For hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sonia Agron believed she might have lost her husband, an NYPD officer who had been sent to the World Trade Center as the towers fell and lower Manhattan turned into what he described to her as a war zone.
In a Spectrum News NY1 report by Eric Feldman, Agron recalled watching the disaster unfold while trying to protect her 16-year-old daughter from the fear she was carrying herself, only to reach a point where she began preparing for the possibility that police officers would soon come to her home with the news she dreaded.
Her husband, Jose Agron, eventually did come home.
But Sonia said the man who walked through the door covered in soot was not the same person she had kissed goodbye the day before, and 25 years later she still describes her marriage as divided into two parts: before 9/11 and after it.
A Phone Call From Lower Manhattan
Sonia Agron, a retired EMT, told Feldman she had been in Midtown Manhattan waiting to attend a taping of The Rosie O’Donnell Show when everyone was suddenly told to evacuate because a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
Within minutes, her phone rang.
It was Jose, who had already been sent downtown as part of the NYPD response.
“Listen to me carefully,” she remembered him saying. “We are at war. We’re under attack.”
Sonia knew he was somewhere near the World Trade Center, but she did not know exactly where.
When she later saw the south tower collapse on television, her mind immediately went to the worst possibility.
“There’s no way he could have made it,” she recalled thinking.
That fear was made even harder by the fact that she still had to be a mother in that moment, because her teenage daughter was asking the same question she could not answer with any confidence.
“Do you think daddy’s okay?” her daughter asked.
Sonia told her yes.
“I had to be the mother of a 16-year-old,” she said.
Jose Calls Again, Then Goes Silent
Not long afterward, Jose called again and gave Sonia another brief glimpse into what was happening around him.
“It’s gone. Everything’s gone. It’s a war zone,” she recalled him saying. “It’s so bad here. I can’t see my feet.”
Jose told her he was near 7 World Trade Center and expected to get a break around 10 p.m., when he said he would call again.
That promise gave Sonia something concrete to hold onto.
Then 7 World Trade Center collapsed later that day.
When 10 p.m. came and Jose did not call, the silence became terrifying.
Sonia said she and her daughter prayed while waiting for any sign that he was alive, but as the hours passed, she began to believe she was going to receive an official death notification from the police department.
That morning had also been Jose’s birthday, and Sonia had decorated a wall in their apartment with his NYPD certificates and accomplishments, telling him when he woke up, “Welcome to your world, Officer Agron.”
By that night, she found herself staring at the same wall and imagining that it might soon become a memorial.
“How Do I Tell My Daughter That Daddy’s Gone?”
After putting her daughter to bed, Sonia changed her clothes and waited.
She believed that if Jose were alive, he would have found some way to call.
“And I’m wondering, how do I tell my daughter that daddy’s gone?” she told Feldman.
The next day, the door opened.
Jose walked in covered in soot.
Sonia said she simply stood there at first because she had already forced herself to accept the possibility that he was dead, and now her mind had to shift back just as suddenly.
“How do I go back to believing he’s alive?” she recalled.
Then she ran to him.
Jose had no words.
“He had absolutely no words,” Sonia said.
What she saw in his face frightened her in a different way.
“That wasn’t the man I kissed goodbye the day before,” she said. “He was just totally gone.”
For families of first responders, that distinction can be difficult for outsiders to understand. Survival ended one kind of fear, but it did not necessarily restore the person who had gone into the disaster.
Sonia Later Went To Ground Zero Herself
Three weeks later, Sonia decided she needed to help.
Drawing on her background as an EMT, she volunteered with the Red Cross and was assigned to work with first responders at Ground Zero, helping in an area where exhausted workers could rest after their shifts.
She remembered responders becoming so tired that they would fall asleep with their heads on her shoulder.
She would hold them for a while before they eventually made their way to their beds.
Watching those men and women struggle with exhaustion gave her another way of thinking about her husband.
“I always wondered, is this what my husband is doing?” she said.
Jose, according to Sonia, never really told her what he experienced or exactly what he did during those hours and days at the site.
She said she has learned only “bits and pieces” over the years.
Even after 25 years, she still does not feel she has the full story.
“I’ve Been Married To Two Men”
Sonia said the psychological effects of 9/11 never fully left her marriage.
“To keep it simple, it feels like I’ve been married to two men, pre-9/11 and post-9/11,” she said.
“And it breaks my heart. I miss my guy. I don’t think I’ll get him back.”
She said people sometimes struggled to understand why she remained emotional about the experience because, unlike thousands of other families, Jose survived and came home.
People would tell her, “At least he came home.”
Sonia acknowledged that she knows how fortunate she was.
But she said the statement misses something important about what trauma can do to a person.
“He didn’t come home,” she said. “His body came home. But his mind is still at Ground Zero.”
That is perhaps the most powerful part of her story because it describes a kind of loss that is harder to measure than death itself. A family can be deeply grateful that someone survived while still grieving the person they were before the trauma.
Finding Her Own Way Forward
Sonia said she eventually found a path through her volunteer work.
When the National September 11 Memorial & Museum opened in 2014, she began volunteering there and has remained involved ever since.
She estimated that she has spent close to 2,000 hours volunteering over the years.
Walking through the museum can still be difficult, she said, but she also finds it inspiring because it gives people a place to hear the stories of those who lived through the attacks and those who never had the chance to tell their own.
During her shifts, Sonia said visitors often ask a simple question: “Where were you?”
She has found that people, including those too young to remember 9/11 themselves, still want to hear personal accounts.
For years, people told Sonia she was strong.
Her answer is that strength was never really a choice.
“I didn’t have a choice to be strong,” she said.
She continues sharing the story, she told Feldman, for the 2,977 people killed in the attacks and for those who have died in the years since.
Sonia does not know how much longer she will be able to keep telling it.
But she believes people still need to know what happened, not only in the collapsing buildings and streets of lower Manhattan, but inside the homes of families who watched loved ones return carrying experiences they could never fully explain.
A former park ranger and wildlife conservationist, Lisa’s passion for survival started with her deep connection to nature. Raised on a small farm in northern Wisconsin, she learned how to grow her own food, raise livestock, and live off the land. Lisa is our dedicated Second Amendment news writer and also focuses on homesteading, natural remedies, and survival strategies. Lisa aims to help others live more sustainably and prepare for the unexpected.
