June Bateman and Ryan Murdock

00:18 My name is June Bateman and I was born on July 12th. 1957. Today's date is June 11th 2006. So I'm almost 49 years old. I'm at the World Trade Center and

00:35 This is just me being today.

00:38 I'm Ryan Murdock and I am 25 years old. Today is June 11th. I'm here at the World Trade Center and I'm here with June Bateman.

00:59 It's a very emotional thing. So, I'm sure that things won't follow a straight line. Anyway, I came here in 1977 to New York to go to film school at NYU and

01:14 It's funny. But I you know, everybody's for a regional in New York City and I've always lived downtown and I studied I specialized in documentary and experimental filmmaking and I did a minor in art history and urban Studies have always been very interested in architecture and Urban Development and there was a real Confluence went in my first years here in that a lot of the film projects and video project. I was working on took place down here around the World Trade towers and I actually took part in a project called The Love tapes that were it was videotape.

02:05 It was shot at the world trade tower in one of the towers and it was meant to publicize the World Trade towers. And basically it was very similar to this in that I would go into a booth with someone and they would have three minutes to talk about love and what love meant to them. So it was kind of in opposition to this big, you know, Macho, you know tower that we were talking about something as vulnerable as love and I didn't like the towers but they were part of my education through studying the World Trade towers in my design classes in Arvin study. I got to know what mechanical floors look like. I could recognize insertive read a building because the World Trade Towers were very easy to read and

03:01 Mechanical force being very clearly delineate it from the other floors over the years. I've worked in the film industry and that my husband that way and we he also live downtown. We got married we moved from where I lived in SoHo down to Tribeca and eventually over to Battery Park City and we moved into a beautiful apartment building with an up on the 38th floor with I would say the most breathtaking view I've ever seen in an apartment in New York City. It was of the

03:41 Weber the Hudson River it was basically you could see New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania and all the way down through the harbor and it was a real Revelation to move into that apartment and

03:56 See if you that was very similar to The View that you could see from the top of the world trade tower. Actually. One other thing about the Trade Towers is that when I was in college the year, I graduated my friend Diana was turning 30 and a bunch of us did something that you could never do now we smuggled up a bottle of champagne and had champagne on the roof of of the trade tower. And anyway, so my husband and I moved to Battery Park City and I decided to go into a second career and open an art gallery.

04:39 And I was kind of getting myself girded for that and you know walking through the the park along the Promenade every morning and it was kind of a ritual and September 30th of 2001. I signed a lease on a gallery space in SoHo and

05:01 On September 11th, my husband came walking with me because we all the artwork for the first show is being delivered that morning on 9/11. We were walking along the Promenade and all these people were coming off the ferry and and I remember just looking at them and because I was trying so hard to get my business going. I looked at them and I said, she know these are that these people are kind of the go-getter. So, you know, it was early September. It was a beautiful beautiful day and here they were, you know, getting off the fairies at probably 7:30 in the morning. So we came back to the building and

05:50 We were getting ready and I was ironing a shirt and the and I heard this kind of whining sound and then a boom and I looked at my husband whose father was a fighter pilot in World War II. My husband knows a lot about airplanes and I said my son was that a sonic boom and he said I must have been

06:16 And

06:18 Then it's funny as our entire apartment was almost all windows except for the section where I was ironing my blouse where there was a little kind of wall.

06:29 And then he looked at me said

06:31 It's a catastrophe and I thought is my husband's from the south. I thought that such an exaggeration and then I looked and I could see that there was the first Tower been hit we turned on the TV. He was nothing on about it. Our phone rang with two two different ones my line rang and it was our friend geometry who is an artist an old friend and he was calling to see if we were okay and I went into my husband's office, which is our second bedroom and called 911.

07:10 It to tell them that a plane had hit the World Trade towers and the woman was saying to me, can you give me what's the location whenever and I got really agitated and I said, you know, what do you talk about on your plane has hit the World Trade towers and then I mean, it was such a weird leg. Maybe it was a minute, but it seemed like an hour before we finally started seeing anything on television.

07:43 And we always had a pair of binoculars a video camera and a still camera on the windowsill because from our apartment you could see everything that happened on the Hudson River and when the tall ships came we could see them and when the World War 2 airplanes with flyby they buzzed right by our window. So we had this incredible view. We also had what I thought was.

