Reluctant Hero: A 9/11 Survivor Speaks Out About That Unthinkable Day, What He's Learned, How He's Struggled, and What No One Should Ever Forget (11 page)

I was raised Catholic, an altar boy for seven years, and received all the sacraments during that time. I went to church almost every Sunday in those days. As an adult, I practiced my faith infrequently. But I made myself a promise I would go every Sunday from that time on.

We left the church and headed to Boozer’s office. Along the way we passed various restaurants with outdoor seating, where,
to my astonishment, people were sipping cocktails and snacking on hors d’oeuvres and, well, just eating lunch.
What the hell?
They were chatting and pulling at the waiter as if it was just another sunny September Tuesday in Manhattan. I think about that image today, and I still can’t believe it.

Boozer is Brian Wenrich. He owns Quinn Exterminating on 30th and Broadway, located on the “penthouse” floor of an old eight-story building. His father was a high school football coach at Our Lady of the Valley in Orange, New Jersey. As a boy, Brian was a stocky kid with big calves. He hung around his dad’s football practices, anxious to participate with the older boys. The high school players nicknamed him after Emerson Boozer, a straight-ahead fullback for the New York Jets in the 1970s. As Boozer got older, the nickname became more apt, owing to his jovial consumption of alcoholic libations. I met Boozer in a softball league when I was twenty-six. I’m surprised we hadn’t met earlier. We are the same age, born twelve days apart. We grew up in neighboring towns, me in Montclair and he in Essex Fells. He went to public school, and I went to a Catholic school, and our paths didn’t cross. But we hit if off as soon as we met. Kindred spirits, we were. We bonded as single guys enjoying their run-and-gun years. We went to concerts, ball games, and bars. We became like brothers. For the two years I had been working in New York, I met him for lunch once or twice a week a block from his office at O’Reilly’s, a great old New York City drinking establishment. I also made Quinn Exterminating a customer, which was not only good business but also a convenient excuse to visit with him during the workweek.

Boozer would give you the shirt off his back. And on this day, that’s literally what I needed.

When John and I walked into Boozer’s building, the security guys gave us the
What the hell you must’ve been through
look everybody everywhere gave us. They stared at us like we were ghosts. We entered Quinn Exterminating, and Boozer’s assistant gave us the same look.

The door to Boozer’s office was open. I edged a few feet away from the door and watched him without saying a word. He stood there, focused intently on a little TV set, propped up on an office chair, that showed the catastrophe—the planes hitting, the Towers imploding—over and over again. Sensing eyes on him, he wheeled around and gave me a big bear hug.

“Boozer, I’m a mess.”

“Man, I don’t care. You’re fucking
alive
.”

The little TV set drew me in. I watched a clip of the second plane crashing into Tower 2. It was the first time that day I really saw what happened. I know people had told me about the terrorists and the planes, but it was all still inexplicable to me. “Boozer, what’s going on?”

Boozer explained to me all that he knew. It was a lot to take in.

As Boozer told me the tale of two planes and how the Towers were no more, my cell phone regained service. From then on it would ring nonstop. Things got hectic. I was working two phones at once. I took calls on the cell phone with one hand and made calls on Boozer’s office phone with the other.

I got through to my CEO around 1:00 p.m. The Network Plus home office was making a head count. No one had spoken to me yet. I told him John Cerqueira was with me. John looked up quizzically. Then Tom Sullivan called. Sully is a college buddy who lives out in Colorado. He was very upset, crying. He said he saw me on TV. He saw me running up the West Side Highway live on the news, and then everything turned to black on the
screen. He thought I didn’t make it. He had been trying to reach me for the past hour and a half. “I thought you were gone,” he said.

I talked to Joy again. I called my parents’ house again. Apparently, a lot of people were calling my parents’ house.

“We got to get you out of those clothes,” Boozer said.

Boozer gave me and John exterminator outfits—gray pants, a gray shirt with the Quinn Exterminating logo, and some sneakers. I peeled off everything: shirt, tie, T-shirt, pants. I threw all of it in the trash. I learned later that Boozer took it out of the trash and put it in a plastic bag for me. He gave it to me a couple weeks later. I did not open that bag until I began to write this book. That gray ashlike dust, and that smell—that acrid burning scent that I’d never smelled before and never smelled since—are still on those clothes. I still don’t know quite what to do with them.

