Remembering 9/11: "What If?"

Enjoying a latte at a quaint coffee shop in her current hometown of Chester, CT, Lauren Agnelli is miles away from the big city life she was living 10 years ago when the unthinkable happened. Living in downtown Manhattan and working uptown, Lauren was underground in the subway, riding the “E” train when the first plane hit World Trade Center One.

It wasn’t until she arrived at her desk that the “whispers in fearful tones jabbered around me.” Everyone was being sent home from Worldwide Plaza at 8th Avenue and 50th Street, along with all other workers in New York City. To get home, she would have to head 4 miles south.

“Bridges, tunnels and subways in Manhattan were shut down, so it left walking home as the only option,” she recalls. Heading toward a friend’s home, Lauren was in search of companionship and perhaps a place to stay for the night to try and wrap her thoughts around what was happening.

Instead, curiosity got the better of the duo as they walked, instead, all the way down to Ground Zero, where the horror unfolded up close. To this day, she wonders “if I’d have been one of them, in pieces of fluttering gray ash, had I taken that office assistant job at AIG on the 102nd floor of WTC One.”