‘My experience of tragedy on 9/11 gave me a second family’ – BBC News
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‘My experience of tragedy on 9/11 gave me a second family’
Image source:
Louise Rayner
Image caption:
Louise Rayner with her two former charges, Bobby and Toland Lawrence, pictured in New Jersey
By Hayley Coyle
Reporting from Baildon
Published 11 September 2026, 06:32 BST
Updated 57 minutes ago
"It was a series of sliding doors moments that led us to each other and from something so tragic, came an enduring, special friendship."
On 11 September 2001, Louise Rayner was living with the Lawrence family in Summit, New Jersey. Then in her mid-20s, she was working as a nanny for Bob and Suzanne Lawrence’s two children.
Louise was a photography student from Bradford, but ended up forming a lifelong bond with the Lawrences after Bob, 41, was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, just one day after starting a new job on the 104th floor of the South Tower.
She ended up staying with the Lawrences for a further two and a half years to help in the aftermath of the atrocity and they remain close today.
On the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Louise, 52, told the BBC how 9/11 changed the "whole direction of my life" and gave her a second home in the US.
She met the Lawrence family by chance – she changed her original flight to the US by two weeks and on the plane met another au pair who introduced her to Bob, Suzanne, and their children Bobby and Toland.
The couple sponsored Louise to study while working as their nanny.
"Toland was about eight and Bobby was six – I got on really well with them and they were really cute and lovely. A lot of Bob’s family lived in Summit, so there was loads of cousins and it never felt like a job."
On the day of the attacks, Suzanne was working away and Bob had left early that morning to get a lift into New York, where he worked for an investment bank in the South Tower.
"I had taken the kids to school and hadn’t seen Bob as he left so early and I went back to bed – and I remember the landline went and started ringing and ringing."
It was a nanny friend who lived two towns over and she said, ‘are you watching the news?’," Louise recalled. "It had been such a beautiful, perfect morning with clear skies and what unfolded was so surreal."
"We were watching it together live and I was talking to her as the second plane hit."
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Figure caption:
‘My experience of tragedy on 9/11 gave me a second family’
Louise said that some of Bob’s family did not even know he had taken a new job at the World Trade Center and Suzanne, who was in another state, could not fly home as aircraft were grounded, so it was her who had to pick the children up from school.
For weeks, Louise said there was lots of "clinging to hope" about missing people being found but it was understood that anyone on or above the 77th floor of the South Tower had died. The plane struck the building between the 78th and 84th floors.
"And of course, no one expected the towers to fall; the skyline, it was like a child losing its tooth – it was just so stark to see it."
"Everyone was presumed dead."
