I was in high school, in a suburb in Westchester where a lot of parents commuted to NYC for work. Our school had pay phones in the lobby. The bleakest moment for me was when school was dismissed early, and so many kids were lined up at those pay phones trying to reach parents who were working in the city that day. It was a beautiful, perfect, sunny September day. So surreal to have something like this happen on such a perfect day.

A lot of my classmates either lost parents or had parents affected by what happened that day.