On Sept. 11, 2001, Karen Matthews was inside her Manhattan apartment preparing her three-year-old daughter for preschool when an unfamiliar, thunderous boom echoed outside. Clutching her young child, she stepped onto the street. Onlookers were gazing upward at a gaping hole in the World Trade Center’s north tower, where dark smoke poured into the sky only a short distance from her residence.
What did you see?" members of the crowd asked each other. Matthews, a reporter for the , instinctively began posing the same inquiry, reaching for her notepad to write down eyewitness accounts while still balancing her daughter in her arms. Her original schedule called for taking her child to school before heading out to report on New York’s primary election later that day.
Instead, she joined a team of AP journalists tasked with recording the unfolding Sept. 11 terror attacks as firsthand witnesses. A quarter-century later, those journalists recall the moments they witnessed. As she made her way through her building's entrance earlier, Matthews had noticed a crying woman.
At that moment, many onlookers believed an errant light aircraft had inadvertently hit the skyscraper. Shortly after, she observed a "big fireball" burst from the south tower when a second hijacked airliner slammed into it. "‘I want to go to school, I want to go to school,’" her young daughter began to weep.
"That’s when we all knew that we were under attack," Matthews said. Matthews initially continued walking toward the preschool, but turned back after spotting weeping teachers rushing children northward. Seeking safety, she returned to her apartment with her daughter and switched on the television show Barney.
Moments later, two immense crashes shook the neighborhood as each tower fell in turn. Almost 3,000 victims lost their lives at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard four commercial aircraft seized by al-Qaida terrorists. Now retired, Matthews continues to view her lifetime through the distinct divide of before and after Sept. 11.
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