08:10 The only view in Manhattan of the World Trade Towers from top to bottom and

08:20 As we were, you know, then John my husband called his brother in California to say look just tell everybody we're fine because generally speaking anything that would happen in New York. This family would think we were you know right next to and it just so happens at this time. We were in fact when the Trade Towers got hit the first time we were living on Greenwich Street and we saw all of the helicopters coming in and because my husband's in film and I have been in film we both sit out. There must be a shoot going on or something at the Trade Towers. So, you know, there's always has kind of it such a

09:02 New York is such a big place and it just doesn't occur to you that something really something can hurt it. It's such a big you know City. It just seems in a way to be able to absorb any kind of shock.

09:22 Are you going back into the bedroom and

09:26 I hurt my husband in the living room, and he said there's another plane.

09:31 And by the time I looked out the window of the bedroom the second plane hit hit and this enormous Fireball came out.

09:41 And I mean we had been thinking some idiot had flown into the trade tower. There was all the stipulation on TV that you know, it was a small commercial playing a Cessna or something and and

09:57 Suddenly I was like

10:00 Things became very clear and very calm.

10:05 And I walked into the living room. We looked at each other and I said we have to go we have to get out of here because our building was the the other kind of tallest building in the area and we were sure that

10:19 Whatever was happening. There were going to be planes coming for us to and I remember looking at the Trade towers and thinking how will they get people out of there? How will they airlift them? Not that they wouldn't be able to but only how would they do that?

10:40 So

10:43 We left and just as we were leaving, I sort of heard my grandmother's voice, and she hasn't been email around for a very long time, but I turned it on and I said maybe we should take a jacket in case it gets cool. Later.

11:00 So what kind of took these lightweight, you know sort of rain jackets or whatever and left?

11:08 And took the elevator down in our building there were some you know, who was a famous model Shalom Harlow who live there there were some actors and actresses and remember we gone into the elevator and it was very kind of

11:23 Just sort of calm.

11:26 Use me and know we got downstairs.

11:29 And there was a chauffeur waiting for a model and then this just stream of people 41 River Terrace is right at the Curve.

11:40 Oh by the way over there and

11:44 It was this kind of flow of people leaving just the sexodus and we just joined the Exodus and my husband had the video camera and he was he was taking video.

11:59 And I understood his motivation and that means we're sort of documenting everything that happened.

12:08 You know good and bad. I mean and it all been good up till that point it all been waiting all week amazing fireworks displays. We saw dozens of them for you know, no apparent reason. Sometimes the whole Sky would light up with fireworks and anyway, so he was taking video and we went to the gallery to meet up with my assistant because we felt that he would be there the truck would be there with the art and we had to get there. So we walked up through Tribeca to Soho and looked behind us.

12:44 And it was

12:46 You know just

12:48 Strange and unbelievable. What was happening?

12:53 I felt that I saw.

12:55 Some people jumping were bodies falling

13:01 They were very small.

13:05 We just kind of kept going and we walked up to Soho and

13:13 It's just so strange. I mean every there were lines everywhere that there was a telephone people trying to call people with our cell phones didn't work. It was a guy sitting on the steps of some place which

13:27 I think is this very old bar at the corner of Prince Street, and he had a radio on and His Radio was saying was actually first we went by some guys who work on working on a construction site and the guy said yeah, they hit the Pentagon.

13:47 And they hit Pittsburgh and that's where my niece was in college and I thought Pittsburgh. This is my private hallucination that can't be right.

13:59 So my gallery space was at Prince and Broadway and when we pass the guy was sitting on the steps, he had a radio that was on and like a big sort of transistor radio. And that's what they were saying on the radiologist said, oh my God, I'm so we got to the gallery. My assistant was there the artwork was not there. I was up on the third floor and the windows in my space were frosted and and looked down on a courtyard. And so we couldn't see anything outside and I called I was having those windows replacement having my glass door replace cuz it was cracked. I called the glass place in Harlem. I was talking to this woman when the whole building Shook and the way that it had shaken.

14:52 And our apartment and she just said to me. Oh, that's how I just came down.

