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American Morning
9/11 Remembered: Police Armory Becomes Shrine
Aired September 09, 2002 - 09:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: In the days following 9/11, family members of many of those lost in the World Trade Center brought photographs of their loved ones to an armory in Manhattan where police were gathering information about the missing. And hundreds of them stood in line holding pictures, but slowly losing hope.
Elizabeth Cohen was there listening to their stories, and she joins us now with a look back.
I vividly remember you in the middle of those families as they dealt with the agony of a very long wait in some cases.
Good morning.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Good morning.
I drove from Atlanta to New York on September 11. Never expected to see what I saw on that street corner: a scene of communal mourning and communal strength.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As can you tell, it is just an endless sea of people.
COHEN (voice-over): The search.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm looking for my son (UNINTELLIGIBLE). He left home that morning, and he hasn't called back since then.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I walked it St. Vincent's. I checked their list. I walked all across World Trade Center and up West Street giving out flyers to people going down to the World Trade Center, to ground zero.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His parents are devastated
COHEN: The sadness.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sal's wife, who's home right now with his two children, spoke to him 10 minutes before the plane hit the building.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has a daughter, 7-months-old, and he is really... COHEN: The posters everywhere, the hope when it made no sense to hope.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody got out, and if anyone made it please call us.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One of his good friends, Dennis McHugh, Eddie Mardovich -- these are people that we used to see all the time, and now, it seems kind of surreal that I'm hanging up missing posters of my brother all over New York City. It is unbelievable.
COHEN: These are their stories. This is their street corner.
(on camera): On the corner of Lexington and 26th, there are no plaques, there are no memorials to what happened here a year ago. But for four days, families came it this street corner to learn the fate of their missing loved ones. If ground zero is this site of the physical devastation of September 11, this corner is the site of the emotional devastation.
(voice-over): This is the interview many people remember.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He would have looked for his workers, he would have helped people out. He did it when they bombed it in '93.
COHEN: Vinny Camaj and I cried together on this street corner. Vinny's father, Roko, was a window washer at the World Trade Center.
(on camera): If you think your father might be out there somewhere, what would you want to say to him?
VINNY CAMAJ: I want to tell him that we all miss him. His nephew, Luke, misses him. And that we are strong. We got hope.
COHEN: Thank you.
CAMAJ: Than you.
(on camera): Aaron, I've talking to these families for two days now, and all of these stories are very much like this: People are just hoping that their relatives are out there somewhere.
(voice-over): Vinny recently went back there with me.
CAMAJ: The memories of going through what we went through last year is just very unbearable.
COHEN: Back to the Armory.
CAMAJ: You'd walk upstairs, they tell you, What's wrong, and you'd explain to them that our father was missing.
COHEN (on camera): Thousands like Vinny streamed through these halls, adding their posters, now made into a memorial.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the two -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) brother and sister in Building One, right?
COHEN (on camera): I think so.
(voice-over): I remember meeting their mother last year. She lost her son and daughter on September 11.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... they are both missing.
COHEN: Suffering beyond all imagination. Part of the scene the likes of which I have never seen before, the likes of which I hope to never see again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN: Boy, does that bring back some of the horrible memories. But I also remember you tapped in to the strength and the spirit of that crowd and actually found a tremendous amount of kindness.
COHEN: Absolutely. I mean, it was the best and the worst. The family members helped each other. Here are people who were searching for their husbands and wives and sisters and brothers, and they would stop and help someone else and say, If you go to this hospital, they have got a list. And they really stopped and helped them. People who weren't directly affected by the tragedy, they came to that corner; they learned where the families were. And they came and they said, I'll stand in line for you -- this is a long line, it's an hour or two long, you go sit down and get a glass of water, and I'll stand in line for you. Or people who live near that corner said, My apartment is right there, go inside and lay down on my couch.
People came over from all over New York to bring food. I vividly remember one girl -- she probably was 7 or 8 years old -- she made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and she brought them to these families.
This was completely unsolicited. They just saw on television that they were at the corner of 26th and Lexington, and they flooded down there.
ZAHN: I remember at one point we sent you to the convention center, where crowds had been told thousands of people to go home days before because the city couldn't accommodate them; they had enough volunteers, and yet they stayed there because they felt this grave need to do something for somebody else.
COHEN: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
ZAHN: Thanks, Elizabeth -- a very poignant reminder of where we all are were just about a year ago.
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