More Than 20 Years Later, Napans Reflect on 9/11
By Lisa Adams Walter
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — When Jason Bertolotto of Napa awoke on Sept. 11, 2001, he saw something that looked like a Hollywood disaster film scene: a plane crashing into the World Trade Center on television.
“I thought it was a movie, only to realize the Today Show was doing a live story!”
For those of us old enough to remember that day, we all have a memory of where we were and what we were doing, and the sheer shock we experienced when the news began to trickle in. The horror and loss seemed impossible. At the time, I was a new mom with a four-month-old baby. When I first heard about airplanes flying into the twin towers, I was awaking from a deep slumber. My initial and naïve reaction was, “What? Is air traffic control all messed up?!”
Then I sat for hours, for days, with a shattered heart, glued to the grim and terrifying news coverage, holding tight my infant and pondering our changed world. Social media and citizen journalism as we now know it did not exist. In Napa, though far away from New York City, the tragedy did not seem so far away. Not only does Napa have immense ties to that city due to the wine and hospitality industry, the clarifying and uniting fact for every community in the country was that the United States had been attacked.
The attacks continued, and no one knew what or who would be hit next. The first hit was the north tower of the World Trade Center, then the south tower, followed by the Pentagon, and finally the tragic crash of a plane in Pennsylvania that was likely headed to either the White House or the United States Capitol building. Two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.
Gina Capiaux of Napa was in Manhattan that day, a graduate student in the Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, working to complete her doctorate in pharmacology. Her husband Sean Capiaux, winemaker then and now for O’Shaughnessy Winery and Capiaux Cellars, was in California for the winegrape harvest. He worked bi-coastally, making wine at Macari Vineyards, Jamesport Vineyards and Schneider Vineyards on the north fork of Long Island, New York, while she completed her education. Their two children, Conley (then 2 years old) and Olivia (a 7-month-old infant), were both born in New York City and there with their mother in September of 2001.
“I was getting ready to go to the lab, the babysitter was coming, and I was getting breakfast ready for our kids,” Capiaux said. “Suddenly I heard all of this screaming, and I realized it was coming from the TV. I saw news reporters, something had happened, there was an explosion at the twin towers.”
Capiaux recalls that at the time, people didn’t know that an airplane had hit the first building; There was a lot of commotion, people were being interviewed at the World Trade Center. She called her husband who was in the Napa Valley, as she was watching the live news.
“I was on the phone with him when the second plane hit the south tower. I heard it as it was happening, because I had the television on, I saw the explosion. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is intentional,’” she said. She was still on the phone with him when the first tower collapsed.
“It was chaos. Our babysitter arrived around 9:30 a.m. and she had no idea what was going on. I told her I really wanted to go to the blood bank and donate blood. So, the babysitter stayed and after I gave blood, I was going to come back home,” she said.
She headed to the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she studied and gave birth to both of her children.
Capiaux recalls that going to the blood bank in Manhattan on 9/11 was unique in itself.
“There were people lined up around the hospital to donate blood, there were so many there that random people just stepped in to help out,” she said. “I grabbed forms for people to fill out, others went to a local deli to get food and crackers, there were literally hundreds of people who just stepped up. There was a big auditorium, and we all just figured it out to make it happen. But sadly, none of that blood was ever used for that event as really, there were no survivors.”
“After a couple of hours, I left,” Capiaux remembers. “As I walked out of the building, which was at 1st Avenue and East 69th Street, the first wave of people from the financial district began to walk north. I will never forget the most eerie sight. A vision I will never get out of my head. It was apocalyptic, a wall of people walking north. They were dusty, dirty, expressionless and in shock. It was silent, there were no sounds. That’s when it hit me how incredibly grave this was. Here were all of these people in business suits, carrying briefcases, covered in ash and they had already walked 70 blocks. It was like a marathon,” she said. She realized that the same thing was happening on the west side of the city; It was happening everywhere.
