This Month’s Featured Article

Above: Susan Massarella’s ID badge from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (at the time, her married name was Mollo). Curiously, the ID failed to scan at the World Trade Center security checkpoint the morning of September 11, 2001.

September 11, 2001

As Tuesday dawned in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood, Susan Massarella hit the snooze button, toying with taking the day off, but talked herself into getting ready for work. Her then-husband Peter Mollo was away, traveling in Southeast Asia with his children.

She took a bus into lower Manhattan, where a cloudless blue sky inspired her to stroll the plaza before entering the World Trade Center. A down escalator placed her on the concourse level with shops, PATH trains, and a security checkpoint for elevator access.

“Now, this gets interesting,” said Susan, grinning wryly. “My ID wouldn’t swipe. After the third try, the guard hand-checked my ID and opened the gate. As I entered, as God is my witness, I said to him, ‘Is someone trying to tell me something?’ and we both smiled.”

She rose to the 44th story “sky lobby,” where workers transferred to elevators for higher floors. She was bound for the 72nd story of 1 World Trade, where she worked as a contract administrator in the engineering department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The PA built and ran the WTC, and operates bridges, tunnels and airports across the NYC metro area.

Described by her cousin Jane Holdridge of Ancram as chatty, outspoken, emotional, and good-hearted, Susan occupied a cubicle with world-class views of New York Harbor. 

“At 8:46 that morning, as I was going through my inbox, there was a loud explosion, and I was thrown into my desk,” said Susan. “We could see flaming debris falling outside our windows.” As trained, everyone moved quickly to their assigned stairwell. Emergency lights installed after the 1993 WTC bombing illuminated their orderly descent.

“There was no panic at that point, just curiosity,” remembers Susan. “I wonder what that was? Everyone was calm.”

However, at 9:03, while they were switching stairwells at the sky lobby, a second thunderous explosion rattled the building. As they continued downward, “every few floors, there were guards offering us water, or a place to rest, but something told me to keep going.

“Every so often we’d hear people calling from below, ‘Stay to the right, firefighters approaching.’” Susan remembered. “I’ll never forget those brave men as they passed us, carrying 80 or 90 pounds of gear. We all thanked them and applauded them as they climbed the stairs. The look on their faces was numb – no expression.”

The farther down she went, the more anxious Susan became. Full-blown panic set in when water started cascading down the stairwell.

As her group exited onto the indoor plaza level, “out the windows, I could see flames all around,” said Susan. She descended an escalator to the concourse, sloshing through ankle-deep water for what seemed like forever. Ascending another escalator, she emerged onto the street to the grim sights and sounds of sheer terror.

Sirens blared and radios crackled as hundreds of first responders positioned themselves inside and around the burning towers. Among thousands more en route to help was firefighter Stephen Siller of Brooklyn’s Squad 1. He had just finished his shift when he learned a plane had hit the North Tower. He drove his truck to the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, but it was blocked off to vehicles. Determined to fulfill his duty, Siller strapped gear onto his back and raced on foot through the tunnel to the WTC, where he later would lose his life saving others.

Once outside, Susan heard a security guard calling, “Keep moving, don’t look up!” She paused near St. Paul’s Chapel to peek at the horrifying inferno above, and her heart sank. A few blocks away, she reunited with some co-workers. As they tried to console one another, a deafening roar signaled the collapse of Tower 2, spewing a multi-story column of swirling, debris-filled smoke in their direction. 

“I started screaming as the smoke approached,” said Susan. “My co-worker Bernie yelled ‘Shut up and run!’ He grabbed my arm, and we started running. I was so scared, I couldn’t really see anything through the smoke, so I was lucky Bernie was holding my hand.”

Now covered in the ghostly white ash that blanketed lower Manhattan, they made it to the Brooklyn Bridge. Once across, she instinctively walked to Peter’s Brooklyn law office, where her son Andrew Perez worked as a paralegal. He wasn’t there. A sense of dread washed over Susan.

Unbeknownst to her, Andrew was still at home, watching the drama unfold on TV with his father Pat Perez (Susan’s first husband), who lived nearby and came over to console their son. Fighting tears, Andrew desperately tried to count floors, wondering if Susan had gotten out. When he saw Tower 1 crumble, “I was convinced my mother was dead,” said Andrew. “I fell to the floor, howling, with my father holding onto me.”

Meanwhile, Susan’s father John, a widower residing in Copake Falls in Columbia County, New York, was enjoying a senior citizen outing in Connecticut, oblivious to the day’s events until the bus reached its destination and the emcee requested a moment of silence for the victims. Agonizingly aware of Susan’s WTC office location, John was so distraught he banged his head on the table and prayed out loud for God to spare her. 

