by Dennis Smith
If I ever write a book, it will be called The Miracles of 9/11. Because Wendy was then plucked from my brain; I never thought about my dear sister again, until later on that day. I think I recognized that if I thought about her, I would have been confused. I would have been in an emotional state, and that emotional state would have taken over. I would never have been able to continue to do what I knew I had to do that day, for those kids and that staff and that building were my responsibility Those were truly miraculous moments for me.
There was a lot of scurrying, screaming, people crying, many in hysteria. People wanted to run upstairs for personal items left behind, and I would say no, like a wicked witch of the West. A security officer from the American Stock Exchange came to help. Others were coming in, people I didn’t know, and I was afraid. In schools we don’t let strangers in our buildings, and it was nerve-racking. Parents were starting to show up, wanting to see their kids, and I told them, “Sorry, you’re not going anywhere.” I shut down the elevators and told them the elevators didn’t work. I had two girls in wheelchairs, I had one girl who had just returned from heart surgery in August, and I had one girl who was 95 percent blind—all she could see was some fog of color. Each had a paraprofessional assigned to her, and I told my assistant principal, “Get them down.” A while back we had discussed cherry pickers, and we knew the fire department’s trucks couldn’t reach the fourteenth floor. While the elevators were still working, we brought the four girls down on them, and told them, except for the blind girl, to leave the building and the area.
I would say God was really directing, because I don’t know how the hell I was doing it. My assistant principal said, “Ada, it’s not good, what we’re seeing from the windows. A lot of things are falling. It’s not a good sight, Ada.”
I’m always amazed at what happened in those early minutes. I remember asking my assistant principal about the kids in the cafeteria. He said one teacher became like a pillar of salt: She couldn’t move away from looking out the window. The kids tried closing the shades before her, and she had to be pulled away. One English teacher told the kids, “Right now all I want you to do is write. Write down what you are seeing and feeling. Write down what just happened, what you experienced.” A real teacher, trying to capture those moments. She continued to work, and the students continued writing, but then at 9:03 the second tower was hit.
I was in the lobby, about two hundred yards from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The plane hit right on our side of the building, and it’s such a tall, tall building that the noise was overpowering.
During the previous seventeen minutes my sister in Texas had phoned, and my secretary called for me over the intercom. I refused to get on the telephone with anyone, and my superintendent and the Department of Ed offices were not happy with that. I knew in my head that they had no clue as to what I was going through. I knew if I got on the phone they would distract me, and I couldn’t be distracted. I had to stay focused. I created a command center in that lobby. I had to observe people, to communicate, to put this person here, get the teachers, gather the kids. So when the second tower was hit, we had things in place, but then everything shook.
The whole building shook. My secretary was at the window, the equivalent of just a narrow street’s distance from the tower, and had a totally unobstructed view of it. She said, “Ada, I could see the windows come in and go out. That’s what the boom caused.”
We evacuated immediately. We had heard talk—through our walkie-talkies, through police—that it had been a terrorist attack of some sort. My preplanned evacuation site was Stuyvesant High School, but Stuyvesant was all the way on the other side of the Twin Towers. My alternative was Trinity Church, but it was too close. Where could we go? I decided on Battery Park, which would be safe—no buildings. I instructed my assistant principal to get on the loudspeaker and tell everyone that we were going to evacuate. We were going to have an orderly fire drill. No one was to leave their floor until the assistant principal went to the floor and said it was time to go. We did not want all six hundred faculty members and students getting crushed in the halls or stairs. We remained orderly, starting with the fourteenth floor. We had two stairwells, but by the time we got to the fourth floor I had them combine to go down one. I wanted them to come out on the side of Trinity Church, because the other exit was closer to the Trade Center.
I remember I wanted total control. I stood up on one of the polling tables in the lobby, in a dress and high heels, and said, “Listen to me. This is my school building, and I am in control.” I don’t know if I was crying. I said, “Everyone must leave the building now. We are evacuating. No one can stay in this building. So everyone leave now.”
By now my deans of discipline had their bullhorns in the street. My secretary told me that my superintendent wanted to speak with me. I said no phone calls; I will not talk to anybody. My secretary had spoken to another one of my sisters and told her we were fine. It wasn’t looking good, but everyone was safe.
I stood at the exit as the kids and everyone were coming down, and I thanked each one of them. “Hold on to someone’s hand,” I told them. “Don’t be alone. Stay close to your teacher. Just walk swiftly, fast as you can, to Battery Park. I’ll meet you there.”
They’re all crying and nervous, “Ms. Dolch, Ms. Dolch!” “There’s not anything to be afraid of,” I told them. “We’re going to be okay. Look, you’re here, we’re talking, this is me, right? We’re talking. We’re fine.” I said, “You can say your prayers. You’re good. Keep going. Go. I’ll see you later.” And we all walked out. I asked my custodian, “Are you sure there’s no one in the building? The kitchen staff?” He assured me that everything was checked twice. I said to the custodian, “I wish I could command you to leave as well, but I know I can’t do that.” He is the captain of the ship. He stayed behind. I said, “God bless you. God be with you.” I left, and as I was going toward Battery Park, I turned around for the first time and looked up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, these two towers totally on fire. Even then, I never thought of my sister Wendy. Never. I hadn’t spoken about her. Nothing. We kept walking.
