AARP Hearing Center
What It Means to Keep Returning to Ground Zero
For 30 years I’ve been drawn to this evocative spot in Lower Manhattan: as a tour guide, downtown resident and 9/11 survivor
Longtime New York City tour guide Christina Ray Stanton traces Ground Zero’s transformation from the Twin Towers to a site of devastation, remembrance and renewal.
Marcos Chin
On July 18, 1995, at age 25, I passed New York City’s tour guide licensing exam, earning the right to lead visitors through the city I had recently come to call home. I imagined guiding as a temporary job while I waited for Broadway to discover my singing voice. Instead, it became my life’s work.
One of my earliest assignments was leading walking tours through the 16-acre World Trade Center complex, a place I would come to know intimately long before the world knew it for an entirely different reason. We would pause at Fritz Koenig’s monumental Sphere sculpture, stroll past St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in the shadow of the Twin Towers, and pause at a circular memorial to the six people (plus an unborn child) who died in the 1993 WTC bombing. Then we'd head to the South Tower observatory.
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During the 58-second elevator ride to the 107th floor, I would spout statistics: The WTC contained 10 million square feet of rental office space; it housed 430 businesses from 28 different countries; the Twin Towers had 198 elevators and 43,600 windows. At the top of the tower, we’d gaze across a 45-mile radius from what felt like the ultimate symbol of American progress.
I still lead tours through the WTC plaza today, but everything else is different: the buildings, the skyline, the statistics I share, the stories I tell. Everything changed — including me — one bright morning 25 years ago.
In this photo taken two weeks before the 9/11/01 attacks, Stanton and her husband stand on the terrace of their Lower Manhattan apartment, six blocks from the World Trade Center complex.
Courtesy Christina Ray Stanton
On that morning, Sept. 11, 2001, my husband and I watched smoke pouring from the North Tower from our apartment terrace, six blocks away. Without warning, a passenger jet roared above our heads, aimed directly at the South Tower. Panicked, Brian and I began a desperate scramble to escape the chaos, but were trapped in a snow globe of toxic ash and debris when the towers collapsed. We were eventually whisked away as part of one of the largest boat evacuations in history, but not before we had spent hours wandering in terror and coated in the remains of the Twin Towers.
Encouraged by EPA reports regarding the air quality, we finally arrived back home on the 23rd. We could see a jagged section of the South Tower facade standing over the rubble, while a dust cloud seemed permanently suspended above the area described as Ground Zero. For months, we watched crews work around the clock to clear away 1.8 million tons of debris. Every morning, despite tape around the windows and washcloths stuffed into cracks, a fresh layer of dust coated our apartment.
Six months after 9/11, I escorted a small group of anxious tourists to the Ground Zero site so they could observe the cleanup where the Twin Towers had once stood. For the next several years, every visitor to New York wanted to view what had been the WTC, and I frequently shifted my tours so we could witness not only the scale of the destruction but also the reconstruction.
With the completion of the 9/11 Memorial in 2011 and the Museum in 2014, the area became something entirely different once again, and tourists were eager to visit the beautiful commemorative spaces. I would point out the nearly 3,000 names etched into the memorial pools, discuss the significance of the Survivor Tree and describe the vision for the new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church before it was completed. In 2019, I added visits to the newly opened Memorial Glade, dedicated specifically to the thousands of people who have died or become ill from exposure to 9/11 toxins.
Now, a thriving center of commerce and tourism flourishes where debris once smoldered. Although my WTC tours include visits to the memorial, these days I’m also guiding groups around shiny office towers and shepherding them to the observatory of the One World Trade Center, built to replace the Twin Towers — symbolically, at least. Both tourists and New Yorkers stream into the WTC to visit the Oculus, a $4 billion transit hub and shopping center, or to catch a show at the Perelman Performing Arts Center.
On the 24th anniversary of 9/11, Stanton stands beside the Twin Tower light columns in front of the building she was living in during the 9/11 attacks.
Courtesy Courtesy Christina Ray Stanton
Many visitors, especially the young ones, clearly view the 9/11 attacks as a completed chapter of history, something bad that happened a long time ago. But the past is always present for the many thousands of us whose lives were changed forever that September day.
We remember how the attacks transformed a symbol of American ambition and international trade into a place of unimaginable loss. We also remember how the epicenter of the 9/11 attacks evolved from a disaster zone to a recovery zone, from a construction site to a memorial site. And now we see how those memorials have been woven into the fabric of a thriving neighborhood that, again, projects strength and a faith in the future.
As I’ve narrated the ever-changing landscapes of this place over the years, I’ve often struggled with how — or whether — to share my experience. For many years, I said nothing about the terror I lived through or the destruction I witnessed. But as fewer and fewer visitors arrived with any living memory of 9/11, I realized my first-person account could resonate more than history textbooks. That’s when I began telling my tour groups what I had seen and felt on 9/11 and in the days and weeks that followed. Last year, I added another chapter to my narrative when I was diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer.
Telling my truth sometimes leaves me feeling vulnerable and emotional. But I tell it because I want people to know that history lives in this once-devastated place. I tell my story for the many voices who were silenced or changed on 9/11. I tell my story for the thousands who carry remnants of that day in their very bodies. And I tell my story to honor the pledge I made many years ago, to never forget.
Stanton leads a North Carolina church youth group on a tour of the 9/11 Memorial on June 24, 2026. She carries a scrapbook of photos, including those of friends who died on 9/11.
James Estrin/The New York Times/Redux
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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