What may surprise the generation that is too young to remember, or may not have yet been born, is that the United States literally shut down on 9/11. Public transportation, borders, businesses and many schools were shut. All air traffic was halted and, for several days, the New York Stock Exchange closed.
Valerie Tubman remembers that she was at HealthQuest in Napa that morning, and that the gym was packed but no one was working out. Instead, they were gathered around televisions.
“I was in shock. I left the gym and went to my aunt, Sue Barlow’s, house. She answered the door crying, I'll never forget her face. I started crying too. We watched as the second plane hit and held on to each other, crying and praying in front of the TV for hours. Days and weeks went by; It’s all that was on everyone’s mind,” she said.
Tubman’s aunt gifted her VHS video format footage of the disaster site, set against the song “Just Give Me Jesus” based upon a poem by Anne Graham Lotz.
“I still have it. I joined the military shortly after that. Never thought about joining before 9/11,” she said.
Her recruiter told her that she would be trained for a career that she chose. She soon found out, though, that her job was focused upon building missiles and bombs.
“We built a lot,” she said.
“I had friends visiting from Toronto, Canada for business when all flights stopped,” said Joel Raes of Napa. “They had to rent a car and drive to the border, then they literally had to sneak back into Canada because the United States shut the border crossing down 100%.”
They shared a boat to cross a river to get back home.
Margaret Simich remembers that her husband was with friends for a weekend get-away to Las Vegas, scheduled to return home to Napa on 9/11.
“Flights were cancelled, so they went to all of the car rental places and ended up renting a minivan,” she said.
They even took another person to Sacramento on their way back to the Napa Valley.
With a young daughter hospitalized in Walnut Creek, Michael Jensen from Napa remembers 9/11 as one of the scariest days not knowing when he would be able to see his child.
“She was 6 years old, hospitalized with spinal meningitis. The bridges were closed, and it was the worst feeling of my life,” he said.
Danyell Burrow was a freshman in high school and her aunt was flying when the attacks took place. Like so many families, they did not know which planes had been impacted when they realized that she was in the air.
“It was so scary, she didn’t get home for a long time,” she said.
In Napa for his 30th class reunion, Stephen Garth, who now lives in Europe, was visiting with his mother that morning and they too were glued to the television. On a bright note, he recalls seeing “flags blooming out everywhere and was surprised by the wave of solidarity being shown.”
Similarly, Meagan Ishtar Scott was living in Napa and had just graduated from Napa High School in June of 2001.
“That’s when people started putting flags on their trucks to show their patriotism and also a significant number of locals that were new graduates started joining the military as a response to the situation,” she said.
Kim Dalton Funk was at home on maternity leave in Napa with two little ones. With her husband working as a law enforcement officer in the Bay Area, it was a very unsettling time.
“It was a sad morning. So much disbelief and so many questions,” she said.
The Funks were also in the middle of purchasing their first home and, while she stresses that it was nothing compared to the lost lives, 9/11 impacted people in many ways. There were things, such as an escrow, that were just put on hold, as no one knew what would happen next.
In an “only in Napa” memory, Charley Duckworth remembers that the hot air balloon flights were grounded.
Joan Arruda Latimer lived and worked in Napa at the time, yet she and her husband had purchased their retirement home in Shingletown, California. She will never forget traveling to that second home, and how many American flags were hanging from businesses on I-5 along the way.
“We took Highway 44 to Shingletown. All along the way people had U.S. flags hanging in their driveways, hanging from trees, archways, mailboxes,” she said. “(We were) amazed at the showing of love for the USA.”
Back in Manhattan, Gina Capiaux returned to their apartment, which was on the Upper East Side. While she could not see the twin towers, later that day and for several days that followed, remnants of papers from the World Trade Center were flying everywhere, blowing toward Staten Island, and they floated down on their neighborhood, scattered reminders of all that was lost.
