9/11 Manhattan, New York Twin Towers attack memories: She was the one!

The first day was all smoke, debris, organized mayhem, and pure disbelief. The next day, reality hit home. That's when you walked out in the streets (in my case, Brooklyn), and saw your first missing person sign, one of hundreds you'd see over the coming months in Manhattan and the outer boroughs. The numbers you heard on TV, the body count, became real faces — real people. In October 2003, StoryCorps, a nonprofit dedicated to recording oral histories of every kind, got underway with a small StoryBooth in Grand Central Terminal. Eight years later, it has recorded and archived more than 35,000 interviews from 70,000 participants. And, more recently, it has turned its focus to 9/11 and the days that followed. The goal: to memorialize in sound every person lost on that day. You can visit the emerging audio archive here.