Stark memories of a miracle

NEW YORK - Elizabeth Connell used to keep a postcard of the Twin Towers above her desk at the World Trade Center.

She bought it shortly after she was hired to work as a portfolio assistant at Fiduciary Trust Co., a job that put her in an office on the 94th floor of the south tower.

"It was pretty exciting, a little Rhode Island girl working at the World Trade Center," says the Lincoln High School graduate, 24. "I felt really important every day."

From her desk she could see the north tower. So when she heard something "like a big explosion" at 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, she turned to see a fireball flash past the window.

"What the heck just happened?" she thought.

Connell froze for a few seconds, until one of her coworkers said, "Get the hell out of here."

Connell grabbed her purse and umbrella and headed for the door, without looking around to see what anyone else was doing.

Figuring that the elevators might not be working, she made a beeline for the nearest stairwell, and started her descent.

She didn't stop when, as she was nearing the 50th floor, a voice came over the intercom telling people to return to their desks.

"I thought that if something like that could happen in the other building, it could happen in my building, too."

She didn't stop when one man, also walking down the stairs, told those around him, "Don't worry, the building's not going to fall."

She did stop, just for a moment, at 9:03 a.m.

"It was kind of like a swaying and a boom, and my ears popped. I figured maybe it was an aftershock of what had occurred in the other building."

People began screaming and crying.

"I really didn't panic at all," Connell says. "I don't know why, because I'm pretty emotional. TV commercials make me cry."

Connell guesses that she finally saw daylight at about 9:30, exiting the Trade Center complex through the underground mall, where all the stores were already deserted, and via the nine-story office building at Five World Trade Center.

Her first sight was a frightened pigeon cowering under a concrete bench.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God, that poor pigeon, he doesn't know what's going on!' That's the first and last time I'll ever have sympathy for a pigeon."

Connell walked a few steps, then looked back at the building, looking in shock at the gaping hole and black smoke.

She wondered where to go.

She had forgotten her cell phone at home, so after walking a few blocks north, she lined up at a pay phone to call her family.

Then there was a rumbling, and someone started to scream, "Something else is happening! Something else is happening!"

Connell thought Manhattan was being bombed.

The south tower, where Connell had worked, was collapsing.

It was 9:50 a.m., just 20 minutes after she had escaped the building.

Everyone started to run.

Fortunately, Connell was dressed practically, in pants and flat shoes, so she ran, too.

And never looked back.

"I was just getting the heck out of there because I didn't know what would happen next."

For all the mayhem around her, Connell says the worst injury she saw was a man whose head was bleeding, back at the Trade Center complex.

"I didn't see anyone jump. I didn't see anyone hurt really badly. I didn't have any debris on me, soot, anything. I just walked in the right direction and picked the right stairwell."

Somewhere along the line, she overheard enough conversations to realize that airplanes had hit the towers and that a terrorist attack was suspected.

As she walked north, her only thought was getting through to her friends and family. When she saw a young woman holding a cell phone to her ear, she stopped and asked her if she could borrow it.

The young woman's name was Erin. As it turned out, she, like most of the people in Manhattan that day, wasn't having any luck getting through on her cell phone.

Erin was headed to the J.P. Morgan offices, at 51st Street and Park Avenue, where her boyfriend worked.

"I didn't want to be by myself, so I just asked her if could walk with her," Connell says.

As they walked, Connell looked into one shoe store and saw the bizarre sight of people still shopping.

"I thought to myself, 'Don't you people know what just happened?' "

Connell and her new friend arrived at the office, about four miles from the World Trade Center, a little before 12:30.

There, Connell finally managed to reach her family on a land line.

She called her grandmother's house in Lincoln's Lime Rock neighborhood first, knowing that the family would gather there to wait for news.

Her aunt answered the phone.

She sounded surprised.

"I don't think they really expected to hear from me."

Connell's grandmother, Elinor Lepore, remembers all the phone calls that came in that morning from family and friends, and how she hoped each one would be her granddaughter.

By 12:30, they had been waiting three hours.

"We were hoping and praying it would be her, but under the circumstances, we thought the worst," Lepore says.

But Lepore says her granddaughter's wise instincts, steely determination, and good luck did not surprise her.

Connell was born with a heart condition called cooptation of the aorta, and had to have surgery when she was 17 days old.

"She's had two miracles happen," Lepore says.

It was while speaking to her grandmother that Connell lost her composure for the first time that day.

"I don't remember the last time I'd heard my grandmother cry," Connell says. "I just lost it."

Connell's mother, Louise Fleury, a teacher at Lincoln's Fairlawn Early Learning Center, had been called to the office that morning. While on the phone with Connell's father, she had watched the south tower collapse.

By the time her daughter phoned, she had been at Lepore's home waiting with the rest of the family, but had left a few minutes earlier to check the answering machine at her own home.

By the time Connell reached her mother at home, Fleury had learned that her daughter was all right.

"She just kept saying my name," Connell remembers. "She kept saying, 'Elizabeth, it's Elizabeth. It's Elizabeth on the phone.' "

After that, Connell called her father, John Connell, who lives in Smithfield.

She called her boyfriend of four years, Damian DiCherbo.

She called a friend from high school who now lives in Texas.

"Every time I talked to someone I started to cry."

Connell passed a few hours at the J.P. Morgan office, watching the news on the TV there, making phone calls, eating a bit at the office cafeteria, where food was free that day.

Eventually, she says, she just wanted to go home she had a new apartment in the Upper East Side and turn on the news.

Only then did she realize how fortunate she was.

United Airlines Flight 175 had crashed into the south tower at the 88th floor six floors below her office.

"I just kept saying, 'I can't believe I made it out of the building.' If I'd left a few minutes later, I might not have made it at all."

Connell, DiCherbo, and another friend spent the evening watching the news reports. They ordered a cheese-and-pepperoni pizza from Mimma's, Connell's favorite pizza place.

Connell didn't eat much.

She went to bed at midnight, but just tossed and turned, and rose at 6 a.m. to call her mother again.

"I talked to her, I swear, it must have been 20 times throughout that whole day, night, and next day," Connell says.

She spent several more days absorbing the news coverage, still in shock. That weekend, she went with DiCherbo to his parents' house on Long Island, then home to Rhode Island for a week or so.

She returned to work on Thursday, Sept. 20.

Fiduciary Trust employed about 600 in the Trade Center, all in offices above the 89th floor in the south tower.

Eighty-seven of those workers died Sept. 11.

The investment firm has relocated to Rockefeller Center. Connell now works on the fifth floor.

She still doesn't like loud noises. When she heard the sounds of construction on the floor above her new office, "I jumped up and grabbed my bag and was ready to leave."

Her mouth went dry, and tasted like smoke.

The other day, the lights flickered briefly.

"It's something so little, but it just freaked me out," she says.

Yet this Rhode Island girl isn't leaving New York anytime soon.

She did consider it right after the attacks "I just felt safer in Rhode Island" but has made up her mind to stay in the city that poses a sharp contrast to her suburban hometown and the small village in western New York where she attended college at Alfred University.

"There's just so much to do here," she says. "I love the skyline at night, when you're coming over the bridge and you just see all the lights . . . "

On Wednesday, Connell will once again be glued to the TV. Her employer has given workers the option to take the day off.

"I just want to watch everything," she says.

World Trade Center memorabilia is sold on every street corner in Manhattan now, and Connell has bought framed pictures for her relatives. Her mother still has the black-and-white photograph of the towers Connell bought her when she started working at the Trade Center, hanging in her study.

But Connell just hasn't felt the need to buy a new postcard for herself. She doesn't need a reminder.