Pictured here is Marcy Borders, an American legal assistant who worked for Bank of America at its World Trade Center branch. She was born on July 19, 1973, and tragically passed away on August 24, 2015. Borders survived the harrowing events of September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked by al-Qaeda.
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| This photo from Sept. 11, 2001, shows Marcy Borders covered in dust as she takes refuge in an office building after one of the World Trade Center towers collapsed in New York. Borders was caught outside on the street as the cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the area. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images) |
Photographer Stan Honda captured an iconic image of her that day, earning her the nickname “Dust Lady.” Reflecting on his photograph’s legacy, Honda said, “Over the years, it has been strange for me to think that my photo has a lasting impact. I never imagined I’d have an image like that. I believe people relate to it because it depicts a single person trying to cope with the chaos of that fateful day.”
“There was a giant roar, like a train, and between the buildings I could see huge clouds of smoke and dust billowing out,” Honda recounted years later.
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| Marcy Borders sits with Stan Honda in 2002, the photographer who took the haunting image of her. |
He ducked into a building lobby, where “a police officer was pulling people into the entrance to get them out of the danger.”
“A woman came in completely covered in gray dust,” Honda recalled in 2011. “You could tell she was nicely dressed for work and for a second she stood in the lobby. I took one shot of her before the police officer started to direct people up a set of stairs, thinking it would be safer off the ground level.”
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| Marcy Borders holds her iconic picture. |
Marcy Borders’ life spiraled downward in the years after the attacks, as she battled severe depression and became addicted to crack cocaine.
“I didn’t do a day’s work in nearly 10 years and by 2011 I was a complete mess,” she told The New York Post in 2011. “Every time I saw an aircraft, I panicked.”
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| Marcy Borders at home in Bayonne, New Jersey, next to never cleaned, dust covered clothes that she wore on September 11. |
Borders lost custody of her two kids and checked into rehab in April 2011. She got sober and eventually regained custody.
In an interview with The Jersey Journal, she revealed she’d recently been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was scheduled to have surgery, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. With the trade center ever on her mind, Borders wondered if her illness could be related to what she endured on September 11.
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| In this Nov. 26, 2014 photo, Marcy Borders shows her shaved head, the result of in her chemotherapy treatment for stomach cancer, at her home in Bayonne, N.J. Borders. She died on Aug. 24, 2015 after a battle with stomach cancer. (Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal via AP) |
“I’m saying to myself, ‘Did this thing ignite cancer cells in me?’ ” she told the newspaper. “I definitely believe it because I haven’t had any illnesses. I don’t have high blood pressure . . . high cholesterol, diabetes.”
Marcy Borders lost her battle with cancer and passed away on August 24, 2015.
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