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Edited on Fri Sep-05-03 11:32 PM by SharonAnn
teaching a class at AT&T.
My 24 year old nephew in Stamford, CT. had died in a car accident on 9-10. I had been on the phone at every opportunity on Monday and Monday night until I found someone who would come and take over the class so that I could get to my sister in CT to help her through her son's funeral.
I'll never forget the guy from the exercise room running out into the hallway as I was getting coffee and yelling "there's a plane in the World Trade Center, it's on fire!" Then going back to greet the arriving class members and then finding out about the second impact. And I'll never forget the class of my panicked adult students who had spouses, neighbors, and family relatives who worked in NYC. Cell phones that started ringing because schools were being closed and their kids were being sent home. Wondering what they should do, where they should go, and they looked to me for answers and I had none.
And realizing that my substitute teacher wasn't going to be able to get to Middletown and I was going to be the only family member who could get to my sister in Stamford, CT to be with her. After the company decided to cancel the class we packed up quickly, sent everyone home, and I took off for Stamford, CT not knowing how on earth I would get there but I figured if I had to go North to Canada and come back down through Niagara that's what I'd do. My sister was alone, she needed help, in NYC people were dying and it was so, so awful. I got across the Tappanzee bridge to Stamford and spent until Friday there. Stayed at the Stamford Yacht Club, across Long Island Sound from lower Manhattan, so that I had a perfect view all week of the smoke billowing up and out to sea from Ground Zero. And the candle-light vigils along the streets every night as families were still hoping that loved ones would be coming home.
I not only will never forget the horror of that week, I don't think I've even begun to deal with it.
I have no idea why I'm even typing this but something about Middletown, NJ and 9-11 brought this on.
I went back a month later to finish the class and we successfully finished it - but we were all like the walking dead.
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