Woman's Day's New York bureau chief Lesley Jackson recalls being in the thick of the terror with a window's view on the attack that changed the world.
I was in
Woman's Day's New York office when the September 11 attacks happened.
Our offices in the Soho area overlooked downtown New York and had the most amazing view of the Twin Towers. The working day had just begun and I was sitting at my desk, which faced the wall, and I heard a thump. It was just a truck driving along the cobbled streets too fast, I thought, and I didn't really take any more notice of it.
The phone rang. It was a friend in London. She was watching the television and asked me what was going on with the World Trade Center. I stood up and walked to the window, and I could just see the smoke and I said, "Oh my God, what has happened?"
She said a plane had flown into the WTC and they thought the sun must have got into the pilot's eyes. Suddenly she said a second plane had flown into the other tower. That's when I said, "It must be terrorism."
I turned on the TV and there was no news coming out of New York. Obviously all the news people were struggling because all the transmission towers were down. Then in the midst of all this, my colleague Marion Collins came in. She had a different view from her window of the WTC and said people were jumping from the building.
I sent her and one of the others in the office to go out and buy us a bottle of Scotch. There was nothing we could do. I was getting my feedback from regular phone calls from London. I literally sat there and watched as the first building imploded, and I will never forget that for as long as I live. I was like a deer caught in the headlights because it was obvious the next building was going to go — and it did.
In the end I told my staff to go home. We all emailed friends and family to tell them we were OK. I ended up leaving the office about 5pm.
I emailed the Sydney office just to let him know that we were OK, although we were all absolutely gutted by it. That email went around the whole of [
Woman's Day's publishers] ACP, and I got emails from people I had never heard of and probably never will again. They just wanted a connection — the whole world was in such shock and it was such an awful gut reaction. Everyone felt so helpless, but they were sending these most beautiful emails, just wanting to say sorry.
The outpouring of sympathy was just extraordinary. This was just something you'd never forget.
Non-stop news
After the September 11 attacks, we were cut off completely from the
Woman's Day New York office, we weren't allowed back into the area.
I wasn't let in because it was all cordoned off. I had a fax machine, a computer and a cell phone and intermittently one of the three would work. So I monitored everything from home.
It happened on a Tuesday and I got calls from
Woman's Day's then-deputy editor Lorrae Willox who did an interview for
WD that next week. Everyone was trying to speak to Ian Thorpe who was in New York at the time.
The newspapers had got hold of a couple of names but there was just too much for everyone to take in. It took weeks and weeks for them to work out who had died. It became addictive watching the TV — I didn't sleep for the next 48 hours, it was very depressing.
TV news came into its own during that time because they were the ones breaking the story.
Resilience of spirit
I never thought of leaving New York. I felt it was being cowardly and that it would have said the terrorists had won. One of the things I like about NY is the people here show amazing strength and the bond for all of us made us feel more of a community and there was just no way you could walk away from that.
The whole revitalisation of the area has been fabulous and I now live in Wall Street. We have also moved the ACP offices into the financial district in support of the rebuilding process.
We actually moved on September 11, 2004 which was a bit surreal. People are being positive but the fear that it may happen again will never go away, it was just too shocking a death toll. It's not over and America will always be a target. I don't think it will ever really be business as usual again, people have moved on but they still remember — it's going to be seven years this September.
Return to the Woman's Day noughties page 
