A witness to history, tragedy. Pastor Gary Mills was working in New York City Sept. 11, 2001

By Pastor Gary Mills

September 11, 2001 was a bright, cloudless, sunny early fall morning in New York City and the sidewalks were filled with people on their way to work or school or just to get one more warm day in the park or on a bench in the middle of Broadway. 
I had taken the Number 1 subway line from home to 96th Street and Broadway and then decided to walk the last 20 blocks (one mile) to my office at 475 Riverside Drive. 
Our office building sits on the highest point of Manhattan Island and from the 16th floor we had clear views of three sides of the City – all of Lower Manhattan, New Jersey and Staten Island as well as Brooklyn and Queens and the Jersey Palisades. 
I arrived at my desk on the 16th floor at my normal time of 7:30, looked south out my window and saw the gleaming Mid-town-west and lower Manhattan skyline and the brilliant shimmering water of the lower Hudson River and Upper New York Bay, and then closed the window blinds to reduce the glare on my computer. 
Bishop Bouman and I would be meeting at 8:30 with a pastor we were hoping would take a call to be a mission developer at a new church we were hoping to start in Westchester County. We decided to meet in my office. About 20 minutes into our conversation the Bishop’s secretary, Joanne, came into my office and told us that it looked like the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) was on fire. We opened the blinds to see what was happening. Smoke was billowing in huge clouds, not just small plumes, and so we assumed that this was more than an internal fire that had exploded the windows. 
We did not have a TV in the Synod office but by that time my secretary, Susan, had arrived and had heard on her way from the subway that a plane had crashed into the tower. I had lived through the 1993 terrorist bombing of the WTC and had lost a friend in that event, but none of us gave any thought to this being terrorism. Simply an accident by a small plane, we assumed.
All our staff were in by that time and one of my colleagues had brought a transistor radio from home. At 9:00 there was an announcement that the Port Authority Police Department had declared that the Twin Towers were to be evacuated. 
Just a few moments later we saw a plane coming up the river, flying right over the City and that was neither normal nor permitted. Then a huge ball of fire rose from behind the South Tower, there were flames everywhere from the upper levels of both buildings and we could clearly see debris falling all around.
My nephew, Louis, worked at the World Trade Center. So did the son of one of my colleagues, Carla, and the Bishop’s son and daughter-in-law were on leave from one of our schools in Tanzania and were there with friends. The panic between the three of us and our colleagues was palpable.
 I tried to call my nephew but could not get through to his cell phone. I tried again and again and again…nothing. Same with the Bishop and Carla. And then we lost radio transmission, computers were down, and within minutes, so were the phone lines. All of the other offices at 475 had the same thing, including no TV reception for those who had television in their offices. 
The issue? Most phone, computer, radio and TV towers in NYC were located on top of the two towers and the lines had been destroyed by the heat or crashes. I could not reach my sister, Gwenn (Louis’ mother) in St. Paul nor my parents in Benson. And I could not reach my nephew. I had never felt so helpless, so powerless.  All we could do was watch out the window.

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