Suzanne Darmory Interview

Click here to see Suzanne’s Interview:

Authored by: Ariana Csonka Kaleta

Suzanne’s story is not one that was frequently covered by the news, although it did inspire both a book and a musical. When the World Trade Center was first hit, Suzanne was in an airplane was only 20 minutes outside of New York City.  Her plane was circling directly over the city.  The staff had the radio on and so, the entire flight was able to hear everything unfold in real-time as they looked down on lower Manhattan, as if watching a movie.

The flight eventually was re-routed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where they sat on the tarmac for eight hours during which, they ran out of food and water. Passengers started panicking. No one knew anything of what was going on. Finally, the passengers were then told to grab everything they had carried on. As everyone deplaned, they began to realize they were first of about 400 planes that hand landed on the tarmac and were lined up side by side, one after another. As the passengers from her flight walked in, they realized the planes had landed next to an armory and they were in the process of inflating 3,000 to 4,000 airbeds. Everyone was given beds side by side and no one was allowed to contact anyone including their families.

The next day, she and her partner were desperately trying to get back to the United States. Once she finally found a phone, she was notified that the boarders were all blocked.

A Canadian women offered to let them stay with her family till the border opened. The Canadian lady had three children and her husband had been stranded elsewhere. Many of the survivors, who landed in Canada made lifelong friends with the families that helped them.

Suzanne also made a great friend that day but even after all these years, she is not 100% comfortable getting on an airplane. Suzanne describes herself as alright except during take off..she still needs to use the rituals she’s now created. Her bag must always be in arms length, she immediately puts her eye mask on, she listens to music, everything to get herself into what she describes as ‘the zone’ so she doesn’t notice her surroundings.

When asked on her views of the event, Suzanne stated “9/11 was one of the most difficult times in our modern day history. We were not alive during WWI or WWII or D-Day, this marked the change of the way that we live, the way that we travel, the way that we communicate with one another. This marks a very strong time that people still remember where they were, what they were wearing who they were with and the effects that came after. I think that day changed the way we think about the world.”

References:

DeFede, Jim. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. First edition. New York: Regan Books, 2002.
Smith, Dennis, and Déirdre Smith. A Decade of Hope: Stories of Grief and Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends. New York: Viking, 2011.
Torres, Francesc, and Clifford Chanin. Memory Remains: 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17. Washington, D.C: National Geographic, 2011.

 

Metadata:

Title	9/11 Interview
Creator	Ariana Csonka Kaleta
Subject	Suzanne Darmory
Subject	9/11
Description	Interview of Greenwich, CT resident on their first hand experience during the September 11th attacks on New York in 2001.
Publisher	Hidden Heritage Collection, Greenwich Library and Historical Society
Contributor	Suzanne Darmory
Date	10 October, 2017
Type	Photographic File
Format	JPEG
Identifier	N/A
Source	Suzanne Darmory
Language	English (USA)
Relation	isPartof September 11th Project at Greenwich Oral History Project
Coverage	41°02’20”N 73°36’49”W
Rights	Oral History Project at Greenwich Library