Students, residents have
ties to attack victims
By Sarah Szczepanski
Assistant
Features Editor
Nadene Downing and thousands of members of the
Purdue community waited for news about loved ones Tuesday after the
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Downing, the mother of Lauren Lin, a Purdue graduate
who worked on the 73rd floor of the World Trade Center, heard news of
the destruction early Tuesday morning.
"We were terrified," she said. "It makes me sick.
When you see photos of the tower, her office was right above that band
of different color."
It wasn’t until 10:30 a.m. that Downing and
her husband finally received a call from Lin and heard her story of
survival.
According to Downing, Lin was just getting into
an elevator headed up to her office when it began to shake and she could
see people running past her. Lin hastily fled the building and ran to
the Hudson River.
She called her husband Brian Lin — who was
on his way to work — from her cell phone. The two somehow found
each other and Lin was finally able to call her worried parents.
"It was wonderful; we were dying," Downing said.
"Thank God she is OK."
Downing was not the only person from the University
who had a family member in the World Trade Center. Jennifer Di Tommaso,
a junior in the School of Engineering, waited for news about her uncle,
a member of the terrorist task force of the World Trade Center. Her
uncle was apparently underneath the building when it collapsed. Her
entire family also lives in the city and she hadn't been able to make
contact with them as of Tuesday afternoon.
"I am so mad," Di Tommaso said. "Give us justice.
I don’t want a trial; I want justice so that their families can
feel the way I do."
In Di Tommaso's room, she has pictures of herself
as a child in front of the World Trade Center. As an engineer, she said
the building amazed her. Now she can't get her mind off it. She found
out about the destruction early in the morning when a friend banged
on her door. Di Tommaso turned on the television and, "I've been sitting
there ever since," she said.
Nick Noto, a senior in the School of Technology,
also watched the news early Tuesday. His mother was an American Airline
flight attendant and he anxiously waited to hear from her. He knew she
flew to Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
Tuesday she was working in the New York City area.
After about 45 minutes, he found that she left
the city one hour before the attacks began, but this was not enough
for Noto. "I was really impatient," he said. "I don’t want her
working for the airlines anymore."
Lisa Morrisroe, a senior in the School of Liberal
Arts, had a longer wait. Her uncle is a high-ranking official for the
Army and is often in and out of the Pentagon. Tuesday morning her family
wasn’t able to locate him.
Morrisroe left her home in tears, going to class
to get away from the television news coverage, only to find she would
be watching CNN in her COM 300, "Research Methods," class. "I just hope
everyone's OK and I hope my mom calls soon and tells me they found my
uncle," she said, clutching her cell phone.
Morrisroe heard news that her uncle was safe Tuesday
afternoon.
Ashlea Hartz, a junior in the School of Liberal
Arts, had an internship this summer in Manhattan. She talked to her
co-workers and heard that they actually watched the second plane hit
the building. "They thought the first one was an accident until that
happened," Hartz said.
Hartz, who felt safe in the city, often talked
to her internship co-workers about terrorism. "We talked about past
terrorist attacks and the bombing, but we always talked about them as
if they would never happen again," she said.
|
