On the morning of September 11, 2001, photographer Jennifer S. Altman was driving down the FDR Drive on her way to an assignment in Brooklyn covering the mayoral primary when she saw the World Trade Center go up in flames. She left her car at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge and ran toward the towers while thousands of people ran the opposite direction.
The second plane roared low over her head. She headed for the corner of Fulton and Church streets, where she knew survivors would be brought out. Altman's photographs from that day ran in Newsweek's coverage of the attacks, have been honored with awards, and hang in the 9/11 Memorial Museum and the New York City Police Museum.
One image is of NYPD Officer Ramon Suarez carrying Crystal Tyson to safety from the 49th floor where she worked for a bank. It is the last known photograph of him alive. Moments later, he returned to the tower just before it collapsed.
In the years since that day, Altman has remained in touch with many of the people she photographed and their families. She recently returned to the corner of Fulton and Church with Tyson, now 56, and Officer Suarez’s wife, Carmen, 67, and daughter, Jillian, 34, who is today an NYPD detective wearing her father’s badge number, to reflect on his memory and the events of that tragic day. I first encountered Officer Ramon in the stairwell where there was water running down the stairs.
I ended up losing my footing and falling down a couple of stairs. I remember Officer Ramon picking me up, literally, and carried me the rest of the way because when we got down to the lobby, it was full of glass and water, and I had on sandals. And once we got through the revolving doors, he said, “Don't look down, don't look down.” And, of course, if someone tells you not to look down, you look down.
And that's when I saw, unfortunately, some bodies of people who jumped out of the towers over us. And he proceeded to carry me the rest of the way in front of the Millennium Hotel to ambulances that were waiting for injured people. He put me in the ambulance, and he made sure they connected me to oxygen.
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