Community Corner

'No One Had Seen Anything Like This Before'

Ledyard Man's Eyewitness Account of The Morning That Changed Everything

“As chance would have it, I was in New York on September 11 and witnessed the WTC calamity.”

So began a personal account of that terrible day by Carl Tjerandsen of Ledyard, who watched the destruction of the Twin Towers from the streets of lower Manhattan. He presented his story, along with reflections on the response and aftermath, in the form of a sermon given at the Ledyard Congregation Church in the weeks that followed 9/11.

Tjerandsen, a member of the church, will join the Rev. Catriona Grant in the pulpit Sunday at 9:30 a.m. for a special service to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks. We are presenting in two parts an abridged version of the sermon Tjerandsen delivered 10 years ago, along with photos he took in New York that morning. The first installment appears below.

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“I will speak of some hard things and of good things. My thoughts and feelings are too untidy for me to present a very coherent narrative. I’m just not that far along.

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“We left well before dawn in the cool quiet stillness of the early morning, eased onto I-95 South, and headed toward New York City. I had blocked off Tuesday the 11th, some weeks before in response to a request by my son and his friend Adam, both of whom would be visiting from California, that I show them the City. I had not visited New York for over four years. On arriving… at the Battery, we glimpsed the Statue of Liberty and proceeded up toward Wall Street.

“Oh, and what a splendid morning! A front with a little rain had cleared the air, giving us deep blue skies, bright sunshine, and great visibility. Financial types were streaming along the sidewalks toward their offices and the day’s opening bell.  Not even a dull booming thud echoing down the canyons of the Financial District could break into their preoccupation. It was 8:46 a.m.

“Moments later, though, some were stopping to look upward. We took notice as thousands of pieces of paper, dancing in the morning light, wafted slowly high over the buildings on a gentle northwesterly breeze. Where had they come from? As they neared the ground, we smelled it even before we could see it. Many were singed or half burned away – letters, legal documents, airline tickets.

“Coming out onto lower Broadway at Trinity Church, we saw the Towers looming above us with a large trail of gray smoke flowing across the sky. We overheard someone say a plane had struck Tower One.

Second tower is struck

“Just then we turned to the sudden intrusive sound of a jet aircraft moving in from our left. “Why is that big plane, flying so low, so fast, so close to the buildings?” It was rolling left as it passed over just in front of us, the screaming engines cracking and popping. Then a terrific BANG! and a huge fireball exploded out from South Tower.

“United Flight 175’s approach from the TV footage looks slow and graceful. From underneath it was like a missile. Cries went up from onlookers about us, and we headed for cover. Our shock at witnessing this calamity became more appalling as we realized what had apparently happened: Terrorists, had taken an airliner, probably with passengers aboard, straight into a national landmark filled with folks gathering on a Tuesday morning to earn their living. 

“Wait! The same thing must have happened to Tower One. That’s twice in a few minutes. What’s next? When will this end!?

“People ran for short distances then stopped, in dazed disbelief, and looked to one another as if to say, “Which way is safe?” Others were drawn back like moths to the giant flaming candles, gnawed with concern for trapped fellow workers and for their City.

“Many of these had just evacuated the Towers. One told us she had escaped from a higher floor.  Another was worried some had been knocked underfoot . Another spoke of body parts scattered over the north side of the Plaza, while another was late for work in an office near the strike point. 

Street littered with shoes

“I’ll never forget the nearly empty street leading up from the Towers, littered with hundreds of women’s shoes, lost or discarded in the frantic exodus.

“We moved back up to Broadway and into Trinity Church to regain a moment of sanity to sort out events. A scheduled 9 a.m. service was just starting. The reverend moved to the pulpit with the dignity and discipline of the cloth and addressed the handful of stunned and weeping persons in attendance. He made a brief reference to events and began the 23rd Psalm.

“A long-forgotten memory of 20 years ago came into my mind. I had shown my father a large print of a picture I had taken looking up at the Twin Towers, dwarfing the First Presbyterian Church in the foreground. He asked with ironic observation, ‘The victory of Mammon over God?’ 

“The reverend’s calm, centered demeanor and sonorous, even cadence as he methodically proceeded with God’s work – not 200 yards from a spot where hundreds of souls had just passed into eternity – answered my father’s question unequivocally. The reverend’s purpose and very presence spoke that any such victories for Mammon are illusion, cycling endlessly in the interval between the Beginning and the End. 

“As he spoke the words of the simple service, the great buildings were hemorrhaging their substance into the sky, sealing their fate and that of thousands of others as well. The first hymn was ‘Rock of Ages.’

“As our liturgist read, for Abraham it began with faith, a faith which anchored mankind’s end of a bridge to God… Certainly this was true at Trinity Church on that morning. The capacity for faith is all that one needs at the beginning, and faith is all we have at the end.

“In quiet moments, as in the pew that morning, my thoughts return to the speechless, stupefying terror of the passengers in the United plane as it bore in across the serene harbor, to workers hanging onto window ledges past pain unendurable, letting go; to passengers sick with despair in darkened smoke filled elevators, experiencing free-fall amidst the din of the collapse; and to the police and fire units at the base of the Towers, looking up.

“In their last seconds, well on the other side of hope for their lives, when they knew, I want badly for them to have known that God was with them, that they would be caught up as they were plunged into the Beyond.

Finding a way home

“Sirens and blaring horns more and more penetrated the thick dark walls into the dim recesses of the church. Concern for finding a way home pulled me from the calm of the service and back to the streets. As emergency crews, all lights and sirens, had moved in to the base of the Towers, I had been struck by how grim and wary they looked. They had not seen anything like this before. No one had.

“As we emerged onto West Street to make our way back to the car, we could see a couple blocks north to their staging area at the base – a chaos of rescue vehicles, flashing lights, and frenetic activity. We heard another roaring sound. I was shocked at how much this unnerved me, expecting another jet strike. 

“But the sound was different – like a hundred dump trucks unloading crushed rock – louder by the second. Looking up, the source was clear enough. The South Tower was coming straight down. Police and fire at the base just disappeared in an enormous billowing cloud of black gray dust and smoke, which instantly rebounded to the top of the sky and leaped toward us like a malevolent creature."

Coming Sunday: The North Tower collapses, followed by a chaotic effort to get out of the city.


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