A Piece of Paper Changed My Life on September 11
Twenty-five years later, I still think about the conference I was supposed to attend at the World Trade Center—and the postcard that changed where I went that morning.
On September 11, 2001, I was 22 years old and working at my first job out of college. I was a Program Manager and then Program Administrator with the New York/New Jersey Clean Ocean and Shore Trust, a bi-state legislative agency focused on environmental issues. Our office was based at Columbia University, and because we were such a small staff, I did a little bit of everything—from attending meetings around the tri-state area to answering phones and opening the mail.
That morning, I was supposed to attend the third annual “Who’s Doing What in New York Harbor” conference. It had originally been scheduled for the World Trade Center, but before September 11, a postcard arrived in our office announcing that the location had been changed to the Consolidated Edison building downtown.
Frankly, I was lucky I even saw it. It easily could have gotten lost or missed.
That piece of paper changed my life.
At the time, I was subletting an apartment at 116th Street and Riverside Drive. I usually took the subway, but that morning I decided to splurge on a taxi so I could make final edits to my first-ever PowerPoint presentation for a conference.
While I was in the taxi that morning, my cousin Vaishal called me. He sounded worried and asked where I was going. When I told him I was headed to a conference, he asked if it was at the World Trade Center.
No, I told him. The location had changed.
That was when he told me that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. I asked him to let my parents know that I was okay.
When I arrived at the Con Edison building, the conference was being postponed because a second plane had hit the towers. A group of us gathered near the windows and watched the towers smoking and burning. Then we watched them collapse.
That image has stayed with me ever since.
Afterward, Manhattan was chaos. The subways and buses were shut down. Cell phones didn’t work reliably. I walked from 16th Street to 116th Street, about 100 blocks.
Along the way, I stopped near the apartment buildings of friends to check on them. Like so many people in New York that day, I was trying to understand what had happened and whether the people I cared about were safe.
In the days and weeks that followed, I volunteered. I handed out food and refreshments to firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers. I also volunteered at the Armory, where families came to report loved ones missing and brought DNA samples.
That experience has never left me. At first, people were searching for the “missing.” Over time, we began to understand that many of them were not temporarily missing. They were gone.
For years afterward, I have returned to the same thought: It could have easily been me.
The conference was supposed to be at the World Trade Center. The thing that kept me from going there was a postcard.
This was 2001, before smartphones were widely available and when email was not nearly as accessible as it is today. Important information still came through the mail. What if that postcard had gotten lost? What if I hadn’t seen it? What if I had simply gone to the place where I originally thought the conference was being held?
When I think about September 11 now, I don’t only think about what happened that morning. I think about everything that happened afterward.
A few months later, I met the man who would become my husband. I got married. I continued my education. I built a career.I lived in different places. I became a mother. I traveled. I had experiences that my 22-year-old self could never have imagined.
I have often thought about how different my life might have been if that one piece of mail had not arrived.
September 11 will always be a day of unimaginable loss. For me, it is also a reminder of how fragile life is, how lucky I have been, and how grateful I am for the life I have had the chance to live.
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