Fourteen Years Later, Delbarton Remembers

14 years after the September 11 World Trade Center attacks, the Delbarton community gathered in the Senior Garden for a gentle memorial service. In 2014, students and faculty had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Thomas Brady give his experience in New York City on September 11, 2001. This year, however, Mr. Jaime Paris held the microphone and gave his eyewitness account of the tragic day.   Mr. Paris worked in World Trade Center Building 7, and had a vivid view of the twin towers. After people’s faces on the 45^th floor dropped, and the realization of a terrorist attack hit hard, Mr. Paris and his colleagues headed for the exits. Due to the mass number of people exiting the building simultaneously, Mr. Paris recalled how the evacuation did not go as one would imagine. “If you think you’re going to run down the stairs and out of a high-rise during a terrorist attack, I have news for you. You’re not. You’re going to walk down slowly, very slowly, all forty-five floors.” Mr. Paris acknowledged how dismal the “deep silence” was as everyone descended through the stairwell. Amazingly, Mr. Paris and his boss, Lynn, managed to get a taxi to Lynn’s home in Central Park West. Mr. Paris finally hopped on a train out of Penn Station. An unfortunate truth, Mr. Paris said “September 11^th, 2001 taught me that everything in this world built by man can be destroyed by man.” The memorial service ended with Mr. David Hajduk reading off names of Delbarton community members who perished on that day, followed by the audience singing “God Bless America.”