Marcy Borders became known worldwide as the “Dust Lady” after her iconic 9/11 photo. She died in 2015 following years of addiction and a battle with cancer she believed was tied to the toxic dust she inhaled that day.
This weekend will mark 25 years, a quarter of a decade, since the September 11 attacks. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives.
Among countless images from the devastating day, one photograph became especially unforgettable: a woman covered head to toe in dust, standing in visible shock after having fled the North Tower.
That moment was captured by AFP photographer Stan Honda. It later made Time Magazine’s list of the 25 most powerful images ever captured.
Marcy Borders, who was the subject of the photo, became known to the world as the “Dust Lady.”
A morning that started just like any for a mother-of-two
Marcy, a mother of two from New Jersey, had only been a month into her job as a legal assistant at Bank of America when the first plane hit. She was working on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center.
“I was picking the junk off the desk, getting ready to start my day. That was when the plane hit,” she told The Independent.
Her supervisor told her to stay at her desk until emergency services arrived. She ignored the instruction, which probably saved her life.
“Hundreds of people were trying to get out. My stairwell was badly damaged and we had to move stairwells, I was convinced we were going to die,” she recalled.
“There were wounded and the injured, it was too much for one to witness. I saw people with things sticking out of them, covered head to toe in blood. I couldn’t understand it. What I saw was carnage, and I thought, ‘God, I’m going to die anyway.’”
Marcy made it out of the building, but outside it was just as chaotic.
“Everything was falling. There was debris everywhere,” she said. This was the moment when Honda captured the photo.
Marcy herself didn’t even know the picture existed until her mother spotted it the next day and reached out to Honda.
The hard years that followed
The immense trauma of the attacks pushed Marcy into depression and addiction in the next years and eventually she lost custody of her two children.
“It was like my soul was knocked down with those towers,” she told the New York Post in 2011.
“My life spiraled out of control. I didn’t do a day’s work in nearly 10 years, and by 2011 I was a complete mess. Every time I saw an aircraft, I panicked. If I saw a man on a building, I was convinced he was going to shoot me. I started smoking crack cocaine, because I didn’t want to live.”
Marcy entered rehab later that year and managed to get sober and regained custody of her children.
A diagnosis that is part of a larger pattern
In August 2014, Marcy was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She was convinced it was linked to the dust she’d inhaled during the attacks years earlier.
“I definitely believe it because I haven’t had any illnesses. I don’t have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes,” she told the New Jersey Journal. “How do you go from being healthy to waking up the next day with cancer?”
After four years, Marcy passed away on August 24, 2015, at the age of 42.
“Not only is she the ‘Dust Lady’ but she is my hero and she will forever live through me,” her daughter Norelle has told the Post.
Marcy’s story unfortunately reflects a much larger pattern. According to the World Trade Center Health Program, more than 9,000 people have died from illnesses connected to the attacks and their aftermath, including 600 firefighters, a number that now exceeds the death toll from the day of the attacks itself.