On the street next to Peter’s law office, suddenly someone called to Susan. It was Andrew’s girlfriend, Sarah, who immediately took Susan inside, phoned Andrew, and put her on the line. “Andrew, it’s Mommy. I’m alive,” she assured him. Both broke into tears. Meanwhile, cousin Jane had reached John by phone to say his prayer was answered.

After Sarah drove her home, Susan shakily stepped into a hot shower and began processing the anguish she had just experienced. As clumps of gray goop fell from her signature curly red hair into the drain, she pounded a fist against the side of the shower, shrieking uncontrollably.

Two days later, Susan and Andrew drove north to her father’s home to escape the calamity. Within days, however, the Port Authority directed her to return to work at a makeshift headquarters in Jersey City. “Every piece of paper was gone,” she remembered. “We had to reconstruct everything.”

Amid the challenges, “I became Miss Port Authority USA – head-to-toe red, white, and blue, every day,” said Susan. “I was filled with positive feelings about my company, my home, and my country. Then you start going to funerals. I never wanted to hear Amazing Grace again.”

One day in March 2002, she just couldn’t get out of bed. She took two days, then a whole week off. “I slept all day, and I’d wake up disappointed that I was alive,” Susan confessed. Like scores of other 9/11 survivors, she had plunged into a deep depression.

“I would say to myself, why am I alive? Why me, when my friends died – people I worked with, had lunch with? I felt embarrassed, ashamed.” Eighty-four Port Authority personnel perished in the WTC attacks. 

Eventually, Susan took a medical leave, went on antidepressants, and entered individual and group therapy. Gradually, her condition seemed to stabilize. In December 2002, the PA offered an early retirement incentive. She took it, ending a 32-year career with the agency.

Then came a call from the new Tribute WTC Visitor Center, inviting her to assist with guided tours of the 9/11 Memorial by sharing her personal recollections. The 50 tours she did were emotionally draining but cathartic.

In June 2005, she moved to Copake Falls full-time to care for her ailing father. His house on North Mountain Road was where the family had summered every year. John passed away that August.

September 19, 2007

Another sunny autumn morning in Manhattan was memorable for an altogether different reason. It was the day Susan first held her new grandson Julian, the child of Andrew and Sarah, shortly after his birth at Columbia Presbyterian Children’s Hospital.

“And I said hey, Jules, I’m your Nana. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. We’re gonna take care of one another. You need me, and I need you.”

When Julian was five, he asked for a firefighter costume to wear for Halloween, so Nana got him one. “I have this picture of him dressed up in his fireman costume, holding a pink stuffed pig,” Susan said. “I think this was Julian’s way of saying to those brave men that I passed in the stairwell, ‘Thank you for saving my Nana.’”

September 14, 2019

The Copake Grange Hall, a stone’s throw from the town clock, was jumping on this Saturday night with an “Old Fashioned Ice Cream Social and Square Dance.” Around 9:30, after the final do-se-do, it was time for the 50-50 raffle drawing.

Susan lowered her eyeglasses from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose and peered at her strip of six tickets. Eyes bulging as she looked closer, she gasped, “Oh my God!”

Incredibly, the last three digits on one of her tickets were 9-1-1. And inconceivably, the first three digits of that same ticket were 8-4-6 – the precise time the first plane hit Susan’s tower on that harrowing day. 

Was someone again trying to tell her something?

“I was completely blown away,” she said. “I showed everyone. This eerie look came across people’s faces.” 

Now 73 and living in a smaller home on Park View Court in Copake hamlet, Susan is a driving force in the Knit Club of the Hudson Valley, whose craft fairs have raised $75,000 for a school backpack program, food pantry, and other local charities over the last eight years. She’s also involved in a local Christmas Friends program and the Copake town park commission.

Susan loves live theater, especially “Come From Away”– the true story of a town in Newfoundland that welcomed 7,000 stranded passengers whose flights were suddenly ordered to land when American airspace closed on 9/11. She’s seen it four times, one followed by a backstage visit arranged by the cast.

“My mom has overcome a lot of adversity,” said Andrew. “She is a survivor. She hasn’t let 9/11 completely define her. She could have just closed the curtains and stayed inside the rest of her life. I feel very proud that she came through this on the other end.”

September 28, 2025

On the 28th of this month, a delegation from the Ancram Volunteer Fire Company will participate in the annual Tunnel to Towers Foundation 5K Run & Walk, which traces the final footsteps of that valiant Brooklyn firefighter, Stephen Siller, 24 years ago. Susan has been invited to ride the bus to Manhattan with them and, at the 9/11 Memorial, share with them her solemn recollections of that day and its aftermath.

With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 one year away, Susan is unsure of the broader meaning of all the tragedy, healing, and odd coincidences she has endured over the past quarter-century, other than to shrug and say softly, “I’m still here.”

Jim Calvin of Valatie, NY, is a former managing editor of the Hudson Register-Star and the Principal of Calvin Communications.