On that day we had walkie-talkies everywhere. As we entered Battery Park, the traffic was out of control. People would stop us because of the walkie-talkies, thinking we were public officials, and we told them, “We don’t have much information, but we’re all going that way.” I was directing traffic, making everyone go toward Battery Park.
As soon as we got across the first street going south, the first tower collapsed, the one nearest us, the south one. I heard snaps, crackles, and pops. Snapping, snapping. I looked back and saw this tsunami wave of blackness coming toward us. It was the first time I remember thinking, I’m going to die now. Phew. And then I saw that all the kids were running. It’s the end of the world. And I remember saying, “Oh, my God in heaven, the kids. . . . Where are the kids going?”
I now started getting pushed and shoved by people. It was a beautiful day, and I was wearing this dress and high heels. You know, I don’t wear dresses anymore. I haven’t worn a dress since that day. I wear pants now, and I’ve given up high heels. I remember saying to myself, “My God, forgive me if I have sinned. I’m coming home.”
This is my faith. This is who I am. There was a bench at the edge of Battery Park with a fence behind it. I jumped up on the bench and, in my high heels, jumped right over the fence and landed by a tree. There was a bunch of women there, all on the ground. They were wailing, crying out to God, “God have mercy on us,” and I just got down on my knees and I joined them. I thought it was a good group.
This black wave now hit us. It jolted us forward. I felt like my neck was getting cut. It felt like my head had been hit by something, but it was just the force that was coming behind that cloud. The air forced from the falling building and whatever was in that air was just really, really striking us. Everything went dark, so black you couldn’t see. And then it got in your throat. I couldn’t swal
low, and what I was swallowing felt like it was cutting my throat. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God, what’s going on here? And as quickly as it got black, it got gray, then it got a little lighter, and all of a sudden we could see light coming through the ashes. Ash was falling, and we were all stunned. Oh, we’re alive! The miracle of September 11 happened—I’m still here to talk about it.
There was a man standing next to us saying, “You have to sit, you have to sit, you have to get it out of your throat.” And some of the men were actually lifting parts of their clothing off and cutting them into material and putting them in a water fountain that was there. One of them was saying, “You have to wet it, wipe your mouth, and clean it up.” I’ve gone back to look for that fountain, and it’s not there. Maybe they’ve moved it? It could be. I want to believe it was God with an angel looking out for us. It was just a miraculous day for me.
The students were gone. I don’t know where they were; they disappeared. I remember sitting, trying to clear out my throat. And then I started walking, and I saw a bunch of kids, and then another bunch of kids. Boats were going to Staten Island, and people were jumping on them. I got on my walkie-talkie: “Where are you? Can you hear me?”
“There are a bunch of kids here,” someone said. “We’re safe,” someone else said. There were a bunch of kids in the Park Restaurant, and just as we began to enter there, the second tower came down. The restaurant people had tried to shut down, as they didn’t want anybody coming in, but people broke through the doors. And just as the second tower came down, it got black again. But this time we were shielded a little bit because we were inside the restaurant. The kids—even the rambunctious, real tough boys, the macho men—were down to nothing, full of fear. And one of the things that I always remember: One little girl looked at me, and she said, “Ms. Dolch, you need lipstick.”
You need lipstick. It reminded me that she was happy to see me, because she wanted me to be exactly as she always remembered me. But I didn’t look so good. The restaurant did have a phone. If you had a landline the phones worked; if you had a cell phone, nothing worked. I said to the restaurant employees, “Listen to me, you’ve heard every story in the world, but I am a principal of a high school, my kids are all over the place, I just want to make one call to the Department of Education. I want to tell them we evacuated. I’m going to tell them I don’t know where the kids are—that’s the first thing they ask you—but I can guarantee you one thing, they all left the building, and I guarantee you that they are all safe, because I’m here to tell the story.”
Through the walkie-talkies and the bullhorns we were able to gather a lot of kids. It was about eleven o’clock now, and I didn’t think anything else was going to happen. We saw the airplanes, the American jets. We’re safe now. The planes are here. We’re going to be okay. Of course, every time a plane came by we ducked. You know, that happened for about three years. I couldn’t hear an airplane after that day that my whole body didn’t shake.
We knew by then that it was terrorism. Our school safety agents work under the umbrella of the police department, so they were getting direct information. We learned about Pennsylvania and Washington. There were a hundred rumors: California was hit, the White House.
Things began to calm a little. I found my girls in wheelchairs. My little girl who is blind was okay. No one was injured significantly. A teacher broke her toe, and one young man had a severe asthma attack. Everybody else, fine. There were no trains, no buses, and we realized we had to depend on the power of the leg and start going somewhere. I suggested we break up by borough. No one could go north, where the towers were. Everyone had to find another way to get around. I said, “You know what? I live in Brooklyn. Who’s going to Brooklyn?” I moved them to one side. “All right, who’s going to Queens?” It was decided that my group could cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and so we started to head there.
