Scott Spak '00 knew that something was terribly wrong the moment he emerged from the subway that morning. Looking up from his vantage point only a few blocks removed from the World Trade Center, Spak saw smoke billow overhead, and figured that a fire had broken out in the surrounding area of lower Manhattan.
Spak, an engineering major on his way to a management consulting job that morning, was one of many recent Dartmouth alumni working or living in New York and Washington D.C. during the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Arriving in his office, he learned that a plane had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center, though no major news website yet carried the story.
"I knew that it was not an accident almost immediately," Spak said, realizing that no flight path brought commercial jets to an altitude anywhere near the buildings of New York.
At the same time, Lauren Brenner '99 was arriving at work for her job as advertising associate for Entertainment Weekly, at an office in midtown Manhattan. Fortunately for Brenner, her distance from the Trade Center ensured that she and her coworkers were safe from any imminent danger.
According to Brenner, she first learned of the attacks while on a crosstown bus that she rode to work each morning.
"Over the PA system on the bus, there was a loud communication that told us not to go beyond Canal Street ... at the time I thought there was probably a water main break."
Although her office was not evacuated, the breakdown in communication " most phone lines were out or busy " and the closure of most forms of public transportation meant that she and many others were forced to walk home that afternoon.
Moments later, Spak left his office on foot and headed for Grand Central Station to take a train out of the city.
"As I got to the FDR Drive, I saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center," Spak said. "Behind us was blocked off by a thick wall of smoke, and ahead of us was another cloud of smoke, and we all became covered with dust."
Despite the surrounding dangers, Spak eventually made his way to the station and boarded a train bound for Westchester county.
Kajal Jhaveri '98, an Amtrak employee from Washington D.C. who worked in corporate communications, was at an event in Penn Station that morning when she learned of the attacks.
"I was on the last train leaving for Washington D.C.," Jhaveri explained. "From the train, we could look out and see the buildings burning ... we saw a cloud of smoke engulfing Manhattan."
"Just the sight of it made me sick, physically ill," she said. "I've never seen or experienced anything of this scale ever."
Though the respondents shared the emotions of initial shock, alarm, and often disbelief, each had his or her own personal response in the weeks following Sept. 11. Jamie Udler '98, who lived a safe distance from the attacks in midtown Manhattan, said she felt things had returned somewhat to normal only very recently.
"It's taken until this weekend for me to feel comfortable ... there are constant reminders everywhere," she said, referring to the pictures of those missing in the attacks posted throughout the city.
Amanda Molk '01, a government major who was working at the Capitol in Washington D.C. when the attacks took place, thought that the eventual return to a normal schedule was a necessary and positive response.
"Everybody is doing a good job of reacting, being cautious but not letting it take over our lives," she said. "People are not succumbing to fear, and are showing the terrorists and the rest of the world that they won't just give in."
Scott Spak, who was closest to the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks, expressed how deeply the events had affected him.
"I went to Dartmouth to have a greater understanding, not to be a corporate agent working in dangerous situations. It has really led me to question my path in life, and to doing things other than what I had originally planned ... as I think any near-death experience does."
