On 9/11 they lived closely the tragedy. It was a day that would shape life in their new home: Dallas

On 9/11, Benjamín Salazar, born in New York and raised in Houston, had just moved to New Jersey with his wife and two children. In June 2001, he got a job as a manager at American Express. His office was on the 41st floor of the American Express tower, just across from the World Trade Center.

For Julieta Montemayor, it had been just a few months since she and her husband had arrived in Dallas from Coahuila, Mexico, to work, save some money and live in a peaceful place. The Montemayors were working for a Dallas construction company renovating a hotel near the Pentagon on that day.

For both, 9/11 was a day that they would never forget. Like many immigrants of first or second generation, it was a day that brought them closer to their new home, sharing the fear, pain and anguish of millions.

It’s been 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when more than 3,000 people lost their lives after four planes were hijacked by terrorists.

Two of them plunged into each of the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon and the other one crashed in a Pennsylvania rural field after the passengers fought the hijackers.

The memories of that tragedy still linger to this day, especially for those who had to change their lives completely after that tragedy that mourned thousands of families.

Salazar’s story

From a train window as Salazar was going from Newark to his job in Manhattan that day, he saw the smoke emanating from one of the World Trade Center towers. Unable to grasp what was going on, he thought it was a very large fire.

Then the train stopped in between two stations before arriving at his transfer point. It stood there for a long time. He didn’t know the reason. To get to his office, he would get off at the station, just below the Twin Towers and go through a glass skyway over West Street.

On a typical day, he would get there a few minutes before 9 a.m.

But the night before, he’d had a headache and a fever and left an hour late.

“Yes, I thank fate, I thank God,” Salazar said. “At the same time, I feel guilty because I wasn’t there to help.”

The skyway, the garden, and the first six floors of the American Express tower were all destroyed during the attacks.

Benjamín’s wife, Martha, was lulling her six-month-old baby to sleep in her house when the phone rang.

She was just back from leaving her daughter at kindergarten and her husband at the train station when she received the shocking news: New York was under attack.

“It was my family from Veracruz calling to ask whether we were fine. I didn’t know anything about Benjamín, but I guessed he still hadn’t got there because I had just dropped him off at the station,” Martha said.

“I also got a call from my mother-in-law, who lived in New York. It was a horrible anguish for me that day.”

Months after the attacks, Salazar was fired from his job and had to start looking for new horizons for himself and his family. He and his wife decided to start over in Dallas.

“My parents were Mexican-American and my grandparents were Mexican immigrants. I grew up with my family in Houston, so I already considered Texas my second home”, Benjamín said.

Today, the Salazars live in Dallas. Benjamín Salazar, 61, is vice president of technology and life sciences at Comerica Bank. Martha Salazar, 55, is a Spanish teacher.

Montemayor’s story

Montemayor’s company worked on projects around the country. On that day, together with six other coworkers, she and her husband were in Washington, D.C, painting some hotel rooms when the planes hit. They climbed to the hotel’s top floor and saw the smoke and flares.

Then the group leader’s radio buzzed. It was their boss telling them to stop their work as soon as possible, without saying why.

“We didn’t quite understand because we didn’t speak English well. We went down quickly, packed our materials, and then our boss arrived and told us what had happened,” Montemayor said.

“He looked like he had just seen a ghost. He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be OK. We’re leaving for Texas as soon as possible.’ But it took us almost three days to get to Dallas.”

“We turned on the van’s radio as we tried to take a road to Dallas. But the people were on the streets, yelling, running, pleading for help”, Montemayor said.

On their way to Dallas, they were afraid to get off at restaurants or gas stations because every time they did, they were verbally assaulted.

“‘Get out of our country! What are you doing here? You just come to steal and hurt us. You’re just like the terrorists,’ was the kind of stuff whites would tell us. We were afraid because everyone was in panic, and we, as foreign people, were seen as a threat,” said Montemayor.

Montemayor remembers how her boss would get off the vehicle at gas stations along the road, quickly buy some snacks for everyone, and keep driving.

Today, Montemayor, 44, works part-time cleaning offices. She’s a mother of two and offers free swimming classes for children in Dallas.

Twenty years after 9/11 and with the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, she said she most reflects on how political violence hurts people all over the world.

“At the end of the day, the people are the ones who pay the consequences,” she said.