Friday was a busy day in Saint John with a cruise ship carrying 4,000 people docked at the port to wrap up the week. Passengers, many of whom are American, enjoyed a sun-filled day where they could shop, dine and enjoy all the city’s uptown has to offer. Many spent much of the day reflecting and remembering where they were and what they were doing when the United States was attacked by terrorists after four planes were hijacked. Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center Towers, which later collapsed, while the Pentagon was also targeted. A fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought the hijackers to keep it from reaching its intended target. Peter Zielyk was taking the train into Manhattan from New Jersey that morning when the first plane hit the Trade Center’s north tower. He then saw the second plane hit the south tower through his own eyes. “You had people coming from the World Trade Center Path station, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey covered in soot from the first tower falling,” Zielyk recalls. “I remember F-14s flying overhead, and I was convinced that it was going to be World War Three. “I just remember forever the landscape being changed, America being changed and understanding, hey, we are just as susceptible to any kind of terrorist attacks like anywhere else in the world.” Nearly 3,000 people died that day in the attacks, and it caused a massive amount of stress and anxiety as friends and family struggled to contact each other to make sure everything was okay. Christine Gerolamo was a freshman at a high school in Scranton, PA, and remembers classes being cancelled to watch the situation unfold on television. “There was fear, right,” she says. “Like, we had family, you have friends that are working in New York City. Nobody could get in touch with each other. You didn’t know if you were going to be next.” “My best friend lives in New York, and I called her immediately to make sure she was okay, which she was,” recalls Julie Branom from St. Louis. “It was very stressful because my work, all of our vendors were in New York, so work was extremely quiet that day and we could only think of our coworkers, and I could only think of my best friend.” Jeff Cyr remembers Sept. 11 as an “incredibly dramatic moment” that changed the world forever. Cyr was a pilot for American Airlines at the time, but happened to have the day off. “To know that was some of my brothers and sisters that were on those airplanes, to know that it could have been me just as well as anybody else, and those families’ lives were changed so dramatically forever,” Cyr says. “It was an incredibly spooky thing to go fly an airliner after that event. It made you think about all kinds of different things in all different sorts of ways.” In St. Louis, MO, on this day 25 years ago, Marilyn Bell was working a catering job at the Amheuser-Busch brewing company where she watched the scenes on a big screen. She remembers streets and the nearby area being shut down quickly by officials in case they were targeted by another attack. “It was the worst feeling like we’re unsafe,” she says. “If [the terrorists] could take the planes down and hit the buildings that we thought were always secure, I can’t even tell you the feeling it was. It was horrible. “Everybody will never forget it. It makes me cry.” The shock of the attacks was felt across the globe, including in Canada for people like Carrie Siemens from Manitoba. “I heard about the first airplane crash into the towers,” remembers Siemens. “I didn’t see it, and then I turned on the television and I watched the second one… Your stomach sank at the time.” Saint John artist Norman Jackson learned about the attacks by a friend who called him and didn’t turn on the TV until after the second plane had struck the World Trade Center. Later that same night of the attacks, he started and finished a painting he titled “The Eagle will Rise” which shows a bald eagle emerging out of the rubble of the collapsed tower symbolizing a phoenix rising from the ashes. It also includes other details like firefighters and people emerging from the dust and debris. “I wanted it to be frozen in time,” Jackson says. “In other words, we all saw it on the TV, but I wanted this to be able to put on your wall and look at it and say, I remember this terrible moment.” For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
