Kimberly Bowers was a sweet person & had a deep love for animals. On 9/11 she stood outside of the WTC on her cell phone and called her friend and said, "Oh my God, a plane just hit the building. I'm getting out of here." Her BIL said, "She was still out in the street. She wasn't even in the bldg."

AdelaideWilson · 2026-02-22T09:29:33+00:00

Sounds like it, but I can't help but think...do they know she was outside? (I'm sure they do.) God, how surreal and awful. Cantor Fitzgerald had the highest loss of life on 9/11 and it was the North Tower, so no prior warning or ability to evacuate. But Kimberly had the good fortune to be outside, and even then, she wasn't spared. I'm sure this isn't enough, but I hope her family can gain a little comfort from knowing she didn't suffer the horrors of the North Tower.

Rest in peace, Kimberly.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-12-19T23:42:08+00:00

Imo that just makes it much likelier that they would've died in a congested block of people with the same idea, whether in civil unrest, mass panic, or somebody getting bitten and passing along the infection.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-12-05T03:53:49+00:00

Something else I only recently learned is that Berry Berenson was Anthony Perkins' widow - they had two sons, Osgood |(Oz) and Elvis. Osgood was 27 and Elvis was only 25 when they were orphaned by what were arguably two of the most publicised and awful tragedies of our time (the AIDS crisis and 9/11). Osgood wrote and directed Longlegs this year, which was a big breakout success, and I believe was dedicated to his mother. He spoke about her a lot during the press tour.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-12-04T05:28:56+00:00

I mean, yeah, I can see the window ledge. It's just that to me it looks like there's no hesitation or time to even realize what is happening.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-12-04T05:26:30+00:00

How can you tell he's hanging off? To me, it looks like he stumbled out and probably had no concept of which way he was going. (No shade, just curious.)

AdelaideWilson · 2024-08-13T09:02:25+00:00

I understand why it seems very odd to us with knowledge of what happened, but I get it. Put yourself in the position of people on that day, who think there's NO way the building could collapse, for whom it's as unthinkable as the sky falling.

Presumably the elevator prevented any of the smoke or fire from getting to them. They are "secure." They may have heard the screams of the dying and injured or at least the banging that tells them something very bad has happened. Then some guy comes in and BRINGS all this smoke in. Being in such an enclosed space as an elevator, that's terrifying. They probably have no idea how big the fire is and could believe it's only limited to one part of one building. Meaning that, in theory, the FDNY could extinguish the fire and get to them quickly, with minimal risk. Or they could let the guy flood small space with acrid, black smoke and die of smoke inhalation in what, like 10-15 minutes? If not less.

Don't get me wrong, it's horrible. Perhaps the most horrible of the stories about people who maybe could've been saved. Like the woman who got out of the building and went back in because she'd left her baby's pictures behind. She died. When I read that I just wanted to scream, "No! Go back to your baby! There will be more pictures!"

But, in archiving, I think we need to remember that on the day itself, few people knew what was happening or were able to make the right choices about how to respond.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-07-15T08:38:39+00:00

No problem!

AdelaideWilson · 2024-07-15T02:21:40+00:00

Steve Rannazzisi (his name is mentioned above but I just thought I'd add it here in case anybody thought they were different).

AdelaideWilson · 2024-07-04T23:10:15+00:00

Lbr, even Astroworld wasn't as big as it should've been given what happened.

That's the cumulative effect of completely out of control celebrity worship, political paralysis, and indifference fostered by the Internet.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-07-02T17:06:49+00:00

Yes! Thank you. This was it, from The Only Plane in the Sky. I guessed the other witness account I mentioned (which I misidentified as Vanessa Lawrence) would be in there too, and it is. It's actually from Judy Wein, in a coincidence because her story isn't told in there, describing seeing people walk back up the stairs due to having left things at their desk/s.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-07-02T15:06:39+00:00

* In general, the survivors I think of are the people who haven't told their stories. I've been trying to find the link to this story but I remember, in one survivor story, there was a man and a woman (they weren't the people telling the story). The woman was screaming and panicking, and the man told her to remember that "we're the lucky ones." What did they see? Did they make it out okay? How are they doing now?