Capiaux sent her babysitter home, who, with all transportation shut down, walked to the Brooklyn Bridge where she joined thousands of others who were walking in every direction to get out of the city.
“After that, there were more bomb threats on a daily basis. Our apartment was semi-close to the United Nations building; The whole West Nile virus was going on so the city park was being sprayed; I had just finished nursing my baby and within a few days we couldn’t get formula or water. By Thanksgiving we decided to move our children out of the city. It was scary. We decided that it was not safe, yet I had to stay in New York to finish up my work,” she said.
She packed up her husband, toddler and infant, who flew back to California, and then she did a reverse commute flying back to California once monthly to see her family.
For Capiaux, 9/11 was a transformative day. Although a native Californian, she says, “It was honestly the moment that I knew in my heart that I was going to be forever connected with New York. Not because of the tragedy, but the way that people, perfect strangers came together at such a tragic time. Even in the park in the days and weeks that followed, the city was shut down and there were fighter jets flying over, kind of protecting us. If someone’s child fell, you were there to pick them up, if anybody needed anything, everybody went into that mode. It was the most amazing feeling and sense of humanity that is engrained in us. If there was anything good came out of 9/11, that is what it was.”
With only seven months until her six-year graduate program in New York would be complete, Capiaux remained in Manhattan until April of 2002. The day that she defended her thesis, she was on her way to take a final flight out and vividly remembers, “It was really hard to leave. So many wonderful things happened, the births of my children, I had just defended my Ph.D., a lot went through my head. As I was driving over the Brooklyn Bridge to go to Kennedy Airport, I looked back at the city and I cried. I had spent six years there, but I experienced a lifetime in that one day, on 9/11.”
Capiaux said that when Napa’s 9/11 memorial downtown on Main Street was installed, she attended along with her family.
“It was quiet and humbling. It was almost like they brought part of my heart back here. It is sad and tragic, but I felt like they brought a part of me back to the Napa Valley.”
9/11 Memorial Services in Napa Valley
Wednesday, Sept. 11 American Canyon Fire Protection District will hold a remembrance ceremony at 10 a.m. at Station 11, 911 Donaldson Way, American Canyon. For more information, email lprovencher@amcanfire.com.
Napa City Council member Bernie Alfredo Narvaez leads a memorial service at the Memorial Garden from 11 a.m. to noon to honor the heroes and victims of 9/11.
In Yountville, CAL FIRE and Napa County will host a complimentary pancake breakfast and a push-in ceremony for Truck 12 from 10 a.m. to noon at Yountville Station, 7401 Solano Ave.
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Lisa Adams Walter is a writer, storyteller, editor and publicist who has been published in media outlets locally and nationally. A California wine country native, she brings intimate insight to an array of wine, food, arts, entertainment, lifestyle and travel stories.
I was at 53rd and Madison Avenue in NYC when the first plane struck. I was actually on the phone speaking with a good friend who worked downtown directly across from the North Tower when the first explosion was heard by him and me while on our call and I was the first who announced to my office mates that the North Tower was on fire somewhere towards on its upper floors. The rest of the day was a traumatic nightmare as even many mid-town office buildings were being cleared out due to bomb scares that were being called in by anonymous copy-cat villains. As I later walked to another friend's apartment later that afternoon as all train service was suspended and I was obliged to spend the night, it was incredibly eerie to walk down the middle of Park or Lexington Avenues without a single car to disrupt my travels to Central Park West for the evening. Our restaurant meal was served cold as the chef had been unable to get to work so an only a limited menu was being offered by a limited staff. The next morning I walked to Penn Station and was able to get a noontime train home to Princeton, NJ with standing room only among a group of solemn and forelorn fellow travelers all just wanting to get home and embrace our families. It took me years and years to ever even go to downtown Manhattan as the pain and memories were too painful to recall. Combine all that with losing a few friends that day in the building collapse and stories from others working nearby and how they were directly impacted are among those few things in my life I'll never forget. Never.
Excellent.