Surviving 9/11 Gave Power to Her Voice

Delynn Ketcherside was preparing to rehearse for the Metropolitan Opera in New York in September 2001. The Los Angeles native arrived in a subway train under the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, with her briefcase of sheet music and carrying her purse.

What happened next changed her life forever.

"It felt like an earthquake," she recalled recently from her home in Julian in San Diego County.

"There was a boom, then everything stopped. The lights went out and it was dark. A dark like you've never imagined. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

"We'd had a bomb a few years earlier, so we all thought it was a bomb," she said.

"People began to panic, scream. I started to sing The Lord's Prayer, Ave Maria, Psalms 91 and 23. Some people started to join in. I sang Panis Angelicus. We had to stay there a looooooong time. It was about 90 minutes.

"They came with flashlights to bring us out," Ketcherside said of the subway conductors. "We walked along beside a railing and up the stairs. At the platform, there was ashy, dandelionlike stuff, ankle deep. I had a water bottle wrapped in a paper towel in my briefcase. I took the paper and put it over my mouth.

"It was chaos outside," she said. "Police and firefighters were yelling, 'Run, it's all coming down.' "

Ketcherside said she couldn't run because she'd had a bad accident about nine months earlier, when she'd slipped on an icy street.

"A firefighter picked me up," she said. "The force of Tower 1 coming down blew my hat off and I squirmed out of his arms and chased it. You do stupid things when you're in shock."

She said that after grabbing her hat, she turned and saw only the arm of the firefighter poking out of the rubble.

"I didn't know whether he was dead or alive. He'd been blown away in the blast."

She said she walked in shock.

"I didn't know it but my face was black from the chemical burn. My skin was itching," she said.

"Then a shoe, with a leg attached—only a leg—came flying at my face. It hit my ear and cut it."

As Ketcherside told her story to Patch from the mountain property where she now lives with her father, Jim Ketcherside, her voice trembled slightly and a faint glimpse of a tear could be seen welling up now and then. Her voice choked up at times. She had an electric fan blowing on her.

"You'll have to forgive me," she said, "Ever since this happened, I have to have air blowing on me."

She said the most profound thing she saw that day was a Hasidic Jew helping a man in Muslim headwear out of the rubble.

"I heard him say, 'Come on, brother, let's get out of here.' "

She said an ambulance came by but she walked past it in shock. "I thought I was OK," she said.

She recalled walking into a grocery store.

"The woman looked at my face and offered to let me go home with her and take a shower." Ketcherside declined and kept walking in shock, she said.

"I went into a theater and they had an industrial-type kitchen. I went and climbed into the sink and washed my face, my body."

Then she went back outside.

"A man all dressed in white offered me a glass of water. It was like nectar. I was so dehydrated. He sat with me and rocked me. Then he left. I turned around and he was nowhere in sight. I don't know if there are angels, but he was like an angel to me.

"There was a mass exodus. Two young men were selling cards of the twin towers. I wanted to push them over the bridge. Two planes came over and everyone hit the deck. Then we realized they were our planes and not terrorists."

Ketcherside said she went over the Manhattan Bridge and ambulances were waiting.

"I keeled over. They took me to St. Vincent's (Catholic Medical Center). They stitched up my ear and put something on my burns. They put me on Zoloft and gave me a prescription for it."

 Ketcherside said not many people survived the twin towers attacks.

"There were actually doctors standing around with nothing to do. Those who died probably did not suffer. It happened so fast."

Ketcherside had been house-sitting in the city for a fellow opera singer who had been on tour. Her daughter was staying there with her.

"I went back to the apartment and she tried to feed me. I couldn't eat. For three days, I lay there and watched the TV news. I was on so much Zoloft that I was really kind of a zombie."

Her daughter was called back to Canada by her fiance. Then Ketcherside's friend returned to his apartment and Ketcherside had to leave.

"His tour was canceled because of 9/11," she said. "I had no place to go."

She said she had sold her Long Island home when her kids had grown up and left home. As a performer who was sometimes away from home, she didn't feel the need to keep a house. It was common for touring performers to house-sit for each other, she said.

When Tower 1 collapsed, Ketcherside's briefcase and purse disappeared in the blast, she said.

"I was left with nothing. I survived on the streets. A lot of us did. Friends sometimes took me in for a while. I slept during the day, under a heating vent outside the Doubletree Inn in Times Square. I had a down coat. I helped other people when I could."

Ketcherside said she got a job at a coffee shop but had a bad accident which left her needing several surgeries. She said her neck ruptured from the second vertabra down.

"I wore a neck brace for a year. I owe my doctor my life and he saved my voice."

She said she had surgery at Scripps Hospital in San Diego when she returned to Julian.

Ketcherside said people who survived the 9/11 attack have choices.

"We can choose to make a difference in the world, to live for others. That's how I defeat terrorism. I choose to be happy."

She credits Irv Windward, a vocal coach or "mechanic" in Los Angeles for bringing back her voice.

"He made it 100 times better and he didn't charge a thing."

Ketcherside, a devout Christian, said her voice is a gift and she hopes she can help others with it.

Asked how she might look at the terrible events of 9/11, as a Christian, she responded: "There are no atheists in foxholes. I know several people who are no longer atheists after 9/11. Some were there."

Patch asked how she might respond to someone who might ask about how her God would allow such suffering.

Ketcherside paused and took a deep breath.

"9/11 was a man-made event. God wept that day and He was there. He protected and saved those He could. So I owe the rest of my life to Him.

"God saved me from being a paraplegic," she said. "He gave me the right person to bring my voice back. He brought me here to heal my relationship with my mother, who later died of pancreatic cancer. Part of my life in the future will be to honor her and my dad. I wasn't easy to live with after 9/11."

Ketcherside said the reason she lived on the streets in New York rather than returning to family in Julian right away was that she wanted to stay and continue her singing career. She was also in recovery from deep shock. And, she said, her relationship with her mother had been strained by her wanting to pursue a career in opera, rather than become a nurse.

Jim Ketcherside told Patch that the family had no idea his daughter had been in the twin towers attack. He is a retired superintendent of Julian High School District who now has a sprawling bed and breakfast on the mountain, called Shadow Mountain Ranch, where he, Delynn and other family live in various cottages. They also have a chapel there among the oak trees, where Delynn practices. Both father and daughter have performed in community theater over the years, sometimes together.

As for her recovery, Delynn told Patch:

"This year, I watched a documentary called Inside 9/11 on TV. It's the first time I've been able to watch something like that. I learned so much. Every year, I've avoided anything like that. I would spend the anniversary watching Broadway musicals all day."

Ketcherside said that when Osama bin Laden was killed, she was afraid of retribution.

"I felt like curling up in the fetal position. I sat and watched TV news closely. I had a personal stake in it. I cried a lot. I was very upset that those valiant men—the SEALs—were sent back in.

Asked what she would tell readers on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, she said: "Never forget. There are still people hurting from this."

We have included her complete comments, and some of her singing, in videos attached with this story. We have also included photos from her career.

Delynn Ketcherside performs throughout Southern California. She will perform at Julian Library at 6 p.m. Oct. 11.