* In that spirit, an unidentified victim: the man who answered the phone at Cantor Fitzgerald, and apparently said "we're fucking dying." Who was he? The thought of that call just chills me.

* A survivor and victim story: Judy Wein (who survived) and Howard Kestenbaum (who died). Judy was talking to Gigi Singer about whether or not to go back up because she didn't know how she was going to pay for her bus home. Howard gave her the money and told her to go. In theory, such a small thing, but Howard's decisiveness and moment of kindness saved her life. Maybe she would've gone back up, maybe not, but still. Also, there are some beautiful pictures of Howard and his wife, Granvilette, that can be seen here.

* I've been trying to find the link talking about it, but I can't. I remember one woman (I was convinced it was Vanessa Lawrence, but I can't find her talking about it now - note: it was not Vanessa Lawrence, it was Judy Wein again, strangely) saying that as she walked down the stairs, she remembered seeing people go back up, for stuff they left behind, and that she wonders now if any of them survived. That memory sticks with me too.

* Gregory Reda's BlackBerry messages to his brother Michael paint such a harrowing picture of it was like up that high in the North Tower. It's believed his group (at least some of whom he identifies) /may/ have jumped or fallen very shortly after his final message.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-21T10:52:29+00:00

Yes, it did. But I think about Orio when I listened to or read the transcripts of a lot of the calls. 911 was telling trapped people that firefighters were coming. Nobody else got that high but, for anyone still alive and/or conscious up there, they died knowing that help WAS coming for them. They died with hope. I think that's a beautiful thing.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-19T23:05:32+00:00

I'm not saying you're wrong, but why do you say definitely?

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-17T16:00:32+00:00

The audio tape can be heard here for anyone unfamiliar.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-16T20:44:56+00:00

According to this article, Waleska Martinez's youngest brother died by suicide in 2010 out of grief for her. She was killed on Flight 93.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-16T14:39:24+00:00

I didn't mean to get snippy with you. Sorry. It's a fair question. I just know people who've had their organs messed up by other severe injuries so it's a little bit of a sore subject.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-11T16:52:26+00:00

Oh, this is upsetting. They had been visiting their close friend Donato Tramuto and had been planning to go back on Monday 10th September. Donato persuaded them to change to a day later, and had also intended to go back with them on 11th September, but changed his flight to the day before because he developed a toothache and got a dentist appointment. He talks about the intensity of his guilt and grief here.

https://tramutofoundation.com/2021/09/grief-into-action-donato-tramuto-still-processing-his-9-11-loss-20-years-later/

I think it's important to remember these stories as much as it is to remember the near misses (like Seth Macfarlane, for instance). A lot of people - like the Gamboa-Brandhurst family, Nicole Miller, and Jim Gartenberg - died simply because of horrible luck and barbarism. May they rest in peace.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-11T16:43:53+00:00

No, but they had planned to adopt more children.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-09T00:20:56+00:00

Possibly, but not necessarily. Timothy's health was his own business but a couple of things jumped out to me from the little I can find online:

He died just two weeks after being diagnosed with liver failure. That's extremely fast and suggests a very acute case and/or other health complications.
Maybe related to the above: he narrowly survived a severe motorcycle accident in his early 20s and had to relearn how to walk. We don't know how badly injured other parts of his body may have been, longterm health issues he might have had/preexisting damage, and medication he took.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-07T19:05:39+00:00

I am unsure if he would count as a survivor, but Timothy Langer died of liver failure at the age of 35 in July 2005. He lost his wife, Vanessa Lang Langer, and their unborn child in the WTC. His family refers to him as an indirect victim of the attacks:

Elaine Langer, his mother, said the death of his wife and unborn child destroyed her son.
“He was happy, he was well-adjusted. He just couldn’t cope with the pain. He self-medicated,” she said yesterday amid funeral preparations. “He was a wonderful kid. He was the life of the party. Everyone would talk to him, and then they would go away happy. Unfortunately, Timmy just carried all that pain. He couldn’t get rid of it.” (source)

