The one thing that bothered me the most was the fact that I knew that from this
day on our life was going to change entirely from top to bottom. There was no
way it was going to be the same. The morning at 9-eleven I was actually at
home. I was off duty. I was listening to Howard Stone on a radio and I was
stringing two fishing poles that goes snapper fishing with my wife at the time.
It was a beautiful beautiful sunny clear day and just as I stepped off the ferry
I heard a noise. There was a picture of the World Trade Center with a big hole
in Tower One and it was Tower One right away because the antenna on top. That's
where my dad worked. I called my mother and I said I said hey mom have you heard
from dad this morning and she just started crying and hung up on me. When the
second plane hit people started to react. You could actually see the south
building tilted to one side. Halfway up was starting to lean and not five
minutes later it collapsed. I just started feeling really not knowing what
to do with myself and hoping that he hadn't gotten to work yet. Hoping that
he was on the train or that he had gotten out on the street and looked up and
because the communications were down maybe he just couldn't get through. Had
no idea what was happening. Shortly there after the Pentagon got hit that's
when I started getting really panicked and then I heard that there was another
plane and I was afraid that that whole day would just be dropping planes all
over the place. So it took me almost a day before they got me on a train going
north and that was late in the afternoon of the next day and they put me on the
last little roomette in the back of a of a sleeper car and it took almost 24
hours to get up there. In that process the word got around the train that there
was a Red Cross worker and I didn't realize I guess it was the porters or
somebody who let the word out but I would get a knock on my door and it was
somebody asked me if I was going to be at the World Trade Center and I said I
didn't know but I was on my way up there and they would give me the name of a
relative or a friend and said please please look for them. So I took the
names and I promised them I would do what I could do. When they started
collecting people who were injured when the tower fell they were bringing
them over to the Jersey City marina where I was. We were hosing them down
just to get the dust off them, get it out of their eyes, out of their paws and
nose and mouth. There wasn't a sound and I expected to hear I don't know what I
expected to hear but I thought it would be very noisy out there and it wasn't
and then it dawned on me they were listening to see if they could hear
anybody buried under that rubble all smoke and debris and you had a tough
time seeing your eyes would burn and you had a tough time breathing. I've
lost people to cancer because of this. I've had one friend that
almost lost his vocal cords. I get tested for cancer you know on a regular
basis you know this is stuff that I'll live with you know until I you know until
I go. Most people in the entire metropolitan area knew someone who
perished that day. I had a relative and five friends of mine that perished that
day. My mom said he's gone he's not coming home 10 days in I want to have a
funeral. Right after the memorial I got back on the train and went back to New
York and kept hanging my missing posters and I kept doing that every day for you
know over over a month months going on two months after every day. Of course the
people who were trapped or the ones above the impact zone that couldn't get
out and of course the heroic fire department personnel who were on their
way up to try to get to them to make the rescue they got caught in the
collapse but when I think of the thousands of people that were saved I
guess that's what sticks in my mind. We saw some firemen EMS we get paid to run
by the you know to run into burning buildings. The civilians that day that
made it out of the building and ran back in to help their friends those are the
heroes those are the real heroes. The construction workers and welders that
ran back to that place to start digging out they didn't have to they didn't have
to sacrifice they're the heroes. To look at each other and be happy that they're
neighbors and look at neighbors and say you know we're here together let's try
and work it out and that was the out of a catastrophe for like that that was one
of the things that came out about it that people helped each other.
