‘She is my hero’
9/11 survivor who became known as the ‘Dust Lady’ succumbs to cancer Subject of iconic photo wondered if the illness that would kill her at 42 was linked to attacks
When the World Trade Center’s South Tower collapsed, just before 10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, photographer Stan Honda was in Lower Manhattan, taking pictures of the incomprehensible scene.
“There was a giant roar, like a train, and between the buildings I could see huge clouds of smoke and dust billowing out,” Honda recounted years later.
He ducked into a building lobby, where “a police officer was pulling people into the entrance to get them out of the danger.”
“A woman came in completely covered in grey dust,” Honda recalled in 2011.
“You could tell she was nicely dressed for work and for a second she stood in the lobby. I took one shot of her before the police officer started to direct people up a set of stairs, thinking it would be safer off the ground level.” The woman turned out to be Marcy Borders, who had only recently begun working for Bank of America in the World Trade Center when the first plane struck.
She was 28 at the time, and Honda’s haunting photo of her — distributed worldwide by Agence France-Presse — became one of the most iconic images of that horrifying day.
The image — and, thus, Borders — became known as the “Dust Lady.”
Borders became severely depressed and started smoking crack in the years after the attack, she said, before finally finding “peace of mind” after the death of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Then, sickness struck: Borders received a diagnosis of stomach cancer last August, according to the Jersey Journal.
On Monday night, she died at the age of 42. “My mom fought an amazing battle,” Noelle Borders told the New York Post. “Not only is she the ‘Dust Lady’ but she is my hero and she will forever live through me.”
A cousin wrote on Facebook that Borders “unfortunately succumbed to the diseases that (have) ridden her body since 9/11,” according to the Jersey Journal.
“In addition to losing so many friends, co-workers and colleagues on and after that tragic day, the pains from yesteryear (have) found a way to resurface,” John Borders wrote.
When she was diagnosed, Borders wondered whether the disease was related to Sept. 11.
“I’m saying to myself, ‘Did this thing ignite cancer cells in me?’ ” she told the Journal. “I definitely believe it because I haven’t had any illnesses. I don’t have high blood pressure . . . high cholesterol, diabetes.”
“How do you go from being healthy to waking up the next day with cancer?” she said before sobbing, according to the newspaper.
Some types of cancers are among the illnesses covered by the Sept. 11 compensation fund, but it is unclear whether there is a link between the disease and the wreckage and debris left after the attacks. A 2012 study by the New York City health department found no clear link.
Last September, just a month after Borders was diagnosed with cancer, three former members of the New York City fire department who had responded to the World Trade Cen- ter died on the same day. All three suffered from cancer.
In 2011, Borders told the Telegraph that she still had the skirt, blouse and boots that she was wearing on Sept.11 — “still unwashed and coated in the dust of the Twin Towers,” the British newspaper reported.
But when a Jersey Journal reporter asked last year if she ever looked at Honda’s photo, she said tried to avoid seeing herself as the “Dust Lady.”
“I try to take myself from being a victim to being a survivor now,” Borders said. “I don’t want to be a victim anymore.”