September 11, 2001 . . . a day that will go down in history. A day that no American will ever forget, I know I will never forget it.

My name is Lowell "Dyke" Miller and I have lived in Lewis County most of my life, until a few years ago when I moved to New York City. And now I have witnessed the most horrific thing I have ever seen.

The morning of the 11^th my phone rang, I thought it was a telemarketer so I didn’t answer it. I picked up my phone a few minutes later and checked my message. It was a message from my father, he sounded very distraught. There was a tone in his voice I seldom heard.

"I was worried and just want to know if you’re OK," the message said.

I called him back and he told me the World Trade Center had been attacked and the first tower was down.

I said "what?" I just couldn’t comprehend this, I just seen those towers last night. I look at those towers every night before I go to bed.

I assured him I was fine. I went up onto my roof expecting the Twin Towers to still be there.

I walked onto the roof looked out and just froze. The second tower had just started to fall. I could not believe what I was seeing.

I still can’t believe it.

There was a roar and a huge blast of smoke. The smoke engulfed everything! It was crumbling down, I was watching it but it just wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be! That is just something that doesn’t happen, in the movies yes, but not in real life. It couldn’t be happening, that is more than 200,000 tons of steel!

I just stood there staring in disbelief. My heart was pounding in my chest as I just stared. The smoke shifted and they were gone, the towers were gone!

And what about the people?

I stood there for what seemed like forever when I finally walked back into my building.

I knocked on my neighbor’s door to ask if she knew what had just happened. I found her in tears. Her niece worked in The World Trade Center. The phone lines were down and she could not contact anybody concerning her niece.

My neighbor, who is in her seventies, said, " My niece is all I have left".

She wanted to walk onto the roof and see what had happened. I walked with her holding her hand onto the roof as we watched all that was left of The World Trade Center.

By this time the white smoke had started to turn black from the full tanks of the planes that had crashed into the buildings. The smoke had taken over the city and the sky was full of black smoke. My neighbor just stood and stared with her eyes tearing up in disbelief.

I went with her downstairs while she tried to contact somebody concerning her niece. I sat there watching the news, still is total disbelief.

All those people in the buildings . . . how many lives were taken away by this horrific act of terrorism?

Well, several days have passed, and my neighbor’s niece was one of the lucky ones to survive. I just returned from the market and the credit machines are down, cell phones are down and communication is still slow here in NYC.

But New Yorkers are pulling together, and helping out in any way they can. Some are scared and some are angry. But we all want answers; I hope we get those answers soon.

We have to protect ourselves to make sure this cannot and will not ever happen again. We must be strong and pull together as a nation.

Somebody said that right now we are all New Yorkers. That is very true, even in Lewis County.

I want to share with you some pictures I took that day, September 11, 2001 . . . a day many Americans and I will never forget.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

I stood barefoot on the roof of my Park Slope, Brooklyn apartment in my boxer shorts and a tee-shirt, just pulled out of bed by a phone call from my boyfriend's sister telling me that an airplane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. I quickly turned on the news and watched footage of the tower on fire. I quickly had to go outside to verify the unbelievable images that my television was showing me - I had to see for myself. Sure enough, the first tower was on fire and a plume of smoke was in the air.

A handful of my neighbors were on the roof as well, and we all were in awe of what we were seeing. Fleeting thoughts of getting my camera came to me, but I didn't. I was stuck to the spot in disbelief.

Then, from seemingly out of no where, the second airplane crashed into the second tower. I saw it, the explosion as it hit; I heard it, but my brain wasn't processing what it was seeing. Some gut feeling allowed me to worry about my boyfriend Danny (Jederlinic) and wonder where he was working that morning. He is an iron worker who had been working on a job nearby the towers. But even that fear didn't seem real.

My neighbors and I alternated between checking our televisions and watching from the roof. When the first tower fell is when I think it really hit me that this was happening. I thought at the time that a bomb had gone off - there was an explosion as the huge structure fell. The sky filled with smoke and an acrid smell, and ashes filled the air, falling down on us. What I heard more clearly was one of my neighbors as he burst into sobs - his wife worked across the street from the towers. I still don't know if she was one of the victims or not. I hope not.

Then the second tower fell. We heard it, and from the newscasts, we expected it. But the sky was black with smoke and you couldn't really see it well from my building. I began to worry about Danny in earnest, and had a sense of surreal numbness. This couldn't be happening. Not here. Not in America.

We watched our televisions and shared jumbled reports of the plane crashing into the Pentagon, rumors of four, five, nine planes hijacked to the rumors of bombs going off all over Washington.

We tried to call loved ones in other parts of the country but the phones weren't working. We laughed weakly in a moment of black humor over our unlikely immediate danger from the ancient armory across the street being an international target. We tried our phones often. I called Danny's cell phone over and over. Nothing.

Then I found my solace as Danny came home from working on the Brooklyn side of the Bay. He had seen the horror from an even closer vantage point, and was bursting with energy and a feeling of helplessness.

That was the beginning of our day.

The World Trade Center towers were so much a part of our lives that I didn't really think about them much. They were just there, as much a part of the skyline as my fingerprints are a part of me. But now, having watched their demise, I can't stop thinking about how much a part of my life they really were.

I have a photo, a tourist shot from the top of the towers that we laughed about as we had them taken. A family member was visiting from out of town, and Danny was playing tour guide as he took us on the tour of the top of the buildings.

That night I was able to reach my daughter Amiee (Carver), a student at LCHS. As we talked about the crisis, I reminded her of the Mexican restaurant we had visited in the Trade Center during her Fourth of July visit to New York. We had been given huge sombreros as it was their Grand Opening, and had walked around the through the Trade Centers in a day of fun and celebration.

As a resident of New York, I had attended concerts on the bay there, had walked through the towers en route to other destinations, had had drinks in the clubs at the base of the towers. It was just every day life.

Danny was called in and worked as a volunteer for the next two days at Ground Zero, clearing away debris and assisting in the search efforts. The first day, his team found five bodies. He spoke in horror of passing the body bags down the line. I can't imagine how terrible that has to be for him and for the other rescue workers on the scene.

He came home covered in that fine white dust that was once the towers, in awe of the environment in which he had spent his day. He said the television didn't begin to translate the immensity of the tragedy. That it was just too big, too awful to understand from the images coming to us through our TV screens. The steel beams that they cut through were huge and tangled. As an ironworker, having built many buildings with those huge beams, seeing them tangled and destroyed affected him deeply.

His brother-in-law, Donny Meeg, is a firefighter and worked on the site as well. He still is working there on a regular basis, although by now it is more of a retrieval and clean up than a search mission. I find a sense of pride in that two people close to me were able to do something tangible to help in the rescue efforts as I helplessly watched the events from home.

The one positive reaction I have with regard to this attack is a pride in my fellow New Yorkers. I have often defended New York from the stereotypes of rude citizens and dangerous streets. During this time of tragedy, my friends from smaller towns were able to see proof positive of the kindness and goodness of the city of New York that I've come to know over my five + years here. Watching them pull together and help one another, watching the outpouring of kindnesses from New York citizens and seeing it broadcast around the country was a small comfort.

And patriotism is back. Everywhere you look, you see the American flag. Danny and I have it flying from the antennae of our car. The entire country as well as many of our allies is flying the American flag and singing songs of patriotism.

As a mother, I often feel the sadness of being so far away from Amiee when she's in school there in Kentucky. But as America pulls together in our humanity and as a nation, I find comfort in feeling that Amiee is very near to me....that as Americans, we are all part of something wonderful.