 |
         |
      |
| Volume XXIII Number 1 | January 11, 2002 |
NYC Resident, Tribal Member Recounts Sept. 11
LaVonne Kippenberger (Panther) is the daughter of Lawanna Osceola and Robert Kippenberger. LaVonne grew up on the Hollywood Reservation and currently is residing in Brooklyn, New York. In a special two-part interview, Kippenberger gives a firsthand account of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.How long have you lived in New York?
Seven years
Why did you move to New York?
I moved up there originally just to see another part of the country and to see what's off of the reservation, to see what city life is. I started school a year after I moved there at a community college, and got an associate's degree. That pretty much just put my life on track. After I graduated from the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), I went to New York University and earned a master's degree in Secondary Education with a specialization in Social Studies.
What are you doing right now?
Right now, I am doing genealogical research for the Tribe's Department of Anthropology & Genealogy. I am able to keep my life in New York and still keep my connections to my family and my culture down here by working back and forth.
Is that mainly what you are doing?
Yes, that's my thing now.
So you went to school in Manhattan? How far were BMCC and NYU from the World Trade Center? The community college is right there. The community college is right on Chambers Street, which is just a couple of blocks away from the World Trade Center. My stop actually was Chambers Street/World Trade Center. So, thankfully, I wasn't in that school at that time, but it's right there. I'm sure they got a lot of the rubble and the smoke, I'm sure it was engulfed by the smoke. NYU is more uptown, I guess you could say. It's in the heart of Greenwich Village, which is pretty much west Fourth Street, that would be approximately twenty blocks from the World Trade Center.
How far did you live from the World Trade Center?
I pretty much lived three miles east of the World Trade Center. Since it's New York, if I were to drive there from my house, it would take about thirty minutes! Go through a tunnel and over a bridge. But if I went to the roof of my building, I could see it as clear as day.
So you live across the river?
Yes, the East River.
On Sept. 11, were you supposed to be in the area or had you planned to be there that day?
No, that's actually in the Financial District, and I'm never down there. Battery Park's in the Financial District. I was at home, I had just woken up and was about to start working. The way I found out, my mother called me, a frantic phone call. I didn't pick it up, because I wasn't ready to talk to mother that early in the morning, and she said, 'I don't know, I'm just calling to see if you're okay, it's a horrible thing,' and then she hung up. So I turned on the news and then I saw it happen and then I felt bad there first of all, because I didn't know it was going on already, but that was right after the first plane hit, before the second plane hit.
A lot of people went up onto their rooftops, were you able to do that?
I was able to, but I didn't. I did not want to see that. After seeing CNN, and all the news coverage, and then after seeing the second tower collapse. Just seeing it in the news, played over and over and over again. I couldn't bring myself to go up to the roof and see that, it was awful. I don't think you could see it clearly anyway, because of all the smoke. Downtown Manhattan was just this big ball of debris and smoke.
The wind was blowing towards Brooklyn that day, so we got a lot of the smoke and the ash. There were charred business cards on the roof of my building, charred faxes and documents. People were walking around with painters' masks on so they didn't breathe it in. Then I frantically called all of my friends, even though I knew they wouldn't be down there, I had to call them anyway to see if they were okay.
What was the general scene where you lived?
I could hear a lot of stuff through the air shaft in my building, there are four floors with two apartments on each side, and I heard a lot of people calling up their parents in different states and just screaming.
Somebody was on the phone, you see that's the thing in New York, you can hear everybody, somebody was on the phone when the tower collapsed and I could hear them just start screaming and talking to their mom saying, 'I'm okay, I'm okay.'
I didn't go outside until much later and everybody was just walking around in shock and being helpful. That's when my hurricane training kicked in, I went out and bought bottled water and canned food and extra can openers. Everybody was really helpful, but very shocked. All the storeowners were very considerate, a lot of them are Middle Eastern store owners and I was really worried for them because they were just as shocked as everybody else.
Were there a lot of other people doing what you were doing?
Yes, a lot of people were stocking up on water, and canned food, and bread, and tuna.
In that respect, it must have reminded you of South Florida when a hurricane's about to hit.
Yes, it was just like that, but for some reason, the shelves were not empty, like they are down here. They were still pretty stocked.
Immediately, in the days after, were you able to move around?
In Brooklyn, yeah, I could move around. There are a couple of fire ladder companies in my neighborhood, one of them lost ten of their men and the other one lost four and there were flowers everywhere. We were pretty free to move around in Brooklyn, I didn't go into Manhattan until, I think the first time I went into Manhattan was the Saturday after. There was a peace rally in Union Square, and we were fine getting in and out of Manhattan by then.
How far was the peace rally from the site?
Union Square is Fourteenth Street, and NYU is on Fourth Street, so it was about the distance between those two areas. But, because Union Square is like Fourteenth and Fifth Avenue, or part of it is Fifth Avenue, you could just look down Fifth Avenue and see were the towers were, all you saw were these big floodlights.
Was there a big military presence?
No, that's pretty much downtown Manhattan. I haven't set foot down there at all, near where I went to school or anything, so I can't really comment on that. I did happen to fly in late September, maybe two weeks after it happened, I had to go to Missouri to see family and you could see the guys in the fatigues in the airport and they were eighteen year old kids. You had to trust them.
How were the airports? How long did it take you to get through?
I had the first flight out, so it was about 6:30 in the morning, so it was fairly easy. They bumped me up to an earlier flight since I had to get there two hours earlier. Security wasn't so bad, they were "wanding" everybody, and everybody seemed to be fine with that. They were making sure you didn't have toenail clippers in your carry-on, there was a big sign with all these different objects saying, 'If you have this in your carry-on, put it in your checked luggage.' Everybody was really patient and calm and a little nervous, but they kept it under control.
How has life changed in your neighborhood?
Everybody's nicer, and that's something for New York. There's this enormous sense of New York pride going around, as you can imagine. Thank God that baseball started up again during that time, because a lot of men and women were really itching for some distraction, and since baseball is so American, it really helped. A lot of people were in bars during that first week, a lot of people were drinking and watching baseball.
In terms of changing, I don't really know, I need to wait and see the long-term effects, if it's going to be a positive change. There were a bunch of peace rallies that I never saw on the news, people were walking around New York with candles in their hands and, very now and then, on the sidewalk you would see little clusters of candles and flowers.
The peace rallies, was there a specific cause?
No, I think it was more of a memorial and no retaliation. There were all these old school throwbacks to the 60's just waiting to come out and sing their 60's protest songs, so they were teaching the younger generation how to sing, what songs to sing, that was fun. Everybody was walking around with candles, there was chalk everywhere writing "peace" and "love," and flowers all over the place, pictures of the World Trade Center all over the place, pictures of missing persons, there was an entire wall of that and that was pretty difficult to look at.
Next issue: Part Two of the Seminole Tribune's interview with Tribal member LaVonne Kippenberger.
| Home · History · Culture · Tourism & Enterprises · Government · Services · Employment |
Copyright © MMIV Seminole Tribe of Florida
6300 Stirling Road
Hollywood, Florida 33024
Phone: (800) 683-7800
URL:
All questions/comments: tribune@semtribe.com
Webmaster: webadmin@semtribe.com
Web site maintained by Seminole Tribe of Florida