Changed By 9/11: A Journey From Ground Zero to Greenport

This is the second of a two-part story on the 9/11 experience that forever changed the lives of two Greenport residents.

After freelance photographer Mark Stetler, a Cleveland, Ohio native who was 37 at the time, had shot the collapse of the World Trade Center frame-by-frame from the moment the second plane hit, he found himself engulfed in a cloud of debris on the rooftop of his apartment building.

He described that cloud of debris as feeling like baby powder — it was that fine of a grain — and that he did not remember breathing. Neither did Stetler’s wife, Caroline Knopf, a native of South Carolina who was 38 when the towers fell.

“Breathing wasn’t even a thought,” she said. “It was just so shocking, I don’t even remember breathing.”

By the time Stetler got inside, it was pitch black outside at around 11 a.m. on a perfectly clear day over New York City.

“I wanted to open the front door to the building so people trapped in that cloud could come in, but even if I were to yell out they wouldn’t know where I was coming from,” he said. “So I didn’t open the door. I felt so helpless. That’s when the self-preservation finally kicked in. I found my limitations that day.”

The couple decided to pack up as much as they could and start walking out of the neighborhood, now silent and crumbling and filled with helpless and exhausted firefighters who now had to return to the pile of rubble that was the World Trade Center.

“The firefighters looked like World War II vets — total exhaustion, it was scary,” he said.

From Houston Street south, Lower Manhattan was empty as the two photographers walked toward a friend’s house to stay the night.

“It was just us, walking down the middle of Broadway at 5 or 6 p.m. — it was unbelievable,” he said. “All I can remember is finally seeing our friends holding up a bottle of wine. It was so good to see them.”

Stetler sent all his photographs to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the organizations in charge of studying what exactly happened that day.

The couple ended up staying with friends in the city during the immediate days following 9/11 but with advertising drying up, work for them was over in New York City. They moved closer to family in South Carolina for a few months, then moved back to their apartment on Nassau Street and stuck it out for another two years. But the neighborhood would never be the same.

“You could always smell that burning smell,” Knopf said. “It smelled like death. It was horrible down there.”

The couple lived in Woodstock before finally coming to Greenport last year to be by the water. Stetler is an avid sailor, and he said he wanted a scenic spot to work on a book.

Though 9/11 left Stetler and Knopf homeless and jobless for the longest time, Stetler said that he’s never been more proud of New York.

“I’ve never seen the city do what it did that day before or since,” he said. “Working for a single cause to make sure everyone was safe and to take care of each other. To see mankind pull together that way and to be right in the middle of it felt so good.”

Go to www.markstetler.org to view more of his photography and to learn more about the book he's working on to showcase the North Fork.