9/11 Memorial Museum Stirs Memories

“This is not like a museum to me.” “This is a little morbid to me,” Vernice Gamble said as she looked around the 9/11 Memorial Museum. 

The museum presents the attacks through photographs, artifacts and personal stories. One exhibition showed people’s reactions during the attacks. In the background, visitors could hear what appeared to be news reports, and you heard people in the background screaming and yelling. The visuals and the audio created an atmosphere that brought the events of that day to life.

Nearly 25 years after the attacks, the museum remains a place of remembrance for the 2,976 people who died in the Twin Towers, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. For Gamble, the visit was also a reminder of how close she once was to the tragedy and how grateful she is to have survived.

Gamble would have never come to the museum simply because of her own connection to September 11. Her nephew was visiting and wanted to see the memorial, so she came along. But once inside, the museum brought back memories of a place she once knew as her workplace. Gamble worked in finance at the World Trade Center before her office moved to a new location shortly before the September 11 attacks.

When the first plane struck the North Tower, Gamble was at her new office in the middle of an interview with someone she might hire, “…when all of a sudden everyone starts running towards the trading floors,” she explained. “We stood there in amazement, because that used to be our floors,” Gamble said.

Looking back on that morning, Gamble said she believes God spared her. In the museum years later, she was confronted with the stories and belongings of people who did not survive the attacks. She did not expect to see people’s faces coming in, even back then she would not look at any of the bulletin boards because the pain of seeing someone she knows would have been too painful.