Then came another miraculous happening for me on that day. A little girl tapped me and said, “Ms. Dolch, I’m really scared.” And I answered, “Yeah, we’re all a little scared. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name: Who are you?” She said, “I’m Charlene Hasan, and I’m one of your new students.” But here’s the amazing thing about Charlene: She’s wearing a Muslim head covering. I had never had a student in my school who wore a head covering. I didn’t even know this little girl. It was the fifth day of school, and I always prided myself that I knew all the names of the kids. I even knew their parents’ names. But I didn’t know my little girl. I said to her, “You don’t have anything to worry about. You’re going to Brooklyn. I’m going to Brooklyn. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to put your arm in mine, and we’re going to walk together. And you’re going to protect me, and I’m going to protect you. And we’re okay.”
That was my little angel who guided my heart. She guided my heart from ever being angry at Muslim people. I can’t be angry at Muslim people. I’m angry at some bastards who did some horrendous things, but I could never be angry at Muslim people. We are all God’s people. This child guided my heart. I see her often now, and her family. I’ve visited her home several times to break bread together. She is my angel, and she knows that.
So, with my angel at my side, our group arrived at the Brooklyn Bridge, but we couldn’t get across, because it was now being used as a secure way for police, fire, and EMS from Brooklyn. So we had to walk a little farther and go to the Manhattan Bridge. In the middle of the bridge Charlene again said, “Oh, Ms. Dolch, I’m so afraid.”
And I kept saying, “Charlene, don’t you have faith in God? Look at what you’re wearing. Does this mean that you believe in God? And if you believe in God, this is when your faith kicks in. You have to believe we’re going to be okay. We’re crossing the bridge; I mean, we could sing a song.”
We finally made it to the other side of the bridge. Lots of people were there, all in total shock. And then, all of a sudden, I realized for the first time that I had to use the bathroom, and thought of 110 Livingston Street, the Board of Education [now the Department of Education]. The other thing that was on my mind was that my feet hurt from the heels I was still wearing. Heading toward the Board of Ed, I remember Charlene saying, “Ms. Dolch, Atlantic Avenue is right here. I’m going to go to my family.” I said, “Are you sure? You going to be okay? You’re going to be safe. You can stay with me.” She said, “No, no, I’m going to be okay.” And I said good-bye to her, and told her I’d see her in school.
My secretary, Lisa, and I reached 110 Livingston Street and, for the first time, I totally lost it—I suppose because I finally felt a little safe. I walked up the steps, but the guard wouldn’t let me in. I said to him, “You just don’t understand who we are. We’ve just come out of Ground Zero. You will let me in or you’re going to have a crazy lady on your hands!” I might have said I’m going to pee on the floor, or something like that. I was crass. Finally, I was able to call somebody on the inside. I told them my name and my school, and sure enough, they let us in.
Harold Levy was our chancellor then. They brought me into a room where they had been having some kind of a meeting, because there was food out, nice sandwiches. I told them I can’t believe where I am right now, and I completely lost it again. Chancellor Levy gave me a box of tissues, because now I was bawling. And I kept thinking back to what must have gone through his head that day: a million point two children in his care, his responsibility, and having no clue where they were. Were they safe? Did they get home? How about children who need medical attention, kids who need medication?
Then I just wanted to hear my husband’s voice. We contacted his school, and they were able to get him. It was funny talking to my husband, the calm after the tragedy. Lisa and I waited at the Department of Ed until my husband finally picked us up. I opened the door and got in the car and just said, “What a day, oh, what a day.” The things we did not say. I told him I was not telling the story; I couldn’t relive it right now. There was no [other] talking.
We too
k Lisa home, and I just fell to the floor when I got into my house. I’d really lost it uncontrollably and was having a shock moment. Suddenly, still on the floor, I began to ask, “Where’s Wendy? Has anybody seen Wendy?”
I have a daughter who was studying in London that semester. She could not reach me in Brooklyn or my sisters in New Jersey, but she called my sister in Texas, who then contacted one of my sisters in New Jersey. There was no other way to communicate. We’ve since learned about how to communicate and how families should create plans for emergencies. Lessons learned after September 11.
At 5:30 I got a phone call from the secretary of Curtis High School in Staten Island, who told me that more than half of my kids were there, and that they were creating a manifest for me. After that day I learned to keep a list of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the teachers and students at home, because it was of no value at school. “Are they okay?” I asked. “Are they behaving?” They were contacting every parent, having them call to talk to someone, because the students would be there all night. No one was leaving Staten Island and coming to Manhattan or Brooklyn that day.
Then I got another call, for there was another group of students in New Jersey, because some of the boats skipped Staten Island, went a little farther, and took them to New Jersey. They were all over the place. There were kids all over, staying in school gyms, city halls, government buildings. Every food place was giving them more food than they knew what to do with—Chinese food, Italian food, pizza, McDonald’s. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. You know, we’re amazing people, Americans—amazing, beautiful people. We get a little cocky sometimes, and we let little stupid things get in our way, but when it’s time for us to really pick up our boots and make it happen, we are just amazing people. The giving that went on . . . truly amazing.