This first-person account was written by 9/11 survivor Renee Cottrell Brown with writer Isidra Person-Lynn. Photos by Donn Monroe.
*Renee Cottrell Brown and her husband, Eric Brown, were staying at the World Trade Center Marriott on Sept. 11, 2001, when a New York business trip for Pro-Line International became a fight for survival.
Renee, whose father, entrepreneur Comer Cottrell, founded the Black hair-care company, was considering going to the hotel gym. Eric was preparing to take a train to Washington, D.C.
Then came what Renee remembers as “a tremendous jolt that rattled us to our core.”
Debris began falling outside their window. A man rushed through the hallway warning guests to evacuate because the gym and floor above were on fire.
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Renee threw on a hotel robe and slippers. Eric grabbed their laptops. She grabbed her purse.
“Let’s go,” he told her.
They descended 26 flights of stairs, made harder for Renee by an old knee and ankle injury. Firefighters and police officers eventually directed them outside.
They had escaped the hotel. They had no idea what was coming next.
From the Marriott into the Horror of 9/11
Outside, Renee saw an aircraft flying extraordinarily low. Then she witnessed the second plane strike the World Trade Center.
“Pandemonium erupted,” she recalls. “People were running, screaming and crying, desperately searching for somewhere—anywhere—to find safety.”
When the towers collapsed, clouds of dust and debris swept through lower Manhattan. Renee says Eric was overtaken by the cloud. She wrapped a scarf she used to protect her hair around her nose and mouth.
Years later, Eric was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The federal World Trade Center Health Program includes thyroid cancer among conditions that may be certified as WTC-related when program requirements are met. Renee’s account does not establish that Eric’s cancer was caused by his 9/11 exposure.
The couple kept moving toward Battery Park. There, Eric found a photo magnet in the street that Renee says was still hot when he picked it up.
They still have it.
A Stranger Offered Them a Home
After learning ferries were evacuating people from Manhattan, the Browns boarded one without knowing its destination.
“We only knew that we were leaving Manhattan—and that was enough.”
The ferry carried them to Red Bank, New Jersey, where a pregnant woman named Dorothea Drew approached Renee and asked whether they needed somewhere to stay.
Drew was a stranger. She welcomed the Browns into her home, fed them and took Renee to a pharmacy to replace blood-pressure medication left at the hotel.
“She knew nothing about us,” Renee recalls. “Yet, she opened her home to us and did so much more.”
The families remained in contact for more than a decade.
The Pro-Line Family Scattered Across New York
The Browns had traveled with Pro-Line’s sales and marketing team for a meeting with advertising agency Uniworld and focus groups planned for that evening.
After the attacks, their colleagues scattered across New York. Some fled toward Harlem; others made their way to Brooklyn. Eventually, everyone was located.
Getting home was another challenge. Commercial flights were grounded and other transportation was overwhelmed. Renee says Pro-Line’s new owners arranged for a chartered tour bus to travel from Florida to New York and bring the team back to Dallas.
“It was a long journey, but we were together,” she recalls. “And we were going home.”
Members of the group still contact one another around the anniversary, remembering those who didn’t survive and checking on those who did.
Why Renee Says Black 9/11 Stories Must Be Told
For Renee, the 25th anniversary carries another responsibility: making sure Black survivors remain visible in the history of Sept. 11.
“When you watch some of the coverage surrounding 9/11, you might forget that African Americans were there too,” she says.
She emphasizes that victims and survivors came from communities across America.
“They were American citizens who were simply going to work, traveling, building businesses and living their lives.”
Renee is now retired, while Eric continues consulting. But every September brings them back to that morning — the stairs, the dust, their scattered colleagues and the stranger who opened her home.
“If we don’t tell our stories ourselves, who will?” Renee asks. “We survived. We were there.”
Twenty-five years later, the Browns remember the lives lost, the people who helped them and the Pro-Line family that made it home. Their experience, Renee believes, belongs in America’s memory of 9/11, too.
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