CHARLOTTE — Friday marks 25 years since the 9/11 attacks, but for many survivors, the memories remain fresh.
Channel 9’s Erika Jackson spoke with one of those survivors. Kathleen Britton now lives in Charlotte, but she moved to New York City for college and worked there for 20 years.
Her condo faced the World Trade Center. Now, in her Charlotte home, a painting of the view from her window on Sept. 11, 2001, hangs prominently in the entryway.
“This is the painting that I was working on at the time in my art studio in my condo,” she said. “I was working on the Trade Center when it happened.”
The skyline changed that day, and so did America.
Britton remembers walking down 16 flights of stairs with the power out. When she reached the bottom, she met a group of people from Atlanta who were there on a work trip.
“Suddenly, the jet just slammed into the building,” she said. “I was maybe a hundred yards, like a football field, away.”
Before the towers fell, she remembers directing that group of visitors out of Manhattan.
“I saved some lives that day,” she said. “In order to save those lives, I had to not panic and not run.”
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg even sent Britton a letter, thanking her for her efforts. It’s framed in her office, alongside a box of news articles about the attacks.
This year, Britton plans to go to church to pray for those who lost their lives and the thousands of others still carrying the weight of what happened 25 years ago.
“I may never have the opportunity to save someone’s life again, and that’s important,” Britton said. “It was everything after that was difficult.”