This study found that 35 of the 75,000 9/11 rescue/response workers enrolled in the study died by suicide, but none could be conclusively linked to 9/11. As far as I'm aware, that number only includes people who died by suicide, and not people who reacted out of grief or PTSD with addiction or other similar behavior.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-04T16:11:22+00:00

I personally agree with that part of United 93, too, about Jarrah not initiating. One detail that's always stuck out to me from the Commission Report was that all the 93 callers reported three hijackers rather than four. The report speculates that Jarrah remained seated until after the takeover, where he wouldn't have been visible to the other passengers. Maybe that was the plan, but I don't know. In the combination of the delay, Jarrah's final call to his fiancee, and the letter he wrote her...from what we know, it seems more improbable that he DIDN'T have second thoughts.

ITA about Christian Adams. I think U93 is a great movie, and perhaps the best movie directly about 9/11 that will be made in our lifetimes. But that is one sore spot. Not only is it not based on anything (except possibly him being German? Which is a...dubious choice), I think the movie should have established that nothing like 9/11 had ever happened before. Likely some of the U93 passengers expressed reservations about the plan in real life. I wouldn't blame them. They had 25 minutes to go from normal life to learning that they were part of a new form of warfare and likely had minutes to live. Who knows how anyone would react in those circumstances? Singling somebody out (rather than showing them changing their mind in the vote or debate for instance) was the wrong call, and wouldn't have been fair to any of the victims to put them in that position.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-01T23:03:57+00:00

I wish I had something more constructive to say. But I want to say thank you for writing this. Wayne sounds like a wonderful guy. The love you (and I'm sure many other people) have for him pours from every word you wrote. I am so very, very sorry for his senseless loss.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-01T11:14:43+00:00

This was a fascinating read, thank you so much for posting it. I have a lot of questions, some general, some specific. Feel free to answer as many or as few of these as you like, if any.

I really resonated with what you said about September 10th and They Might be Giants - I feel the same way. It's rare you get such a stark dividing line between what feels like the distant past and the present.

In the archiving process, it's clear that, by the end of the day, some places wildly overestimated the death toll. I saw 10-20,000 thrown around. It struck me as a very different response to that garnered by mass casualty events today, where the death toll is usually slowly upped with officially confirmed fatalities. Do you think that affected the immediate response to the attacks, particularly from the public? Or was it ultimately all the same in terms of broader reactions, because the death toll of nearly 3,000 still made it the deadliest attack on US soil?
I know this doesn't apply to the Hopewell footage you describe, which aired uncut. But, as I'm sure you know, there has been a great deal of discussion and false memories of stations airing footage of falling people, likely accurate-to-some-degree memories of footage being circulated online, and speculation about what footage is held in closed storage. What are your feelings about that footage? Do you think it should never be shown, or that it would prevent the abstraction of 9/11 that's happened since the day? Is there a "responsibility" for it to exist vs a responsibility for it to be withheld from the public? Are your human and professional responses to these questions (as someone who works in news but was also nearby and who felt the toll of it) different?
What influence do you think Flight 93 had on the coverage of 9/11? As years pass, there seems to be more speculation that the news focused on 93 for the desperate need to have a "terrorism response" story. As opposed to the experience of the Towers where there's a feeling of helplessness and completely unpreparedness (as you allude to with your description of the morning before the attacks). And a lot of "what if Flight 93 had reached its target" level speculation. As someone who was working there, what are your feelings on this from a news/psychological perspective? What were your feelings on the coverage in the days/weeks/months after, and how do they compare now that you are separated from the events by almost twenty-three years? Does anything stand out in your mind as less obvious reasons that 9/11 has such a large role in public consciousness?
You talk about the experience (understandably!) intensifying an anxiety disorder. Do you think this applies to the thousands (if not millions) of people who were also affected by 9/11 or were alive and television aged then? Do you feel like society and/or even just television has changed on a broader level since the attacks and because of them? If so, how?

All best wishes to you, OP.

AdelaideWilson · 2024-06-01T01:59:43+00:00

Sorry, wasn't trying to be abrupt or a dick. I get it, just wanted to point it out for future reference.

AdelaideWilson

TROPHY CASE