Twin 'Power' Sisters Trace Their Timeline Back To Events Of 9/11

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

It was mid-day in Paris when Kevin Max got the phone call from the company comptroller in New York.

Do you know what’s going on? Find a TV.

Kevin went to the lobby of the office building he was working in, where there was a television, and found CNN.

“The second tower had been hit and was on fire,” he recalled. “At that point, I tried to get in touch with Sarah.”

Kevin’s wife was enjoying a carefree day in the French capital, shopping. Her old-school cell phone rang with no answer. She’d left it in the hotel room. Hours went by before she heard about the horrors of 9/11 happening back home.

“News traveled slower then,” she said. “Only American TV (channels) were playing it at that time.”

Married less than a year, the two young writers who had met while working for a New York City magazine did what they could to follow the news and plot their return home, to Brooklyn.

It would take another week before they could get on an international flight back to New York.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, in September of 2001, Sarah turned to Kevin.

Do you want to stay in New York, or would you consider moving out of the city?

Before the wheels of the plane touched down, Kevin had already said, “yes” and latched firmly onto a possible destination – the place where they could start fresh.

Bend. There’s this place called Bend.

“I think 9/11 was a carpe diem moment for us,” Sarah said, looking back on it. “Rather than trying to flee the city because we were scared, it was more, this has happened and we’ve always wanted to live in the mountains anyway. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have moved as quickly, or possibly not at all.

“It was a turning point.”

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks, Sarah recalls seeing dump trucks loaded with debris from the World Trade Center on the Brooklyn Expressway, headed toward landfills on Long Island. She remembers the acrid smell hanging in the air of Lower Manhattan.

“I get goose bumps just thinking about it,” she said. “From JFK going to Brooklyn, the twin towers were something that we always saw. It was like a limb being amputated because part of the skyline was no longer there.”

The prospect of someplace else – Bend, Oregon – became more desirable with each passing day.

By December of that year, Kevin and Sarah Max were on the move. It was Oregon or bust. Halfway across the continent, Sarah learned that she was pregnant.

The following July, the Maxes welcomed twin daughters Isabel and Fiona. They were born prematurely, at 30 weeks, and spent the first seven weeks of their lives together in a Bend hospital before they were able to go home. 

(A middle-school painting by Izzy Max depicts a New York skyline before 9/11)

Almost 18 years later, here they are. Izzy and Fiona Max, seniors at Summit High in Bend, are part of a Class of 2020 in which nearly every member entered the world in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that re-shaped thinking about safety and security in the United States and deepened the fracture in political discourse.

For Izzy and Fiona, who will come to New York with their mother this week to compete at New Balance Nationals Indoor, the collapse of the Twin Towers and the other atrocities of 9/11 represent something of an origin story. And for two Princeton-bound track athletes who helped Summit win the 2018 Nike Cross Nationals title, New York City holds a particular attraction.

“Even though we’ve never lived there, New York does mean a lot to us,” Izzy said. “Going back there, it’s like going back to this golden era from before everything sky-rocketed, before 9/11. We see a different part of our parents when we go there: Their city days. It’s like seeing this older era, like part of our past.”

The truth is the city was a professional proving ground for Kevin and Sarah, who both came from the Midwest as aspiring journalists. But on their weekends together, they sought outdoor recreation at every opportunity – skiing at Killington in Vermont, hiking or rock climbing in Maine or western Massachusetts.

Over the Atlantic, thumbing through a mental rolodex of prime locations to re-boot a life together, Kevin thought of a post-college climbing trip he took with a friend in Central Oregon.  

June 14, 1990.

“I came out (to Oregon) to climb at Smith Rock. But it was so hot that day. The friend I was with said ‘Let’s go skiing.’ I said no @$%# way!

In Bend, there are outdoor recreation options in every direction. Located on a high, dry basin east of the volcanic Cascade Mountains, the area has been a favorite, juniper-scented playground for Oregonians for generations. Snow-capped Mt. Bachelor is the popular ski hill 22 miles to the west. The city is bisected by the eternally cold, cut-glass purity of the Deschutes River. It’s a far cry from the Hudson.

Kevin and Sarah were not alone when they made the calculation that moving to Bend was a good idea. The population has boomed from about 20,000 when Kevin first saw it to near 100,000 today.

After settling in, back in 2002, Kevin got a job at the local newspaper, the Bend Bulletin (today he owns and publishes a pair of lifestyle magazines). Sarah continued to freelance about finance and business for publications in Manhattan.

The girls grew up around non-stop, year-round recreational opportunity and embraced all of it with the same lust for adventure as their parents.

When they entered high school they brought their love of the outdoors – and a nuanced understanding of New York City – with them.

“They are two of the most positive-minded people that I’ve ever been around,” Summit track coach Dave Turnbull said. “That’s a big statement because we’ve had a lot of them. But they just have this incredible energy, personality, character and intelligence all wrapped together. They’re special.”

To begin with, as ninth graders, Turnbull helped sort out the twins’ athletic strengths.

“Their freshman year they competed against each other and it was so hard,” he said. “Izzy has more foot speed and Fiona has a little more lung capacity. There’s nothing identical about them. They are so uniquely wonderful in their own right.”

Trained by former distance coaches Jim and Carol McLatchie, Fiona won two state cross country champion and also two 3,000-meter state titles. Izzy has been top three in the 800 meters three times and won the 2018 state title.

Beyond their running, Turnbull said, is an appreciation for how they have affected the Summit culture for four years. They are currently both involved in the Thunder Pageant, a fund-raising initiative sponsored by the school that is raising money to help pay medical expenses for a local boy named Tytan Neff, an 11-year-old cancer patient.

The girls are also musicians, nordic skiers and writers, like their parents.

“It’s hard to find anything they can’t do,” Turnbull said. “If they’re not the Twin Towers of Bend, they’re the Twin Powers. They are so powerful.”

This week, Fiona and Izzy will compete at The Armory for the first time at New Balance Nationals Indoor. Fellow senior, teammate and friend Azza Borovicka Swanson is coming on the trip with them. It’ll be her first time in New York City.

The twins have made yearly visits to the city. They know their way around. They know the subway system and the sidewalk vendors selling roasted nuts and what it’s like to run in Central Park.

“One of our favorite places is the NEUE Gallerie museum,” Fiona said. “It’s recovered artwork from Germany and Austria. It’s in a little house off of Central Park. And you can end (your tour) at this decadent café.

“You also can’t ignore runs in Central Park. It’s my 100 percent favorite thing – to run in Central Park. I can’t pretend that I don’t love living in Bend and looking out at the mountains, but it’s this whole other experience in running – the city joggers and marathon training groups.”

Going to New York and competing this week – Coronavirus be damned – feels extra special.

“To me, it feels like two worlds are colliding,” Izzy said. “It’s coming to this perfect zenith in senior year. It feels like the best of two worlds. We’ve always seen New York as a place where you go to make your career and learn more about yourself, whether you like it or not. And now this other world is wrapped into our track season.”

In a sense, it’s also a return to where things started. Twins with anchors buried in the Manhattan schist as well as the Bend lava.

It’s an origin story they’ve heard repeated many times, perhaps like many others in the Class of 2020.

“We tell them everything,” Kevin said. “It is a part of their narrative.”