14:59 And we'll kind of a mean time was moving at such a strange rate. We kept thinking. Okay, let's go. Let's leave my assistant needed to get in touch with his girlfriend. We went to the ra couple of film companies in the building we went there and we watch the monitors of the towers coming out. I was like watching a movie of something else to wait upon the roof of the building and looked and there were no Towers at that point and that's when we left again. We went down to the street and there were people coming up Broadway and they were saying it was this one guy. I remember saying join us. Come on, we're going to go to the hospital. We're going to give blood and we said, okay, let's do that. So we settle through so Hollow and walked up through the West Village.

15:51 And I'm kind of we stopped for pizza because we thought we might get hungry and there was this pizza stand at the corner of Carmine and Bleecker.

16:04 And

16:05 It was a long line of people and people were saying okay. I like some pepperoni on my and the guy was just like a machine cutting these wheels of pizza and saying, you know, that's what we got. It was just plain pizza and I don't know it was just things were people were on autopilot everywhere.

16:28 Everyone was kind of eating and and drinking and and just moving and there was like this thing that kind of kept you going. So we got to the hospital we went to

16:41 St. Vincent's and they were making announcements. There was a big crowd of people there. They were saying what we really need our socks and bandages and things like that. We can't take any more blood because everyone's already donated and they were Wheeling out anything that had anything that could hold someone like an office chair with a sheet over it and Gurney's in another world is press people there and there was this amazing silence on Greenwich.

17:14 Avenuers just nothing. Nothing. Nobody coming back.

17:21 Nobody's nothing and that's when we started to cry.

17:49 Tipton

18:04 You could look down 7th Avenue, and there were no towers and it really wasn't.

18:11 Smoke it was all blowing in the other direction and

18:18 We walked

18:19 Back downtown

18:23 And went to go to war building and he's me actually before we left. We had stopped off at our friend Dorothy's as we were going up into so out. She's an artist and she has a loft on them.

18:39 Franklin Street, and we just kind of checking in and letting her know what was going on cuz Dorothy doesn't have a TV show doesn't watch television. And when we got back down again, we made this kind of big whoop, and we were turned away until that we couldn't go back to our building and we have been telling people like my assistant weed said well, you know come and stay with us if you can't get back to New Jersey, you know.

19:08 So suddenly we couldn't go.

19:11 And we went over to see Dorothy and she said will get you no stay with me come and stay here and she came out with us and

19:24 I think it was that night. I mean things definitely get a little bit, you know mixed up. I think we went to a deli and bought a bunch of stuff and there were all these firemen and people in there buying things as a deli on Franklin and

19:43 Hudson

19:45 And everything was shutting down but we brought a bunch of stuff over to Dorothy's and and had this kind of strange, you know, not a festive dinner at all. But in like a crazy through the impromptu dinner party and she told us that we should stay there.

20:04 Now at that time to there was this whole idea of where we all going to be rounded up and taken out of the neighborhood or what and most of us. We basically wanted to stay there. We weren't even thinking about leaving or going anywhere else and

20:23 That night the air change the wind changed and I remember Dorothy didn't have air-conditioning either and she wanted to keep the windows open. She said no, it's a beautiful late summer evening. I said no it this is poison that we're breathing and I think I Prevail it mean to close the windows Emily seal them and the next morning. It was funny. I looked out of her window a kind of peeked out of the curtains and down below was my doctor going through a dumpster that night. I hadn't been able to sleep and Dorothy had a copy of the lives of the artists by

21:08 Oh, it's name gosh, that's irrelevant. And I remember trying to concentrate and trying to read about Michelangelo and I couldn't and we wound up staying with Dorothy for two weeks and I could never focus on what I was reading. I would just sort of I would close my eyes and I would revisit this beautiful cathedral that near the house that I grew up in that has a big green hill and woods and I would go there and just go walking around there just to

21:42 Being a better place the next day. We went to the West Side Highway and it was amazing. It was completely lined with.

21:55 Hundreds of of vehicles stacks of buckets thousands of bottles of water McDonald's had set up this huge thing on Greenwich Street. One of the great shocks was seeing these meet our number 7, which was just this it looks like a roller coaster that had melted the way it was laying on its side. I was just there were so many things like that. I mean that were nothing was expected but it was like every time you turned a corner mean the streets covered in Ash and Yet full of complete papers that were from people's offices. It's just so weird and then you could see there was a clear demarcation where the ash stopped and then the the regular color of the street continued and that was true in all over Tribeca.

