Orofino residents visited in NYC on 9-11

Ted Brown took this photograph of his niece Ashley Lampert (left) and his daughter Rachelle Brown (right) standing near the Statue of Liberty with the World Trade Center buildings in the background. The date on the bottom right-hand side of the picture is 09/10/2001. Rachelle now lives in Lewiston. Ashley lives in Canada.

By Alannah Allbrett

Orofino resident, and now City Councilman, Ted Brown took his family to New York City to attend a wedding. They stayed with family members on Long Island while there.

Ted took the above picture of his niece Ashley Lampert (then age 15) and his daughter Rachelle Brown (then age 17) from Liberty Island while viewing the Statue of Liberty.

It was a Monday (09-10-01); they also managed to visit Ellis Island, and the Empire State Building. They were going to finish the day at the World Trade Center (Twin Towers), but it got to be too late in the day. So they postponed the Twin Towers stop until the following morning. They arrived back to their lodging on Long Island– late, due to long delays in their train ride. Ted said there had been a huge thunderstorm that night; power was lost and the trains were shut down, creating a two hour delay.

The next morning, Tuesday, September 11 they made the decision to cancel the lengthy trip into Manhattan to see the Twin Towers. The train they would have taken was an early one, and they would have arrived at Penn Station at 8:45 a.m. The first infamous strike, destroying the towers, occurred at 8:46 a.m.

Pennsylvania Station is only a couple blocks away from the towers. Ted said when you step out of the station on that side; you would have immediately looked up in awe at the size of the looming buildings in front of you.

Following the attack, air flights were cancelled preventing them getting a flight out. Car rentals were discontinued temporarily, so they couldn’t rent a car to get home. Finally, two days later, a car was released to them on Thursday, and they departed Long Island at one a.m. in the morning.

Leaving Long Island, they could see the wreckage and smell the smoke still coming up from the rubble of the destruction at Ground Zero. Ted said that is a smell they will never be able to forget. In their eagerness to get home, they drove straight through to Chicago that day.