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The daughter of ‘Dust Lady’, the subject of the infamous photograph of a woman having just escaped the World Trade Center during 9/11, has revealed how her mom’s biggest fear came true.
However, behind the famous photograph was a woman whose life was profoundly changed by what she experienced that day.
Borders was just 28 when terrorists hijacked four planes and attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, during which she was working as a clerical assistant for Bank of America on the 81st floor of the North Tower.
Discussing her escape, Borders said: "Every time I inhaled my mouth filled up with it, I was choking. I was saying to myself out loud, I didn’t want to die, I didn’t want to die."
After making it out of the building in one piece, she was spotted by a photographer Stan Honda, who pulled her into a nearby office building. Honda later recalled: "This woman came in completely covered in dust. It was a strange sight.
"She paused for a second, and I took one photo. It was just that one frame - I really only had time for that shot, then somebody took her upstairs and she was gone.”
But her daughter would later insist that the photograph told only a tiny part of her mother's story, with her surviving the attacks just the beginning of a much longer struggle.
She battled depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse in the years that followed, with her family revealing that she also struggled enormously with what she had witnessed and experienced.
Borders lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, just a short distance from Manhattan, but she rarely returned to New York.
When her eldest daughter, Noelle, graduated from middle school, the family traveled into the city in a limousine, but even then, Borders could not bring herself to leave the vehicle.
Her daughter later explained just how deeply the experience had affected her mother.
"Me and my mom were best friends," Noelle said. "She still is my best friend."
Noelle was only eight years old when 9/11 happened, but she remembered what her mother told her about escaping the tower.
Her daughter discussed several recollections of her mother: "She said she saw papers falling out the window, then chairs, then people.
"She was like, ‘Oh no!’ She left everything and ran because her main goal was me."
Yet Noelle believed the public knew only the image of the Dust Lady, and not the woman behind it.
Eventually, however, her family said Borders began rebuilding her life. "She turned to God. She went to church two times a day," Dawn said. "She left all of that in the past and focused on her daughter. [Then] when her son came, that was it."
Borders also attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings and continued working towards recovery. Her daughter remembered her mother returning from treatment determined to be present for her family.
"My mom went away for treatment," Noelle said. "She came back and was ready for senior prom."
Despite rebuilding parts of her life, Borders carried another fear from September 11 with her. She worried that the dust and toxic material she had been exposed to during the attacks could eventually make her seriously ill.
Then, in August 2014, the news she had feared arrived, after she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
She had previously considered herself healthy, and believed the disease could have been connected to her exposure during 9/11.
Her family also suspected there could be a connection, although the precise cause of her cancer was not established.
Borders fought the illness for around a year, but in August 2015, she died at just 42 years old.
Her family have been determined to tell the story beyond the picture, ensuring that Borders’ legacy lived on.