I felt better sitting in Boozer’s office in clean clothes. I had also been brought up to speed. I understood what had happened at the World Trade Center. I knew about the Pentagon. I knew there was still one plane unaccounted for. That’s the story we were following. The phone continued to ring.

Joy was waiting for me uptown. I was at 30th and Broadway. She was at 82th and 2nd. But I knew she was OK, and she knew I was OK. The overwhelming sense of urgency that dominated the last three hours—the longest three hours of my life—had left me. As long as I knew everybody was OK, I relaxed, mentally. Or maybe that was the feeling I wanted to have, so I gave it to myself, just temporarily. How long could I stay in emergency mode?

“Let’s get you something to eat and drink,” Boozer recommended. So John, Boozer, and I walked over to O’Reilly’s. Normally, we sat at the bar to eat, but the bar was packed. The
whole place was packed. Boozer found us some space in the back, in the dining area where patrons enjoy the frill of white tablecloths. This was the first time I’d sat anywhere but at the bar at O’Reilly’s. Boozer ordered us beers and a ton of food. I didn’t realize it, but I was starving. I was insatiable. I had beers in each hand. I was so keyed up, so intense and full of energy that I could’ve consumed anything and I wouldn’t have felt it at all. I was full of adrenaline, antsy, unable to sit still. I guzzled beer, not to escape or get drunk, but to simply feel the liquid. I devoured one cheeseburger and then another. Boozer continued to fetch food for us from the front bar.

I was inhaling a fistful of fries when Boozer called to me to come to the front. And there I was, on TV. I watched the clip of me running for my life up the West Side Highway.
It’s about 2:30 p.m. Four hours earlier, this was all actually happening. Now I’m watching it on TV!
This was hard to process. “That’s me,” I said sotto voce with some disbelief. It was surreal, and it was frightening all over again.

That was it. Like a lightning bolt, sanity hit me.
I’ve gotta get the hell out of here and go see Joy.

I thanked Boozer for his incredible friendship and generosity. What better wise man could this wanderer have chosen?

John and I started back out on foot and soon after caught a bus heading uptown on 5th Avenue. The driver was not accepting fares. He took us as far as the corner of Central Park South, right in front of the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street. I remember thinking about the bizarre opulence of this New York City landmark juxtaposed against the cataclysmic wreckage I’d been inside not long ago.

There were twenty-nine more blocks and several avenues to go to get to Joy on 88th and 2nd. With John and me back on foot, I got another call from corporate saying that a reporter from
USA
Today
wanted to interview me. “Yeah, fine, whatever,” I said. My mind was in a million places. I couldn’t think straight. “Is it all right if we give out your cell phone number?” they asked. I was apprehensive but had no time to evaluate this. “Yeah, sure. Look, I gotta go.”

Two blocks later, at around 4:30 p.m., my cell phone rang. It was the guy from
USA Today
. He said, “I heard what you did …” Blah, blah, blah. “Is it all right if we talk now?”

I don’t care. Fine. OK.
The reporter was very nice. He patiently asked questions. He listened. He seemed to really get it. According to my cell phone records, it was a forty-five-minute interview. I passed the phone to John, and they talked for a while too.

He asked me some personal questions about my religion. I told him I was an altar boy for seven years. He asked about my physical ability, wanting to know how I could carry the woman down sixty-eight flights. I told him I played college football and rugby. He was pretty thorough.

The next day, Tuesday, September 12, the interview ran prominently in the front page of the Money section in
USA Today
. I can only guess he found out about us from the video clip that ran that day. The article didn’t mention whether the woman we carried out was alive. He didn’t know, and neither did we.

As soon as the interview ended, the phone rang again. It was another college pal from Brown, Billy Hayes. “Harry, what do you need? Where are you?” Billy lived on the Upper West Side.

“Billy, I need a shirt, a jacket, and a hat.”

“I don’t care where you are, Harry. Whatever you need, I’m bringing it to you.”

I gave him my location and told him my final destination: Joy at 88th and 2nd.

“You keep going where you’re going,” Billy said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

At 72nd Street, John and I cut over from 5th Avenue to 2nd Avenue. The phone never stopped ringing. It felt like all I was doing was walking and talking.

We hit 88th and 2nd. I turned the corner to go to Robert’s building, and I ran smack into Billy. He was there with a hat, a jacket, and a shirt.

