My 9/11 story: The Bond That Survived

NEW YORK (Gray DC) - Twenty-five years ago, Debra Alfarone watched the first plane hit the World Trade Center from a street corner in Greenwich Village.

Witnessing the first strike

Alfarone said she was standing on the street corner when she noticed people walking by with a look she had trouble describing.

“It’s hard to believe that I was standing here 25 years ago when I saw people walking by, and the look on their face made me turn around,” Alfarone said. “It was something like it looked like shock, but it was hard to put a word on it. All I could tell is that their faces had a hard time registering what they were seeing, and so I turned around in time to see a plane hit the World Trade Center.”

“We now know that was Flight 11 hitting the North Tower,” Alfarone said. “What I knew in that moment is I had to go find my friends.”

Alfarone said she and four friends — Linda, Samantha, Elisa and Sharon — had worked together at Two World Trade and bonded. Linda was in the building at the time.

“So I just knew I had to get there. So I hit the subway,” Alfarone said.

Racing toward Wall Street

Alfarone said she was working at 40 Wall Street at the time, about three blocks from the World Trade Center. While she was in the subway, the clock struck 9:03 a.m., meaning Flight 175 had already hit the South Tower.

“I’ll never forget how it felt. Even 25 years later,” Alfarone said. “You had to keep your eyes closed because things were getting in them, little particles of dust felt like it would scratch your eyeballs.”

Alfarone said she got back on the number 4 subway train, and by the time she came up again, the skyline had changed and both towers were gone.

“All five of us survived,” Alfarone said. “25 years later our lives look nothing alike. We live in different places, and there’s several of us who can’t bring ourselves to come back here to where Ground Zero is.”

Five friends, five different experiences

Linda made it out of the building and has never been back. Sharon was standing in front of the towers when the second plane hit and ran home safely. Elisa was scheduled to be in the towers later that day and saw them collapse from blocks away. Samantha had moved to Boston and watched the events unfold on television. Alfarone made it home safely and sat in front of the television for hours and days afterward.

“I didn’t know then what I know now, but that was the moment that made me become a journalist,” Alfarone said. Today, Debra Alfarone is a national correspondent, working out of Gray Media’s Washington News Bureau.

Alfarone said she was moved by journalists who helped New Yorkers search for loved ones who never came home, and she has been telling those stories since.

A conversation 25 years later

For the anniversary, Samantha Meder, who worked in the World Trade Center, sat down with Alfarone to remember that day.

“There were you guys, my tightest, closest friends are down here and, you know, my family, my mother worked two blocks away,” Meder said.

Alfarone asked Meder what she knew of their friends’ experiences on 9/11.

“Like I knew Linda in the building. I knew it was such an ordeal. I talked to her, obviously like shortly after, but separately,” Meder said. “I don’t think any of us had ever really told each other the story of where we were, you know, in that whole morning, like, I didn’t find out about two of them until this morning.”

Asked why that might be, Meder said: “I don’t know, because I think it was had such a terrifying experience, I feel like. You don’t really want to relive it.”

Remembering at the 9/11 Memorial

More than 10 million people visit the 9/11 Memorial every year, remembering the 2,977 people who died that Tuesday. The memorial’s fountains fill the footprints of the towers, which once stood 110 stories tall. The sculptural voids were designed by architect Michael Arad.

“I came down here thinking, enough time had passed. I didn’t think it would be so emotional,” Meder said. “But then yesterday, when I saw the name of my once very close friend, it hit hard.”

Meder described the memorial as fitting.

“And what they’ve done here is kinda perfect. It’s perfectly poetic. It’s peaceful,” Meder said. “It’s a beautiful reminder, in tragedy life does go on.”

Alfarone said she and her friends vow to never forget, no matter how much time has passed or how much distance lies between them.