GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The 15th anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks has some vivid memories for a Green Bay man.
Mitch Lambert, a Midwest Communications sales manager, was working for a TV station in Maine 15 years ago, and was in New York City for a sales meeting when the planes hit the World Trade Center..
“I didn’t believe the TV, I mean even though it was live. I went outside and could see the smoke bellowing out of the 1st tower. This is when it was first hit”
He’ll always remember the look on the faces and the eerie quiet in the nation’s busiest city.
“Nobody is talking, not even a whisper. It’s just utter silence”
From his business meeting in mid-town Manhattan, Lambert made his way toward the Ground Zero site.
“As I walked as close as I could down there and there were people walking back. Even a police car that went by…you couldn’t tell it was a police car it was so covered in soot. People were walking back just totally covered in white”
While he works in the media, Lambert had never done “on-air” work….until that day.
He wound up doing reports over the phone for the TV station in Bangor, Maine that he was working for then.
He says many of his colleagues in New York had friends or relatives that were in the towers or were among the police and firefighters that responded when the planes hit.
Lambert has been back to New York several times since then and has visited Ground Zero.
He’s glad to see a new tower has gone up near the site, and the 9-11 Museum will help insure that we never forget.
