I’ve grown old. I miss my wife, she always keep me sane. Gave me purpose. I think about friends that have moved on, in Vietnam in a war zone you know it can happen, but they don’t train you for that. But as a civilian you just never expect to lose friends, not at work, not between morning coffee and lunch.
I had my own consulting business, we did aviation consulting had a major contract with Port Authority of NYNJ. I was going to a morning meeting to report on the status of taxiway improvements at JFK.
I was early, on the 52 floor of the north tower, I stopped outside of the conference room and was looking out the windows view, looking west, looking right at JFK, it was CAVU. When all of a sudden something, some movement caught my attention out in front of my field of vision and to my left. At first I thought it was a bird or something falling, but as I focused I realized it was an aircraft, an airliner, I’m thinking what idiot routed this guy over the city. As he drew closer, I also realized that he wasn’t very high and in the blink of an eye. Wham, the entire building rocked, a big sway, followed by smaller ones.
All of that stuff that builders put up above that false ceiling in large skyscrapers came tumbling down. The entire floor was covered with dirt, dust and AC and Heating ducting. I called my wife to let her know I was on my way out of the building and that I planned to stop at the Mt Sinai Annex at the corner of Gold Street and Fulton Street and see if they needed help. I was a Special Forces combat medic in Vietnam and a NJ EMT.
By the time reached the street and crossed Broadway the second aircraft had just impacted the South Tower, moving west towards Fulton Street, there were already dead on the street and body parts, either blown out of the building or perhaps from the second plane, and I knew we were at war.
I spent the next 14 hours washing out the eyes of grimy firemen and patching up construction workers injured on the pile, I finally caught a ferry running to Highlands, NJ, my home. They stripped off my clothing at the dock in Highlands, decontaminated me and I answered challenges from the FBI agents questing everyone coming off the ferries from New York City. Kathy met me and we walked home, I took a long hot showered, put on a robe, sat on the edge of our bed looking out our north window with its view of lower Manhattan, I could see the smoke curling up skyward from where the World Trade Center used to be and I cried like a baby.
