EDINBURG (KVEO) – Renee Hill still remembers a day from 19 years ago.
“It’s just heart-crushing,” says Renee Hill, wife of UTRGV men’s basketball coach, Lew Hill.
This day from 19 years ago still replays vividly for Hill.
“Normal day, busy, all my business meetings are scheduled for the day everything is set up. And then all of a sudden, it was as if, this can’t really be happening.” She was in her office in Manhattan when the planes crashed.
“What I thought was just glass and debris falling from the sky was way more than that.”
Chaos ensued.
“No cell phones are working so you can’t call anyone to tell them that you’re OK, you can’t call and check on people to see if they’re OK. Everything is covered in gray fog.”
Hill was lucky, she was able to make her way home on foot safely. Others never came home.
“On this day in particular I say a prayer for all of those people. At that point, everyone was all the same. Everyone was willing to help someone, you’re walking arm and arm, you see an elderly person, a black person a white person, everybody is holding hands just to get everyone to safety, and to just get away from what is going on.”
Reflecting on that experience in 2020 gives Hill a different emotion.
“It gives me hope, and I feel like if you have hope, that’s a great place to start, everyone was just there to help everybody. Which is two-fold now because we all need to ban together to help each other.”
