'Never Forgotten': Girl Scout Collects First-Person 9/11 Stories

SOUTHOLD, NY —A Girl Scout who was not even born yet when 9/11 changed the world has spent an entire year recording the stories of survivors and those whose lives were changed forever — and now, she's debuting a moving and gripping documentary of her work.

Ellie Alloway, 16, a senior at Southold-Junior Senior High School, has been on a mission to record first-person accounts of 9/11 so the haunting stories of that day told by those who witnessed the horrors firsthand will be remembered for generations to come.

Her 9/11 documentary, "Ripples: 9/11 Reflections from the North Fork, NY," will be premiering on Friday, September 10, at the Southold Town Recreation Center, located at 970 Peconic Lane in Peconic at 7:30 p.m.

The film represents more than a year of research, interviews, and editing by Ellie, and is the centerpiece of her Girl Scouts USA Gold Award project, the highest national award available to Girl Scouts. Ellie, a Girl Scout from Troop 94 in Southold, has been a Scout since kindergarten.

"The documentary records over a dozen North Fork citizens’ experiences on that terrible day, woven into a narrative that reflects on how important firsthand witness experience must be communicated and preserved for the generations that follow — like Ellie and her generation, who were not even alive at the time of the September 11 attacks," a release said.

She has also created a website that documents the history of the town’s memorial at Jean Cochran Park, “Morning Call,” as well as a place for her documentary to be viewed after the premiere. She hopes to add a feature to the website that will allow local citizens to upload their own experiences onto the website, similar to the recording booth that exists at the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York.

Her documentary will also be shown to students of Southold and Mattituck High Schools. All are invited to attend the premiere on September 10; an encore presentation of the documentary will be shown on September 11, also at the rec center, at 11 a.m. immediately at the end of the 9/11 memorial service at Jean Cochran Park.

Speaking with Patch, Ellie described a project that changed her forever. She filmed 13 people and spoke to many more about their experiences.

The two that impacted her most deeply, she said, were interviews with Hillary North and Ed Sidor.

North was meant to be at work on the 103rd floor of the towers on the day of the attacks, but was late due to another person holding up the line when she was trying to vote in the Democratic primary that morning before work, Ellie said.

"She knew over 60 people she worked with that died that day. I remember getting into the car after the interview and having to take a minute because I was crying so much," she said.

Sidor's story, she said, focused mainly on the aftermath of the attacks, as he was heavily involved in supervising the clean-up of Ground Zero.

"He told me a story of how there was one point when he was walking by a truck being loaded with debris, and part of it missed the truck and landed right in front of him."

What fell before him were human remains, and he was physically ill from the shock of what he'd seen, she said.

"He also spoke about how his job affected others, and how he believes dust from his work clothes that he wore home from the Pile may have given his partner terminal cancer," Ellie said.

"Currently, he is the vice president of operations of the 9/11 museum in New York City, but he still struggles with the consequences of the attacks every day. While other interviewees' involvement ended pretty soon after the attacks, Mr. Sidor made me think about all the people we’ve lost after the attacks due to work-related illness, and the emotional toll on the survivors," she said.

Although only 16, the project has changed Ellie's perspective on 9/11 forever, she said.

"When you see a still image of the burning towers, at least for me, you feel weirdly disconnected from it. As with almost any image in a textbook, you feel a sense of dread, mostly from having to do an assignment on it, and you recall that it happened but you just can’t relate to it. But when you actually have a conversation with someone who was there, who was involved, it opens your eyes to the pain and loss, and it made me realize how universally this was felt then and today."

The project was deeply meaningful, she said.

"After every interview, when I would stop recording, almost every person breathed a sigh of relief and/or had tears in their eyes. For a lot of the people I spoke with, it was the first time they had spoken about their experience to someone else. It was so gratifying to see the catharsis wash over them and, I hope, they were able to find a little peace."

As a young person, Ellie explained why she believes it is so important for her generation to carry the stories of 9/111 forward.

"I would like to think that every generation is wiser and more open-minded than the last. But the point remains moot if we aren’t willing to learn. Pain is universal across different political parties, race, sexual orientation and identification, and origin. I feel that it is crucial that all generations must work in unison to teach the next, and we can all begin to understand the story of love and strength that came from 9/11."

Ellie and her troop members have been Scouts together since kindergarten, her mom and Troop 94 Leader Nicole Alloway said. Ellie is currently an Ambassador-level Scout; she has already earned her Bronze and Silver Awards, plus completed an additional set of badge prerequisites before deciding to seek her Gold Award, Alloway said.

"Ellie has participated in the Southold Town's 9/11 memorial since she was a very young girl, helping the town committee to hand out the 2,977 flags; that is our tradition," Alloway said. "Plus, she has heard stories about 9/11 all her life: her uncle had to walk out of downtown Manhattan to Brooklyn that day."

Ellie's mother's college friend was killed, as was her uncle's first girlfriend.

As she grew older, Ellie said she has enjoyed filmmaking as a hobby, getting her first video camera and equipment when she was 10.

But, Ellie said, it was a field trip to the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center in Glen Cove where her life was changed, after she heard, live, the first-person story of a survivor. That experience, she said, "drove home the importance of recording first-person testimony of tragic but significant events, so that these terrible things will never be forgotten or denied."