Editor’s Note: Dave Levy, a resident of Rhinecliff Street for more than a decade, is a Town Meeting member. Here, he shares what it was like to witness the events in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, something he had wanted to do but was spurred to do on this 25th anniversary of the hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA. Locally, the First Baptist Church, 819 Mass. Ave., will toll its bell 25 times at the moments each of the four planes crashed. Because the automatic ringing system is inoperable, Paul Andrew Chudigian will use a bell hammer to hand-strike the bells.
By Dave Levy
My son has a school assignment to interview someone who was “there” on 9/11. To prepare, I thought I would write down my thoughts. It’s something I’ve meant to do for some time, but every time I’ve tried, I’ve found it t too painful. I moved to New York after school a few months prior.
Monday, Sept. 10, 2001
Thunderstorms ripped through New York that evening. I remember looking at the weather in bound across the Hudson River from my office at 75 Park Place thinking, it’s a night to work late. I left work at 8 or 830. It was dark. The rain had stopped. I walked into the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall, grabbed a seat on the 6 train, and realized I didn’t have my sunglasses. Crap. My surprise and relief to find them resting on a subway vent grate next to City Hall park. When I picked them up, the north and south towers shown bright through the rising moisture, almost rainbow like with their lights on top of each building. I can still see that image today.
Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001
When I boarded the N/R train at Prince Street, around 8:50, looking down Broadway, you could see a trickle of jet-black smoke downtown. The first plane had hit, but from my vantage point, maybe it was a traffic helicopter or a small plane. That would all change by the time I exited City Hall station on Broadway. Something was very wrong. Smoke was visible everywhere. Sirens were very loud, and metal of some kind had landed at the subway station exit. I walked to my building. Tension was starting to rise. The north tower’s smoke from the impact at the top of the building was visible everywhere. I still thought it was the only impacted building. But the south tower’s impact, initially hidden from view, was far more monstrous. When I turned a corner to look down Church Street, I couldn’t believe it. The south tower was practically cut in two. There was no way out for anyone above the fire. And the fire was everywhere. The building roared at you in pain.
I found my co-workers. We were huddling on the north side of our building away from the fires and floating debris, three blocks south. If you looked at the south tower, above the impact, people were jumping out of the building as the flames were too hot to remain where they were.
By 9:20 a.m., panic was filling the streets. The fires were not being put out. No one was making plans to return to work. Sirens, wailing, were being drowned out by screams filling the air. I told my co-workers I was going home. They understood. I’m pretty sure I caught the last 6 train home.
When I got to my apartment, my roommate had not made it home. Cell phones weren’t working. I raced to the roof. One of the reasons we chose this apartment on Houston and Elizabeth was the unobstructed rooftop views of downtown and midtown.
I wasn’t the only one on the roof. Someone brought a boombox. 1010 WINs was playing. We listened while we watched downtown. The radio coverage switched between reporters at various locations. There was an update on the Pentagon. There were several unconfirmed reports of other planes still in the air. We, on the roof, knew we were attacked, under attack. But it was all a blur. While it felt like I was on the roof forever, it was only minutes until the south tower collapsed.
The screams were in stereo. The reporters on the radio screamed. My apartment neighbors all screamed. People on neighboring rooftops screamed. I screamed. The building screamed through noises of groaning from the steal breaking and rumbling. We didn’t hear the screams of those trapped inside the building or those who made every attempt to save someone. I happened to be taking photos (ones you would develop on film) and caught the south tower’s tragic end. How could a building so tall collapse so quickly? And then the smoke. It wasn’t a little. It covered all of lower Manhattan within seconds.
Was this it? No way could the north tower suffer the same fate. The fire was too high on the building. Surely, it would be contained. Still in shock from the first building, I saw the north tower perish. Unlike the south, which cracked in half before it all toppled, the north simply collapsed on itself. Gone within five seconds. The smoke, still covering, now blanketed all of lower Manhattan. For a while, nothing south of Canal St was visible.
At this point, Rudy Giuliani got on the radio. “Get out,” he said. But I wasn’t listening. I was frozen in shock. If people could take down two of the tallest buildings in the world, there was no stopping their horror. I watched the Empire State Building and didn’t move for 30 minutes.
At that point, fighter jets swarmed the skies. The radio confirmed all flights were grounded. Reports of Flight 93 were confirming a crash. The attack was over.
I came downstairs. My roommate’s co-workers were over. They couldn’t go back to their apartments near what was named ground zero. We took turns using the still working landline to call our parents. Now a parent, I can only imagine what mine were thinking when I spoke to them. We would all talk to family and friends throughout the day.
Gathered together
We gathered around the TV. That was the introduction of the CNN ticker (for better, for probably worse). We were glued to it. We would go back up to the roof. By 5 p.m., word was out Building 7 would soon collapse. I went up to see it. But it was too painful. The adrenaline was wearing off. As I would later tell my cousin, what I saw those hours in the morning was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Still is. We were all hungry. Miraculously, Prince St Pizza was open. And while they were in shock, they took orders. Just bring cash. By this time, to cross Houston Street, the street I lived on, we needed to show ID. The police had set up sanitation trucks and roadblock barriers on every crossing street. We offered pizza to the police officers. They respectfully declined.
It took me years to go back to the site after I left New York. I saw so much of it for the years I worked downtown. I knew it all too well. When I first went to the 9/11 Memorial on a way to a meeting, years later, I walked slowly past the names. Then I got to the names of the firemen named on the south tower. And more firemen. The police officers. And more police officers. More firemen. More police officers. I put my hand on the names. I wept for a long time.
In the hours, days, months, years since that day, I’ve been fortunate enough to feel immense joy. I’ve been able to get married, raise kids, keep friends, make friends, remember family and friends I’ve said goodbye to. I’ve been able to live. The co-workers, who I barely knew then, who I would become friends with, work with after, I wish all the same.
What I will tell my son is what I tell you now. Those who died, who I saw die, deserved to live. They were robbed. Their families were robbed. Their friends were robbed. And if you lived where I lived, you knew this all too well by the sign after sign after sign posted on every piece of available space, of someone missing that you might find, because that someone mattered to the someone who made that sign, made it for the someone who didn’t make it through that day. We owe them. Never Forget means never forgetting we owe them. We owe them a better future. A future they didn’t get, but a future they’d be proud of if they did. And we need to start that right now. For us. For them.
This commentary, published on Sept. 11, 2026, was written by town resident Dave Levy.
