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Community Corner

Changed by 9/11: Bill Wright, Mortgage Broker

Southampton native was a college student upstate on 9/11.

“I was in college and I remember being woken up by someone running down the hall,” recalled Southampton native and East Quogue resident , now 30 years old. Everyone in the dorm at Marist College in Poughkeepsie was glued to the television watching the Twin Towers, and classes were canceled. Wright, a junior at the time, said initially they thought it was just a major accident, and it didn’t become clear until later that the plane crash was a terrorist attack. “I did have family who lived and worked in the city,” he said. Though they weren’t close to the site, he worried about them and couldn’t get in touch because phones were down. Others in his dorm had family working at the World Trade Center that day. Wright said in the 10 years that have followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he hasn’t felt fearful, but has been conscious of dangers when traveling. “It definitely made me have a greater appreciation for life, as well as all the volunteers and the fireman and police,” said Wright, who is now the senior loan officer and at on Main Street in Southampton Village. “It just gives you a greater respect for those positions — those who put their life on the line.”

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