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"Everybody ran, but you couldn't outrun it," she said. "As I looked around, at one spot people were OK, then 5 feet over everyone was killed," she said. "Lots lived; lots died - it was just so random."
Many folks back home in Jackson County saw Monroe, daughter of Sue Monroe of Webster and New York and the late Ben Monroe, featured on the "Third Watch" television show.
"That was the first interview any of us who were working the site had. We were still pretty traumatized," she said. "As we told our story, I looked at the cameramen and they were crying."
Monroe said she thinks that television spot may have precipitated her royal invitation. "When I used to work for Gov. Jim Hunt, I was friends with an individual in Parliament. I think perhaps he saw the show, recognized me and was responsible for my being asked to go to England."
Also at the ceremony were former U.S. President George Bush, U.S. Ambassador William Farish and representatives with the New York City police, fire and mayor's office. With the queen were the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Tony Blair. The service was attended by senior politicians and 800 family and friends of the estimated 80 British victims.
"Many of the British were also Americans with dual citizenship," said Monroe, who, back home, found it hard to talk about the Sept. 11 tragedy. "But these people in England didn't have a chance to connect with anybody. There were no emergency personnel to tell them what had happened and what was still going on.
"The British families were desperate for details, and they deserved to hear, so it was easy to talk to them, to answer their questions and to tell them what we knew," she said.
This 1977 graduate of Sylva-Webster High School appreciated what Blair had to say, too, as he reaffirmed the friendship between Britain and the U.S. Additionally, Blair read from the New Testament, Romans 8:35-39.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
"As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
"Nay, in all these thing we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come.
"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
At the request of bereaved families, actress Dame Judi Dench read the 19th-century poem "Remember" by Christina Rossetti.
In a moving act of remembrance, Queen Elizabeth laid a posy of white flowers, and the families of the dead each placed a single white rose on the Memorial to Innocent Victims at the abbey.
Addressing the group, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey condemned the attacks, which "killed Britons far from home."
Back home in New York City, Monroe said they are still having memorial services because "we are still recovering bodies."
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Former Webster resident Amy Monroe, left, a lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department, was asked to carry the U.S. flag in Britain's National Day of Remembrance ceremony Nov. 29 at Westminster Abbey. With Monroe is an unidentified British dignitary carrying the Union Jack.