Some of Donna Gruneich’s most cherished memories were made on the block surrounding the World Trade Center. She will never be able to visit those places again or share them with her children.
“We weren’t in the towers, but were still so deeply affected,” the Basin resident said last week.
When the structures collapsed, she was in Connecticut but her husband Kevin was four miles away in Midtown Manhattan. The impact was such that neither has ever been the same.
This Sunday, Donna said she’ll be thinking thoughts of gratitude for the lives they now lead and wondering where the victims’ families are now. Kevin said the memories are still fresh.
Donna met Kevin while working in the Oppenheimer & Co. building the southernmost World Financial Center building. She came out of the subway at the World Trade Center every morning and described it as the “backdrop for my whole working career in New York City.”
When Kevin was ready to propose, he readied himself in the shopping mall below the South Tower. He used a payphone there to call Donna’s father to ask permission. He then walked in at the end of her workday and proposed on bended knee in front of her whole office.
“It’s sad that we can never take our children there and tell them those stories and show them where they occurred,” she wrote in a short memoir about the attack. “For Kevin and me, the World Trade Center was an integral part of the start of our life together!”
In 1993, Donna witnessed the first explosion in the towers. At the time, it didn’t seem serious, but she later learned it had been terrifying for the people inside. That prompted many of them to evacuate early the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 which likely saved their lives, she said.
Donna remembers Sept. 11 as a beautiful fall day with clear skies like those in Park City. this time she was living in Connecticut with three children. She learned of the attack during a telephone call with her father. She immediately phoned Kevin, but with two towers already hit and rumors of more planes in the air, he felt safer staying at his desk.
“Knowing what I know now I would have exited building immediately,” he said in an interview.
Donna went to pick her child up from preschool and noticed the air was so clear she could see the pillar of smoke from the towers 45 miles away.
Military jets circled overhead, shaking her 1928-home and giving her the feeling of being in a war zone. For months afterward, fears of crashing jets plagued her every moment, she said.
Although they did not personally know anyone who perished in the towers, the Gruneichs said they mourned with their community.
A family wedding forced the Gruneichs to fly soon after and Kevin had to go back to work, so life resumed normally in a short time, but the emotional impact still lingers, she said.
Having witnessed two terrorist attacks, Donna said she is convinced another is imminent. Still, she has learned to push on and said she is inspired by the resiliency of those more deeply affected.
“You see how after all that time people’s lives do go on no matter how hard it was, and that’s encouraging,” she said.