# Stephen Kear oral history interview conducted by Amanda Mancuso, June 13, 2014

Stephen was an NYPD officer on 9/11. He saw the first plane hit the North Tower on TV and immediately drove straight into Manhattan. As he got closer to the towers, he could see people running everywhere. He saw some colleagues and together they drove to the site. He did not know where to begin. He looked down and saw a lone shoe among all the debris, an image that still haunts him. Stephen had been an electrician before joining the NYPD, and his expertise was much needed. He was assigned to man the generators, making sure that they were running, especially at dark so that the rescue efforts could continue through the night. The conditions were dangerous everywhere. The first few nights that he was there, he would sleep against a wall in the vestibule of a building that had been blown up. He finally felt some comfort when the ship "Spirit of New York" arrived. It allowed the rescuers to come aboard to shower, get a bite to eat, and rest. Stephen remembers how people just "came together". Everyone wanted to help; everyone wanted to donate. School children in the Midwest sent bag lunches with notes of thanks to the volunteers, and police cars from every state of the nation were there to lend a helping hand. He cannot forget the charity of the manager of Home Depot telling him to take "whatever it is you need," or the woman in the airport who "hugged him so tight" when she saw his NYPD tee shirt. These were the things that kept him going through all the horrors that he…

- Kind: Interview
- Year: 2014
- Runtime: 40 min
- By: Kear, Stephen
- Genres: History
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2015048_224/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/afc2015048_224?play=1)