“You OK?”

“Yeah, I’m OK.”

“C’mon, come with me to this bar over here,” he said, pointing to Cronies on 2nd Avenue.

“I’m on my way to see Joy. She’s waiting for me, Billy.”

“Here, take this stuff. We’ll wait right here for you.”

As I walked away from Billy, things went a little numb. I didn’t feel fatigued or pumped with adrenaline. Now I was just moving. It didn’t matter what direction. I’d see Joy in a minute— in thirty seconds.
My fiancée. My Joy. I will touch her hand and connect back to myself, back to something else, back to clarity and decisiveness and sanity and equilibrium. I’m moving, and I will not stop moving until I see Joy.

We entered the building lobby. Joy came bouncing down the steps. She couldn’t wait to see me. I wanted to embrace her. But I didn’t. Or I couldn’t. She wanted to give me a big hug, but I pulled back. To this day, I don’t know what came over me. I was aloof, almost formal. “How are you doing?” I asked her. I made stiff introductions. “This is John. This is Joy.”

Joy says she looked in my eyes, and there was nobody there. I was gone.

This was supposed to be like a scene out of the movies, where the music swells and the man and the woman have that big emotional reunion after being apart for the entire heart-stopping
ordeal. I don’t know if I wanted it to be that way. Maybe I didn’t want to feel some things. I didn’t want to accept the madness I’d witnessed, the severity of where I’d been. I didn’t want to feel the reality. It was too much to relive right away, too much to reflect on. I didn’t want to accept that I was that close to death and almost didn’t make it. Showing great emotion would be to acknowledge that great emotion was warranted, which meant accepting the thing that caused it—the hell I had been through. It meant I had to accept the terrible feeling I had while trapped under that truck, in the blackness, suffocating and thinking I might not see Joy ever again. Hours had passed since I was under that truck. I had had time to put it out of my head. I couldn’t reverse the slight peace of mind I had found. I couldn’t relive this thing emotionally with her right then and there. I wanted normalcy. I wanted distance from it—distance from my true feelings about what I experienced. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed anymore. I didn’t want another moment today where I would be relinquishing control. By fending off my own emotions, I disabled myself from feeling and showing emotion to Joy, the person with whom I truly wanted to share my deepest feelings. At that moment, I began to build walls. It was a building project that would continue for years.

We went upstairs. Robert had prepared lovely crudités—delicate finger foods—and champagne. He lived in a studio apartment. He never kept much in his apartment anyway. He likely put together whatever he had in the fridge.

Of the innumerable surreal moments of the day, this one topped them all. I took a napkin and began to eat. I felt myself swirling in a daze. I could barely follow the conversation in the room. John was doing a lot of talking. I collected myself for a minute and noticed I was drinking a glass of champagne. My god, what the hell was happening?

I took a shower. John took a shower.

I put on a pair of Robert’s pants; the shirt, jacket, and hat Billy brought me; and a pair of Boozer’s sneakers. “Let’s go out,” I awkwardly suggested. I badly wanted out, mostly out of my own skin.

We met up with Billy Hayes and his friends at Cronies, a loud sports bar with a large, open front window area and what seemed like a TV for every patron. There stood Billy, at the corner of the long bar that stretched almost to the entrance, looking at me the same way he had the last twenty years, with a wise-ass grin that made me feel like I’d known him all my life. I had for most of it anyway. It seemed as though fate conspired to always keep us together.

Billy and I were freshman roommates at Brown, but we’d actually met a year earlier at a coin toss on the 50-yard line of a high school football game. I was a captain for Immaculate Conception High School, and he was a captain for Chatham Borough. It was a tough, close game. My team won.

We both got accepted to Brown. Schools often try to match up jock roommates. I got a note over the summer that my roommate was another football player, but at the last minute, he switched to another school. So they placed me with someone on the waiting list. He and I were complete opposites. Let’s just say he was a bit more interested in his studies than I was. Billy lived in a better dorm on the other side of campus. His assigned roommate got killed in a boating accident off Long Island over the summer before school started, so Billy lived by himself. Days into the fall semester, my roommate got in a car accident. The poor guy took it as an opportunity to move out of our room to a dorm closer to his classes. In the locker room during the first week of freshman football, Billy approached me and said, “Aren’t you Mike Benfante who I played against in high school?”