The following is my verbatim interview with Kevin McPartland, a writer, who grew up on Fifth Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets. He now lives on Staten Island.

“I was home sick that day with asthma. Didn’t go to school. I was in 8th grade at the Holy Family School on 14th Street and Fourth Avenue (Denis Hamill just wrote an article about the school). What I remember: a tremendous amount of sirens, fire trucks, ambulances,  police sirens on Fifth Avenue where we lived (between 11th and 12th Streets).

“My friend Brian’s brothers lived on 13th. He was a cub reporter at the time, a freelance photographer. He had a police scanner and was always rushing off to crime scenes. He was the first person on the scene at Sterling Place. You know those pictures you see of the crash — there’s no name attributed to them – I think they’re his pictures. His name was Jerry Haynes. He died young of juvenile diabetes.

“I don’t remember watching it on TV. But it was on the radio. WMCA. At first we weren’t sure what had happened. Was it a big explosion? Then we heard it was two airliners.

“My parents, everyone in our 6-family tenement building on Fifth Avenue, people were talking, people were crying. There was lots of talk. Someone was definitely crying.

“My neighborhood, Fifth Avenue between 11th and 12th, it was a tough neighborhood. Working class. Rough and tough. Street gangs, drugs. You know, I write all about that. There was heroin in 1960.”

“The area near Sterling Place was a better area.

“Stephen Baltz, he was the big thing. The kid that was still alive. I think he died, like, 24, 48 hours later. They found 67 cents in his pocket. It’s on the wall. That’s the memorial plaque. Someone had the idea to put the change in his pocket on the plaque as a memorial.”