“Nobody saw the carnage,” says Nina Pineda, a reporter who was on the ground at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
“Nobody saw the people holding hands, jumping off,” she says, her voice breaking. “Nobody saw bodies on the ground. For the respect of the families and the victims, we never showed that. But we saw it.”
What did America see after 9/11? And what did we overlook? There have been so many attempts to capture the magnitude of the tragedy and the intimate loss of that day. In The Women of 9/11, a new documentary hosted and produced by Robin Roberts that will air Wednesday on ABC, Roberts takes us through each harrowing moment of that day through the eyes of women survivors.
The interviews, with a diverse range of survivors, are humanizing and excruciating. Roberts sits down with Devorah St. John, known as Jane Doe #1, the first unidentified injured woman at the scene. She also interviews Janelle Guzman McMillan, the last survivor pulled from the rubble at the World Trade Center.
McMillan, who was rescued after 27 hours trapped under debris, speaks about trying to descend the tower from an upper floor wearing high heels. Amy Mundorff, a forensic anthropologist at the scene, speaks of the “privilege” of processing thousands of body parts. Lieutenant Colonel Marilyn Wills rushed to the Pentagon that morning—she didn’t have time, she tells Roberts, to brush her two little daughters’ hair.
After the building was hit, Wills led a group to a window, carrying an older coworker to a window on her back, only to realize that the highly reinforced Pentagon windows wouldn’t open. “You’re gonna die right here,” Wills remembers thinking. “You’re gonna die.”
Almost every woman Roberts speaks to says a variation on those words.
Eventually, Wills and her colonel kicked the window off its frame and lowered their coworkers down on a human ladder. But the experience, Wills tells Roberts, doesn’t feel 20 years in the past.
“I sit here and look at this window,” Wills tells Roberts, crying, and gesturing at the window in the room where the interview is taking place, “It’s like, Could I get out of this window if something were gonna fly into this building?”
To viewers the events of September 11 may be a part of history. But the women who lived it tell Roberts that for them the day continues to feel urgent. The interviews are painstaking, personal, and necessary. Glamour sat down with Roberts to ask about 20 years of covering 9/11.
Glamour: Each woman in the documentary tells the story of her 9/11. You were a reporter that day. Can you share what that day was like for you?
Robin Roberts: I was home in Connecticut where I was working full-time for ESPN. I was watching Good Morning America. I saw it unfold like many did, while Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer were on the air, just seeing the plane fly into the tower. I immediately got in my car and drove to New York. It’s about two hours away, and by that time they were not letting anyone in.
I got in in the morning and hit the ground and started reporting. The city was just…I had never experienced anything like that. I think many New Yorkers felt that way. I had an apartment in New York, and went to my apartment and discovered that many people in my building…they didn’t get to come home. We knew some of the people in the building had animals, so we wanted to make sure that we could get in to care for them. That was my 9/11. For most of us who were not actually there, we experienced it from afar but felt so connected to all that was going on.
What was it like, asking these women to tell their stories?
We always hear this phrase, Never forget. I wanted to have a new perspective to make sure people would really take notice and not gloss over, “Well, oh yeah, it’s been 20 years.” To hear these women—many of them talking for the first time about it—I have to say, every single one of them during the course of the interview had to stop. It was like they were back in that moment. We would say, “Do you want to take a break?” They were like “No, no, no, I want to continue, I want people to remember and to help them fully realize what that moment was.” We bandy around the words strength and resilience. These women embody that. And I’m so appreciative that they were willing to relive it for us. They would get chills and they would get tears and then they would gather themselves, and it was just so incredible to see their grace in telling this story.
Tragically, there are so many women you could have interviewed for this documentary. How did you pick these women?
Janelle Guzman—27 hours she was trapped under the rubble—of course we wanted to speak with her. I’m glad we had a moment to really let her share her story. And then the police officer [Judith Castro of the NYPD]—she’s tiny, and she was dragging people twice her size to safety. Colonel Wills at the Pentagon—I mean, she’s just incredible. We wanted a fair representation.
Everyone’s experience is unique, but there’s some overlap in these stories. What themes came out of these conversations for you?
They didn’t want to make it about themselves. They wanted to thank others that were there around them, but were also very grateful that they had an opportunity to make a difference, which many of them did. The common thread that you saw with each of these women—they were not going to let what happened to them not mean something, and not do something with their lives. And all of them have done that. That’s the common thread. They’re not the same as they were on 9/11.
You interviewed Nina Pineda, a reporter on the scene. You also reported on the scene the next day. How do you deal with reporting on such traumatic, difficult events?
When Hurricane Katrina wiped out my hometown, the pain of that made me have empathy for the person I’m talking to, when covering stories of death and destruction. A week after 9/11 I went to a little town that was hit especially hard. It was a commuter town. A lot of the cars were still in the commuter parking lot. We wanted to profile some of those people who were lost. It’s very hard to go to somebody’s house and say, “Can I speak to you about your husband?” I distinctly remember—I saw someone, and I knew her husband was killed.
I thought I was being compassionate. I said, “I don’t want to interview you but can we have a photo, to show your husband?” And she said, “I won’t give you a photo unless you interview me. I want to talk about my husband. I want people to know.”
It was a real eye-opener to me. Oftentimes we’re watching the news and thinking, “How can they be talking about this? They just lost somebody!” Don’t compare your despair. You have no idea until you’re in those shoes. I try to approach it with empathy, compassion, listen as much as I talk, and take my cues from the person who has gone through a tragedy.
This is such a hard topic. What would you say to someone who might think, “It’s been 20 years; I don’t want to keep reliving 9/11”?
That’s a fair question. And the answer is: We cannot forget. All those lives that were lost—it has to mean something. It does mean something, every life does. Part of our coverage [on ABC] is letting the families say their loved ones’ names. We’re not going to speak over them. It takes a couple of hours for that to happen. They don’t want their loved ones to be forgotten. You need to remember—as painful as it is, the pain that we feel is nothing in comparison to what the families have felt for 20 years.
“We’ll never forget”—let’s mean it. Let’s mean it.
Women of 9/11: A Special Edition of 20/20 with Robin Roberts airs Wednesday, Sept. 8 (9:00-11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC.
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
