center. The actual view of the towers was exactly through the windows facing south as smoke began pouring from them.
Ambulances and fire trucks began howling downtown through Times Square…our boss said that we should go over to the fashion shows, but when we decided to head out of Manhattan, we kept thinking fighter planes would soon start shooting us like in Tora!Tora!Tara!
There was no longer subway service and as we headed downtown, a kind Pakistani shoe shop guy gave me a pair of tennis shoes as we stopped to look at his TV, which he had on a chair out on the sidewalk. He was sad as he listened to the narrative that had begun about Middle Eastern terrorists and said his shop would probably close because he knew how this hate works…I went back to find him a few days later and pay him for the shoes. He was packing up.
I tried to call friends and family as we walked, but there were so many cells calling, I couldn’t get through. I found a pay phone and got to talk to a friend who told us that the fires had really gotten worse, so we started running to get out of the lower Manhattan area… we were a few blocks away, going onto the Williamsburg bridge when the buildings just started to disappear…we really couldn’t comprehend that they were falling down. It was not understandable.
Jets started racing down the skies over us and the huge cloud of dust and smoke covered the neighborhoods and we saw people all dusty. We’d gone past the New York University hospital where many emergency workers were standing, waiting to receive injured people…but no ambulances came.
When we got to the middle of the Williamsburg bridge, the crowds of people were shattered.
We prayed, we shared our shock.
I was nearly out of my mind, so I stepped away to remind myself that I would stand there, 10 years from then, and everything would be ok.
As we arrived in Williamsburg on the other side of the bridge, the Hasidic community had set up folding tables with milk and juice, cakes and bagels to refresh the river of people fleeing Manhattan. They told us that they understand the horror of bombings and terror attacks and extended a safe space to keep people sustained. Women let us hold their babies to remind us that there is life to look forward to, a future. The men gave us rides to different neighborhoods to help us get closer to home.
So much changed that day. I never got to interview for the Paris job, Mademoiselle magazine closed a few weeks later.
Our life became smoke and survival, putting out small fires on my fire escape and roof from the burning pages that dropped into our neighborhood from the arc of burning debris in lower Manhattan. We gathered in Union Square, looking at flyers posted on hurricane fences seeking lost loved ones, thousands of them. At first, it was hopeful, then in the following days, it was a memorial as we realized thousands were buried in that place