"If we had left at the appointed time we would have been in the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center towers,” said June Nivens, who along with her husband, Earl, led a group of senior adults from Liberty Baptist Church, Chelsea, on a tour of New York and Canada.
As it turned out, the chartered bus left around 8:40 a.m. on Sept. 11 from the group’s hotel in Times Square heading toward Ellis Island to tour the Statue of Liberty. As they were driving to their destination they noticed smoke billowing out of one of the World Trade Center towers. They were unaware at the time that at 8:48 a commercial airliner jet had been hijacked by terrorists who had plunged it as a makeshift missile into the famous landmark.
Nivens said their bus driver turned on the radio for information about the fire.
“When we first tuned in to the radio the announcers were saying a small plane had hit the World Trade Center and initially they were all but making light of it,” said Nivens, who is mayor of Chelsea and a deacon at Liberty.
“We started seeing fire trucks, police cars and ambulances flying by us, so we pulled off the road,” he said, explaining that by this time they were within four to five blocks of the twin towers.
Mrs. Nivens said as they watched the clouds of billowing smoke and fire she noticed an airplane flying toward the building in the distance. “There were helicopters flying around the building and I remarked out loud, ‘why would they send an airplane to try and rescue people from a burning building? It’s too big to do any good.’ ”
At about the same time she lost sight of the plane as it went behind the buildings.
Then the unthinkable happened. The unsuspecting spectators watched in frozen horror as the airliner crashed through the massive skyscraper spewing what many said looked like atomic balls of fire, surrounded by black clouds of smoke and tons of missile-like debris soaring through the air.
Joe Bob Mizzell, director of Christian ethics and chaplaincy ministries at the State Board of Missions, was also on the trip with his wife, Peggy. Mizzell said, “We were taking pictures out of the bus window when all of a sudden we heard this incredibly loud explosion.
“There was so much smoke you could only see halfway up the building,” Mizzell added, noting he then saw people jumping to their deaths.
“We assumed the first plane crash was an accident, but after the second one hit we knew something was terribly wrong,” Nivens said. “We heard the radio announcer saying terrorists were suspected and we immediately headed back to our hotel.”
Although they were only a short distance away it took the bus one and a half hours to return to the hotel. During this time Nivens asked Mizzell if he would lead the group in prayer. “We all held hands and prayed that God would comfort those people trapped and dying in the building along with their loved ones and that He would guide our government leaders,” Mizzell said.
Upon their arrival the group encountered chaos at the hotel. “Everyone was in shock. All you could hear was the sound of ambulances rushing up and down the streets. We probably saw 50–60 ambulances and state troopers coming in to assist,” Nivens said.
The majority of the tour group had never been to New York, and Mrs. Nivens said they had really been looking forward to the experience. “We never dreamed that this would be a memory we would be taking back with us,” she said. “When you witness a tragedy it’s so different from watching it on television. It’s just so much more real. You personally experience these people’s sadness. You immediately realize that God is near and that your life is in His hands,” she said.
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