THEIR STORIES
9/11 experiences of three local people recalled
On September 11, 2001, Porterville’s Nick Arcure was sitting on the runway at Newark Airport; Lindsay Unified School District Superintendent Janet Kliegl was at school at work and was anxious to hear from her son, who worked on 24th Street near the World Trade Center. As it turned out, he had just stepped off the subway and witnessed a plane flying low and saw it hit the second tower. And Lindsay’s Roslyn Brennan attended classes at the WTC and was going to drop her child off at daycare held on the 60th floor of the World Trade Center. But the baby had a high fever and she was advised to stay home.the baby’s teacher along with five other young mothers and their children, were never seen again and believed to have perished in the collapse of the Twin Towers.
These three stories ran in the Porterville Recorder on September 11, 2011. Here are their stories:
ROSLYN BRENNAN — A DAY ONE LOCAL MOTHER WILL NEVER FORGET
It’s been 10 years since 9-11-01, but for Roslyn Brennan, the nightmare of that day will forever be etched in her mind.
She can still remember the chaos, the screams and the helplessness she felt watching as people jumped to their deaths. She can still remember the horror she felt as she witnessed the second plane strike the second building. She remembers sirens, helicopters, the billowing black smoke and the horrific dust from the fall of the twin towers — and she can still remember the smell of melting steel entangled with gasoline and death, and the smell in the days that followed, of decaying bodies — a horrendous stench, she said, she will never, ever forget.
Brennan, who now lives 2,800 miles from New York in Lindsay, said she knows neither time nor distance will ever completely heal the emotional damage caused when America
was attacked by terrorists.
“It looked like a stage straight out of a movie,” Brennan said. “I should have been there.”
A single mother living in New York, Brennan was trying to get her life together through a program called “Project Return” — a rehabilitation program for young, single mothers. She lived in a building on Canal Street, several blocks from the World Trade Center.
“It was a six-week program through Career Blazers and we met at the World Trade Center for classes. There were a lot of programs that met there,” she said. “I’d take my baby to the 60th floor. That’s where all the day cares were — between the 60th and 70th floors. That’s where all the children were. That’s where my baby should have been.” But that morning, Brennan said she noticed her 15-month-old daughter felt warm.
“I took her to the infirmary where we lived and the medical trainer said not to take her in to the World Trade Center and stay home with her,” Brennan said.
“She had a high fever. And because of that — she saved my life.”
Brennan’s classmates were not as fortunate. One of her teachers, and five other young mothers — and their babies — never returned and Brennan said she believes they were among the 3,000-plus who perished that day.
Other classmates had finished the class at the World Trade Center and assigned to various work sites around the city, Brennan said.
“There was so much confusion. Everyone was crying and screaming in the streets,” Brennan said as she wiped away at tears. “Several of us who had not gone to the World Trade Center that day watched from our building. It is something I will never forget.
“When the buildings collapsed, the smoke and debris was so thick, we had to go inside. We all went down to the basement, where our cafeteria was, and stayed glued to the television. The mood was sadness, angry, screaming, crying. There was a big sense of loss. We didn’t really know what was going on. We were scared. We kept waiting — thinking more attacks were coming. Waiting and wondering.”
Counselors were brought in to help them deal with their emotions.
“We all shared the same tragedy so everyone knew what everybody was feeling. Those of us there knew some of the girls were in the (WTC) building. We were in shock,” she said. “But what it did for me is make me appreciate life better. That night before, who would have guessed what the next morning would bring? I am thankful that my life, and my baby’s life, was spared.”
Brennan said she knew she wanted to leave the area. She had no desire to stay there and was glad when a friend in California invited her to come to Lindsay. There were too many horrid memories in New York City.
“New York was like a ghost town. Everything had come to a halt. We were not allowed out much because of the smoke and the smell. We had to stay inside — always glued to that television,” Brennan said. “But we did walk past Ground Zero all the time — the smell of decaying bodies and gasoline was absolutely horrible.”
Brennan said she felt numb and in shock as she watched people crying, photographs in hand as they searched for loved ones.
About 10 days later, as she walked past Ground Zero, she saw a volunteer working.
“I told him I should have died there. My friends did. But my baby saved my life,” she said. “He wore a 9-11 shirt and I asked him if I could have it as a souvenir of that day. He took it off, right there and then, and gave it to me.”
