Using Oral History to Preserve Space for Individual Traumas within the Collective Tragedy of September 11th

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Rebecca Brenner Graham reminds us how oral history can validate and preserve individual traumas from such a harrowing time.

By Rebecca Brenner Graham

The September 11, 2001 attacks occurred twenty years ago. Five years ago, I conducted a series of oral history interviews with survivors of trauma related to September 11th. For these narrators, their experiences on that day—all that was lost— will remain integral to their life stories. Jay was a Rhode Island-based attorney whose little sister was working as a flight attendant. Annie was a civilian employee who felt safe and worked longer than most in the transient workspace of the Pentagon. Steve worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, located at 1 World Trade Center, from 2000 through 2002.

While September 11th unfolded for each narrator differently—Jay lost a loved one, Annie sat in the Pentagon when hijackers crashed into it, and Steve stood in the North Tower’s lobby as its elevators stopped working—their experiences and traumas collectively taught me three important lessons. First, personal loss—of a beloved sister, a sense of safety at work, or an entire office—isolates one’s individual experience and memory from a collective or nation’s experience of a major event. Second, the collective nation’s ability to memorialize the event and mourn what was lost in collective memory on a national stage is limited. And third, Jay, Annie, and Steve taught me that ineffable, intangible feeling of connection and empathy that I cannot translate into words but that I will never forget.

Jay watched United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower from his law office’s television in Rhode Island. Since his sister Amy was flying neither to nor from New York, he did not realize that she could be on the plane. Yet, a few hours later, when his boss knocked and gently told him “I’m going to bring you home,” Jay intuitively knew. The horror that he watched on television held gutting personal implications: Amy was gone. Jay described Amy as the last person who you’d ever think could get caught up in this. Amy was characteristically easy-going, free-spirited, and good-humored. Amy began her career as a flight attendant after graduating from Villanova University. She had planned to marry her college boyfriend Kyle. Amy was a talented flight attendant and a “perfect aunt.” Jay’s daughter Ally reminds him of his sister. She is named for her and simply has a way about her that reminds the family of Amy. 

Amy’s Mount Saint Charles Academy high school classmate Chris Ross composed and recorded a song for Amy, entitled “Brave.”

Annie Bratcher, fall 2016

Two hundred and thirty miles south, Annie was a longtime civilian employee at the Pentagon. She enjoyed and took pride in her work and still does. Throughout her career, Annie has woken up before 5 am to listen to gospels to fuel her day spiritually. When Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 am, Annie was several hours into her day. Before September 11th, Annie’s routine was comforting, predictable, and sacred. Trauma is the opposite. As days turned to weeks, Annie remained paralyzed on her couch. When she returned to work, the colonels helped her around the building. A fellow commuter with whom Annie frequently chatted—without asking her name—never returned.

When Annie awoke on September 11th, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee in New York might only have been asleep for a few hours. Working late into the night, Steve signed emails, “from the top of the World Trade Center.” One of these nights was September 10, 2001, and as a result, Steve ran late the following morning. His estimated time of arrival at work grew later after running into a cousin while commuting. They caught up on the details of Steve’s recent honeymoon. By the time Steve arrived in the lobby, the North Tower had been hit. When the South Tower was struck, Steve watched from underneath it. He will never forget the sight of the plane’s nose protruding the opposite side or the sound of people who, in their last moments, chose to jump rather than suffocate to death. Steve lost almost all the colleagues who had shaped him and his early career. He will especially never forget his mentor Dennis.

One of the ways that Jay remembers Amy is by noting ways that Ally emulates the aunt that she never met. One of Annie’s coping mechanisms is her involvement at church. She has even spoken publicly about what she experienced on September 11th. Steve honors Dennis’s memory when he mentors others. Another Cantor Fitzgerald colleague who died on September 11th had advised Steve to watch his guests watch the slideshow at his wedding. I reflected on the loss of Steve’s colleague by following the same advice at my own wedding.   

Survivors of trauma relating to September 11th offer memories and perspectives that might differ from traditional or even patriotic narratives. The relationship among individual, collective, and official memory is complex. Individual people contain multitudes—ideas, meaning, memories—September 11th transformed the lives of every person in the wrong place at the wrong time and their loved ones.

These oral history narrators generously, graciously shared pieces of themselves—who and what they lost—with me. I will always remember them, and not only on September 11th.

Rebecca Brenner Graham is a newly-minted Ph.D. historian, a full-time history teacher at an all-girls boarding school, a compulsive reader, and an aspiring author.

Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia user Saifunny, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.