Sept. 11 is a difficult day for most Americans, but for June Dyer, Sept. 11 is especially painful. It is the anniversary of the day she nearly died in the World Trade Center.
“It’s not an easy day,” says Dyer. “It is definitely a day that means something.”
On September 11, 2001, Dyer, 56, was rushing to catch the subway with her daughter Dennine in tow. Dyer was upset because Dennine was moving slowly and she was worried she’d be late to work.
Dyer worked at Aon Risk Services on the 92nd floor of 2 World Trade Center, where the company employed approximately 1,100 people and occupied floors 92 and 98 to 105. Dyer, who normally took the subway with Dennine and made sure her daughter got on her transfer line, was so unhappy that morning that she forgot to tell Dennine she loved her before the two parted ways.
She arrived at her desk just before 8:46 a.m., the time American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the north face of 1 World Trade Center. She heard a loud explosion, felt the building shake and saw a “huge ball of fire.” People ran to the windows and one man said an airliner flew into the building.
“People looked out the window but I didn’t because I’m not good with heights,” says Dyer. “I started crying. I knew it wasn’t an accident because people always saw little Cesna planes flying below our floor at around the 60th- to 70th-floor levels … and as soon as he said it was a 747, I thought, ‘jihad.’”
Dyer, being a subway commuter, always wore her walking shoes to work and changed into pumps at the office. She took off her pumps, put on her walking shoes, grabbed her purse and walked to the stairs. “I knew I was walking down,” says Dyer.
Most people stayed in the office. One coworker said it wasn’t 2 World Trade Center, not to worry. “I thought, ‘You have to be crazy,’” says Dyer. “But the majority of people in the office didn’t leave. The stairs were not crowded … for the most part, I walked down by myself.”
On the way down, a person from another floor stuck his head in the stairwell and invited Dyer and a few others to rest. Dyer asked where the restroom was but decided it was too far to leave the stairwell. Some people stopped on that floor. Dyer continued.
When Dyer reached the 60th floor, the building shuddered, shook and swayed. United flight 175 hit 2 World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. between floors 78 and 85. Had Dyer stayed in her office, she could have been trapped.
“I held on to the rails and sat down. It was that bad,” says Dyer. “It pushed the building. I remember there was a guy who said it was a big plane and ran upstairs. I screamed at him. I knew the stairs were made of steel, whereas floors were like pancakes–one over the other–so I was not leaving the stairs. I remember praying two words: ‘My children.’”
She remembers a split second of peace entering her mind and thinking there was nothing she could do. “For that split second, I committed myself to God and that was it,” says Dyer.
Then the building stopped swaying and people in the stairwell gathered their courage and encouraged others to continue down, Dyer says. But her emotions took over. She started to panic. She couldn’t stop crying. Her feet dragged and two men helped her down the stairs.
“I thought, ‘Nothing is wrong with you. You’re getting in the way of others trying to get out safe and if you’re going to get out safe you have to take control of yourself,’” says Dyer.
She stopped and told the men helping her she was OK. One stayed with her and she stopped crying. The two of them continued down the stairs.
It was between the 14th and 10th floors that the people in the stairwell started talking about the explosions. She still hadn’t seen anything except for a flash from the initial ball of fire. The man who was helping her down said that before he started walking down the stairs, he called home to ask what the news was reporting. His dad told him about the second plane. He hung up and looked out his office window to see the wreckage. He saw a body fly down.
The two finally made it to the ground floor and Dyer invited him to go with her to her old job nearby. She was going to get water, use the restroom, get a taxi and go home. Dyer gave him her home number and he gave her his business card, and they separated.
On 2 World Trade Center’s ground floor, police directed the evacuees to the exits. Dyer wanted to exit onto Broadway and walk to her old job. But she was directed to exit elsewhere. Had she exited at Broadway, she would have seen the bodies of the people who had jumped from the building, she says.
She did see a body falling. “I heard the crowd roar and I looked and saw a body, but the height the person jumped from was so high the body looked like a match stick,” says Dyer.
She walked into her old job just before 10 a.m. While she was there, 2 World Trade Center collapsed. Dyer and some of her friends started to walk toward the Brooklyn Bridge but were directed to the Manhattan Bridge instead. As Dyer walked, Manhattan businesses along the way handed out water and food, maintenance workers handed out wet cloths, shoe stores handed out shoes, and stores with face masks handed them out.
“The crowd was moving at a crawl,” says Dyer. “Everyone was walking and the place was covered in dust that was like powder. It was not grains. It was not pebbles. It came down as powder. But as bad as it was, you really saw a totally different side of humanity. People really came out and showed that they care.”
On the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge, a crowd of people welcomed the evacuees. People hugged strangers when they reached Brooklyn and gave them water and food.
“Overall I felt I was safe because Manhattan was the place where you didn’t know what was going to happen,” says Dyer.
A week later, Aon held a companywide memorial service. Dyer remembers feeling joy when she saw someone she knew and overwhelming sadness when she saw the pictures of people who didn’t make it. Aon lost 176 employees.
Dyer doesn’t remember the name of the man who helped her walk down the flight of stairs. He called once and talked to her husband and they called each other for two of the 9/11 anniversaries.
She’ll never forget that day, though. Nor will she ever forget to tell her family how much she loves them.
“Yes, it is definitely a different day,” says Dyer. “It reminds me of what everything means to me.”