To this day, Brennan keeps the shirt tacked on her living room wall. She cried softly as she took it off the wall.
“I never wore it. I never washed it,” she said. “I was invited to return and I was thinking about it but I can’t afford it. But what is very sad and very wrong is that the firemen and other first responders were not invited. I think it’s wrong.
They risked their lives to help people get out. It’s just wrong that they were not invited back — after all they did.”
Brennan said it is hard for her to believe that it has been 10 years since that tragic event and is glad her daughter was too young to remember it.
Her daughter eventually returned to New York to live with family but Brennan has stayed in Lindsay.
“I always light a white candle on September 11 — for peace and in memory of what happened,” Brennan said. “It still chokes me up and is something that will affect me for the rest of my life.”
NICK ARCURE — ‘AMERICA IS UNDER ATTACK’
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We are taxiing back to the terminal. America is under attack” — those were some of the words Porterville resident Nick Arcure heard as he sat in an American Airlines plane on the runway at Newark Airport on September 11, 2001.
“At that point we were given permission to use our cell phones and I immediately tried to call my wife but couldn’t get through,” he said. “I finally called a co-worker and had him relay the message to her.”
In the meantime, Arcure’s wife was panicked, thinking her husband’s plane had been involved in the attack. She had been listening to local radio KTIP and had already learned about the planes.
“I was flying from Newark to Boston on American Airlines and scheduled to depart at 9:49 a.m. — the same airline and the same time the plane in the attack
was scheduled to depart,” he said. “My wife looked at my itinerary.”
Arcure said he watched everything unfold from the small airplane window. “Everybody on my side of the plane was focused on watching. I had people looking over my shoulder — everybody was trying to see,” Arcure said. “I actually saw the second plane hit the second building. From where I was it looked like a small aircraft. I knew it was flying low and I instantly thought it was some kind of accident.”
That was when the pilot made his announcement about America being under attack.
“We taxied back and went into the terminal. The best way I can describe everything is ‘Controlled Chaos’,” Arcure said. “I think everybody was still in shock. I could see the building from the terminal’s big window. We could see the building smoking and saw the buildings fall.”
The controlled chaos continued as he tried to rent a car to no avail.
“Everybody was trying to get a rental car. I hung around for five days trying to get a flight and finally ended up taking a Greyhound (bus) from New York to Las Vegas,” Arcure said. “The bus depot was a whole other adventure as there were more people than ever there.”
Arcure returned to New York on the first and second anniversary of 9/11 and said he was still in disbelief that it had happened.
“It was unbelievable, even a year later. It had been a year,” he said of the one-year visit. “Yet it felt like it had just happened. It was so odd to think that the night before (9/11) I was eating dinner in view of the World Trade Center. It really affected me. When you face reality, it’s a big reality shock. All that death that occurred and all the people trying to help other people out. Total controlled chaos — definitely a different atmosphere and a wonderful showing of how the city came together to help each other.”
JANET KLIEGL — A MOTHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE
For Janet Kliegl, Lindsay Unified School District Superintendent, Sept. 11, 2001 was one of those days mothers dread — the day she received an early morning phone call filled with bad news. Her son, R.J. Griffith, was working in New York — on 24th Street.
“Initially I got my first call from a daughter here in California,” Kliegl said. “I heard about the horrible event in New York and I immediately started calling RJ. But I couldn’t get through so I went from being terribly afraid to being hopeful to being almost paralyzed with fear.”
When she eventually heard from him, there was a big sigh of relief, she said.
“He kept trying to reassure me. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK. Can you hear the planes? They’re patrolling. It’s OK,’ he kept saying,” Kliegl said. “He was trying to comfort me but I knew he was scared.”
According to Kliegl, Griffith, who was 25 years old at the time and working for an investment banking company, had just gotten off the subway when he noticed a low-flying plane in the area. He and the girl who was next to him in the subway saw the plane crash into the building.
“It was quite shocking for them,” Kliegl said.
Kliegl said Griffith walked to the site and volunteered to help but nothing was organized yet and he was turned away.
“He ended up walking all the way home. There were no subways — they weren’t running,” Kliegl said. “He ended up at the Village and ran into a high school friend who was in town for a conference and the two of them had dinner together. Who would of thought — in the midst of all that, to run into a friend he had not seen in a long time.”