as funny as the kirk memes are, the fact that we stopped hearing about his killer once we found out he was white speaks volumes. if he were black, we’d still be seeing his face everywhere. no black person would’ve been allowed to forget him. that’s painful to think about.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 28-year-old Marcy Borders was at her desk on the 81st floor of the North Tower.
It was her first month on the job.
When the plane hit, her boss told everyone to stay where they were. Marcy ignored him and ran for the stairs.
She reached the lobby of a nearby building just as the tower came down behind her. A photographer caught her standing there, frozen, covered head to toe in grey dust.
To the world, she became known as "The Dust Lady."
But she never wanted to be famous for it. She became afraid of planes and tall buildings. She started drinking and using drugs, lost custody of her kids, and spent years unable to work.
In 2011, she went to rehab and got clean.
Three years later, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Marcy always believed the disease came from the dust she breathed that morning. She died on August 24, 2015, at 42.