EAST LANSING, Mich. (News 10) – Brandon Joseph, an East Lansing native, was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, to see a Michael Jackson concert.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I think every day I think about it in some way. I think it\u2019s more or less just a blessing that, you know, I woke up that day,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
A day that started like any other<\/p>\n
Joseph was with friends and planned to meet with a guide to take them through the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were scheduled to be right there that morning. He wanted to take us down to the World Trade Center. He wanted to show us all that and everything,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Joseph and his friends woke up in a Times Square hotel to nonstop ringing on their phones. They turned on their TVs as the events unfolded, then went out onto the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you get out there and it was like people, you know, were running\u2014I mean, literally they were running for their lives, you know? And we were part of that,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Stuck in the city<\/p>\n
\u201cThey shut down the bridges, they shut down the subway, they shut down the train. You couldn\u2019t get out. So we were stuck,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Joseph said he thought of his family back home in Michigan throughout the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that was one of the scariest things is like not being able to tell your family that you\u2019re okay and your family knowing that you\u2019re okay… I talked to several people that night when our phones kind of came back on a little bit, and they were just sitting at the phone all day, worried,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Returning to the memorial<\/p>\n
Joseph has returned to New York twice since 2001 to visit the memorial.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time for us to see if we can get some type of closure to this. But I mean, there is no really closure to this. It\u2019s always going to be something that\u2019s always going to stick, I think for the rest of my life. It was one of the worst days of my life,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
Stream News 10 Lansing on your favorite devices! Here\u2019s how to download the News 10+ app on Roku, Fire TV or Apple TV.<\/a><\/p>\n Be the first to see the Mid-Michigan headlines you care about \u2013 download the News 10+ app<\/a> and subscribe to our News 10 newsletter<\/a> and YouTube page<\/a> to receive the latest local news and weather.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WILX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EAST LANSING, Mich. (News 10) – Brandon Joseph, an East Lansing native, was in New York City on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13225,129269,98917,129268,267,9,24,55,54,56,129270,54358],"class_list":["post-344870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-13225","tag-911-attacks","tag-911-memorial","tag-east-lansing","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-remembering-911","tag-sept-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}