22:55 So we went back.

22:58 2 or building later that day very late in the day and

23:05 Actually before we did that I recognized him when he was wearing a face mask, but I recognize him anyways, so my Approach with in film and I couldn't remember his name and I said hi. I'm June Bateman, and he said his name and he said there were supplied by Studios. And I mean there were lines of people lining up to volunteer.

23:36 On Franklin Street and just around the block and I mean, I remember all these great great Act of just kindness and selflessness and the people who were there in droves we're basically

23:54 They were they were blue collar people. They were film industry workers. They were metal workers the stories of the people who came over in any boat, they could from New Jersey who cut through the railings to take people in boats.

24:11 To get out of the city. I mean all these things that we kept finding out on all of them made me cry.

24:20 And

24:22 So anyway, we got to our building.

24:26 I had knee surgery a few years before we moved over to this building. That was one of the reasons that I was on this Earth exercise regimen and our doorman. Lynessa flashlight.

24:38 So that we could eventually climb up to our apartment on the 38th floor and get stuff and we left with nothing. No credit cards. No change of underwear. Now. I'm nothing and my husband video tape that I'm walking up the stairs with Amy me with bad knees one flight after another after another after another after another I wasn't going to stop.

25:05 And I made myself stop once or twice. We walked into our apartment. We close the windows.

25:12 And it was like walking into a time capsule. I mean we'd only left the day before but it was so hard to walk in there at the end of the day and have all this light coming in through the windows and then to look out and see the world trade tower site and

25:31 It was then.

25:34 I got.

25:36 A cathedral that had just been blasted to Smithereens. I mean there were these Jagged wall sticking up and everything was smoldering and there were people down there that you could see and you know the bucket brigades and but it was truly. It was a vision in Olive of how I mean it was so awful and we just kind of you know gathered up what we could John took some pictures and we left was just like a littlest kind of suitcases that we could have to carry him down 39 or 38 flights. And then and we went over to Dorothy's and went upstairs and Dorothy had no TV or she a little so neither John wheel down plugged in in a watching snow. We could sort of here a little bit of stuff but we were pretty out of the mainstream media and then we went upstairs from Dorothy and had dinner with her neighbor.

26:36 And they had TV and they had air conditioning and it was so strange to suddenly be in that modern environment from where?

26:50 When we were at our apartment, I could see that they had turn the part below us into a helicopter landing pad and it's just everything was utterly transformed. So then we stayed was Dorothy for two weeks and I walked to work every morning there were checkpoints. You know, how little cardboard are these business card that she's sign on the back of the June Bateman is staying with me and that was my pass to get through the lines at Canal Street and all of the sound that you know, a lot of the people who were there the National Guard work from all over the country. So you tell them where you were going and they wouldn't know what that meant.

27:35 I had the opening the guy took the artwork back to his home in Queens. He is from the Middle East so he didn't feel all that safe and the glass people came and replace the windows people came into my gallery and we had put up Xerox is of the artwork that was going to be down just to kind of place it to get used to the space.

28:03 The show called on the street and it was some photographs of New Yorkers by Amy armas from the 1980s. It was a very New York show as getting all this great press and everyone was looking forward to it anyway, and people would come in and because it was a gallery in SoHo they'd see the Xerox is on one of y'all cool to see Rock show, you know that people could accept anything because our minds were so blown apart at that point that whatever was presented is not the norm would you know, you just kind of went with it.

28:44 The guys were replacing the windows and it was broken glass everywhere in the gallery and people were just kind of stepping over it and stepping around it and they come in to look at the art and I think Kim is okay Steph Curry on glass. I must got hit one morning coming to the gallery. This car was backed into me and I put my hands in the car stopped and I remember thinking

29:13 But if I get one over I know how quickly it would be over now. I mean it was sort of like

29:21 The being face-to-face with death

29:25 Became another part of whatever that new Norm was.

29:31 We finally got back into her apartment building but they put hurricane fence all around it that the Middle School across the street became the the

29:42 The central location point for the police and everyone our neighborhood was a crime scene and everything changed overnight. They loaded the barges right in back of our building. So that was 24 hours a day and the trucks were you know, what?

