When the Tower Fell, a Shepherd’s Psalm Remained

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Paul Carris attended 8 a.m. Mass at a small chapel near Battery Park before taking his desk on the 71st floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. When the jet struck, the building tilted so violently that books fell from his shelves. “For a split second, I thought it was gonna keep going over,” Carris recalled.

As workers fled to the stairs, he noticed Judith Toppin, who suffered from sarcoidosis and carried a defibrillator in her chest. He chose to stay with her, supporting her weight on one side while she clung to the banister on the other, beginning a descent of more than 70 floors.

Partway down, Toppin began to pray aloud: “The Lord is my shepherd.” In a stairwell where no one yet knew a second plane had struck, or that the towers would soon collapse, the ancient psalm became their compass — one step, one breath, one prayer at a time.