Posted on 11/08/2001 12:07:26 PM PST by Lucky2
Former first daughter writes first-person account of Sept. 11 for magazine The Associated Press 11/8/01 3:08 PM NEW YORK (AP) -- Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton, who was 12 blocks away from the World Trade Center when it collapsed, has written an account of that day for Talk magazine.
"Before Sept. 11 I wouldn't have believed I had many innocences left," begins the four-page story in the December issue of the magazine. "I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters. ... Despite all that, I woke up that Tuesday morning feeling good about where I was in my life and happy about where I was going."
Clinton was near Union Square, at the apartment of longtime friend Nicole Davison, when the first hijacked airliner hit Tower One. Davison, who had left for work, called Clinton and told her to stay where she was. Like many Americans that day, Clinton turned on the television and watched as the second plane hit.
"I tried to call my mother, but after I said hello to her assistant the line went dead," Clinton wrote. She ventured outside to find a working telephone, and ended up walking downtown -- toward the towers.
"I remember very little about how I got so far downtown. ... I don't know whether I was on the corner or in the middle of the block," she wrote. "I do remember standing in line at a phone somewhere and hearing a deafening rumble."
The noise Clinton heard was the collapse of Tower Two.
Clinton later found Davison and another friend, and the three spent the day working their way uptown. Clinton wrote that a "somewhat irrational medley of thoughts" was running through her head, including concerns about President Bush's tax cut.
"I worried that with the tax cut we wouldn't have enough money to repair New York and D.C. and to help the families of the thousands I knew must have died," she wrote.
At one point, she stopped to pray and thank God that her mother was a senator representing New York and that the city was led by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- a leader Clinton wrote she "had been criticizing just the day before for some insensitivity or other."
When Clinton finally got through to her mother, who was in Washington, she burst into tears of relief. She later spoke with her father, who was in Australia.
"The next night I saw my mother, and early Thursday morning I saw my dad in Chappaqua," Clinton wrote. "It was only after I had seen them both that I finally felt secure again in my own skin."
Now studying in Oxford, England, Clinton says she is frustrated to be away from America. She says she encounters anti-American sentiments every day.
"For more than 21 years I lived with the assumption that I was safe, with a sense of security so profound I didn't even know I had it," Clinton wrote. "Today I find myself shocked into a new awareness of how much I loved the country I grew up in."
To be perfectly honest, when I was running from the first collapsing tower and the debris cloud, and then when a plane was buzzing over us and we thought it was going to take out the bridges next to us (turned out to be our F-16s), the LAST thing on mind was even who the President was! I just wanted to live.
She wasn't in danger, so she decided to try and place herself in danger -- or at least in camera range. I bet that if she managed to get on TV while she was making her way *toward* the WTC, she would have claimed that she was there and trying to leave.
It's like watching a car wreck. It nauseates you, but you can't bear to look away from the absolute carnage.
2.5 miles, actually.
I love Chelsea bashing, but - speaking as someone who used to live on Union Square West - she wouldn't have had any trouble making it down there in the time frame she claims. It was roughly 1 hour 20 minutes from the first plane impact until the South Tower fell. It only takes about 15 minutes to walk a mile.
You don't really think most of the students of the snob schools get there on merit, do you?
Maybe she should have gone to class once in a while.
Bad choice of words, IMO
Tell me about it...I don't think even "innocences" (plural) is a word.
“Before Sept. 11 I wouldn't have believed I had many innocences much innocence left”
I agree. Ya know, ya just see so many that you become sorta numb to the idea, BUT, along comes a category 10, and it just catches you off guard!
I will await the WTC Chelsea Doll to be released just in time for Christmas. Comes with her own latte, jogging shoes, and little t-shirt that says "W's Tax Cuts Suck". Phone booth sold separately.
Oh, man, no wonder they kept the gag on. What a typical limo liberal.
According to Chelsea's breathless account, she didn't leave Union Square until after the second tower was hit. She then tried to call her mother, and then left Union Square. That time frame gives her approximately 45 minutes of walking downtown before the South Tower fell. Under normal circumstances, she may have been able to travel 15 minutes in a mile, but with so many people fleeing uptown at the same time, I seriously doubt she made it too far in that time frame.
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