30:01 Up and down the West Side Highway 24 hours a day.

30:05 I don't know suddenly. We were in a state of Siege and then we found out that you know for members of my husband's church had dying and the Trade Towers. We went by to see a friend Nancy.

30:24 City Gallery yellow moon and I have done to work shows there before opening my own place.

30:31 And no.

30:33 She was just putting up a sign her window when we got there. It was her brother's picture.

30:42 And

30:44 I just said I want you and she said that's fine. You know, we're going to find him he'll turn up.

30:52 Of course, he will.

30:55 Has she lost her brother? The guy who is sold us our apartment when we lived on Greenwich Street who was a really sweet guy. He died in the World Trade Towers. I mean it was like

31:10 Things really did become and they are to this dead and Dorothy had a big birthday party. She turns 60 August 8th of 2001. We had a great big party and it was wonderful and all of our friends were there and it was very festive than her Loft and my husband reminded me that the other day so, you know, it's been five years since Dorothy's party and I said, you know what it's been about 200 years since that party at party is such a long time ago.

31:40 So anyway

31:45 To kind of move along I mean

31:47 I know.

31:50 There's no way to pick up to tell the story quickly, but suffice to say me my business struggled and I struggled and I had great success with it. I was in the

32:03 Press all the time every show. I did got really good attention and but the Art Market plummeted and Sohail plummeted and changed and everything changed eventually we moved out of our apartment which we had loved and by the time we moved out of there we couldn't wait to be gone because my husband to designer and he would sit in his Studio everyday.

32:28 I need stop when they stop down at Ground Zero to take a buyout.

32:34 You know, I remember every day as soon as I could I started taking my walks again and I would pass the the memorials the impromptu memorials for the the flight workers who died and were the policemen and firemen who died and all the hundreds of hats and the badges of people to come at every day. I thank you know, I'm going to walk past your today and I'm not going to cry and I cry everyday every single time.

33:05 And this one time I didn't cry and I thought well, okay, and then I saw these five be kind of Burly guys come in their street clothes and they walked up to that Memorial and I thought they were off duty.

33:22 And they started to cry and I start to cry it out.

33:26 I saw a man driving a semi tractor-trailer truck pull up to the supermarket in Tribeca to make his delivery and he got out of his truck and he went and sat on a bench and wept I mean, this was a guy with big muscles and on leather vest on and it just was that way, you know.

33:48 I remember seeing the the first cruise ship come up the river because the river was closed off for all that time.

33:56 And and that was emotional and then I realize that the people in the cruise ship were on a cruise to Nowhere that these were families of people who'd been killed and they were, you know farm and families in policeman's families and that made me cry. I mean, I was sort of

34:15 I don't know why this great great sadness.

34:22 So

34:24 Anyway, then we moved from our apartment and we moved into a really interesting place at 11 John Street, and he only sort of watch the neighborhood be

34:40 A crime scene a war zone

34:44 A health hazard a giant health hazard and then it came back to life and you know that the grass is green again and people started being able to come to the park again and they reopen the financial center in.

35:01 And then we moved into this building and the great irony is that when we moved in they said well, you know, they're thinking about putting in a Transit Hub, but it's probably going to be a while. So now we're being displaced by eminent domain and we're having to leave and I never thought in 1977 will 1977. I was so exhilarated to be in New York that my heart would pound just to think that I was living here and then as a poor student, you know, I sent my $20 in to help clean up Central Park and I felt like everyone feels when you're part of New York that I had a lifelong relationship with his City.

35:48 And now we're leaving because of eminent domain and because everything that's now happening downtown has to do with real estate and you know this crazy kind of real estate market and

36:04 It feels really really sad. I mean, I feel like I've experienced a lot of deaths since 9/11 I think five years ago. If you told me that any of this was going to happen and we were going to wind up moving away as many of our friends have I would have said of course not I'll never leave New York City.

36:26 Yeah, but we are so.

36:30 What are you doing?

36:32 Well, we're going to move to Yonkers and I'm going to keep a studio. Ida closed my art business to

36:42 But I'm going to keep a Studio on Broadway 26th and Broadway.

36:51 Thank you.