Elizabeth Victor

I am a guidance counselor at a high school in Brooklyn. I had a student whose mother was also at the WTC when it was attacked in 1993. He said that he begged her to quit then, and was both scared and angry on 9/11. The entire day he was with me alternating between crying and yelling. The cell phones were operating sporadically, so not much information could be gathered. At the end of the day, his mother called his cell phone to say that she had escaped unharmed and had gotten a ride home to Brooklyn from a stranger. My student began to cry with relief, as his mother is his only relative. As he left my office he asked if I thought it was a good idea for him to buy a rose for his mom on the way home at the local bodega. I said yes.