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 (4 page)

When it came time for my parents to drop me off at my freshman dorm, I didn’t think it was a big deal. But it was a big deal for my mom. I was the first in our family to leave home and the first to graduate college. (It helped that in high school I made all-county football and track, became an honors student, and was recruited by Brown to play football.) After we said our good-byes, my dad came back up to my room because my mother forgot something. “Why didn’t Mom come back up?” I wanted to know. She was crying in the car, that’s why. And it dawned on me then how much it meant to her, keeping the family together. The family unit remains the most important thing in the world to my mother.

She wrote me letters at college all the time. I still have them. There’s nothing better than getting a letter when you’re at school. My mother always gave me support and encouragement. She senses better than anyone what’s going on with me—even when I don’t know what’s going on with me, which is more often than I’d like. She knows when to knock you down and pick you up. She’s the best at picking me up. My mother knows I don’t make all the right decisions in life, but she’s not too critical. Still, she lets me know just what she’s thinking.

When I announced my engagement to Joy, I thought my mother would be thrilled. I was thirty-six years old with a long history of relationships that had gone nowhere. Some had met the family, but most didn’t. So how did my mother react to the news that her oldest son was finally settling down? “Know what you’re doing here,” she said to me. “Don’t mess around—for
her
, and for you. Don’t be a jackass.” My own mother was asking me what my intentions were.

I didn’t exactly make it easy on my parents all the time. During my teen years, I was a bit of a hell-raiser. I got into a lot of trouble in and out of school. Half the teachers loved me, and half resented me. I was making national honor roll during the week and getting into huge brawls over the weekend.

My parents couldn’t choose my friends any more than I could choose my family. But the friends I chose, no matter how they might have looked like to outsiders, carried—at their core—a code of values that made sense to me. I know in my heart that if it was one of those guys who found themselves on the 68th floor in Tower 1 on 9/11, they would’ve done no different than I did, and you would’ve read about one of them in the papers and seen them on
Oprah
instead of me. Not one of those guys would have left anybody behind. How do I know? Because that’s the way we were with each other. Maybe we did get into trouble—
but we were in it together. When one was in trouble, all were in trouble. I’m talking about the Lever brothers, Mike and Rick (we called them Ike and Clever), the Michura brothers, Paul and Luke (Nips and Louie), and the McKeown brothers—Bob, Tom, and Paul (Bull, Tom, and Mac). They were all older than me. We played football together in Pop Warner and high school. And that led to other stuff. But whatever it was we got into, it was always backed by an all-for-one-and-one-for-all code. If each of us is made up of where we’ve been in this life, then who I was and what I did on 9/11 surely had something to do with those boys. And maybe my parents knew that about me and them, and knew we were worth the “trouble.”

My parents knew when to let the reins go and when to pull them back. They struck the right balance with me, because truth be told, I was the type of kid who could’ve gotten into a lot more trouble than I did. They gave me an unconditional love that let me know I could always go home. And I always wanted to.

That’s what’s most important, I think:
wanting
to be with your family. No matter how lost you get running with the fast crowd, partying or thinking that you’re somebody you’re not, you’ll be OK if you find solace and safety in the desire to return home. As they say, “There’s no place like home.” My mother and my father made it like that, for me and each of my three siblings.

My brother, Angelo, is two and a half years younger than me. He is my youngest sibling. When we were teenagers, I tried to keep some distance because I didn’t want him to run with my crowd. We grew extremely close as adults. Angelo got married before I did. He and his wife, Lisa, had two children, my niece Amanda and my nephew Angelo Jr., who is also my godson
.

Nobody has a bigger heart than my big sister Maria. She’ll do anything for you. Wherever she’s worked, whatever group she’s involved in—they all love Maria. Like my mother, she lives
for her kids. She and her husband, Marc, have three children: MarcAnthony, Sara and Angelina, and I marvel at how much love she gives her family day in and day out.

Susan is my oldest sister. She has Down syndrome. We had to look out for her.

In many ways, with Susan, it was always like having a younger sister. This is another thing about my parents. When Susan was born in 1959, they didn’t know as much about Down syndrome and other disabilities as they do today. Back then, parents were often advised by doctors to institutionalize the child. Susan was born premature. She lay in the hospital incubator, very tiny, and my father would visit every day. When he put his hands into the rubber gloves and held Susan through the incubator, he said, “I don’t care what those doctors say. She’s coming home, and she’s going to live with us.” And that’s where Susan lives to this day.

Your home can be a place where you learn fundamental values. My home taught me love for all kinds of people no matter how different they may be. It taught me to value and respect each individual. We take care of each other. We don’t give that responsibility over to others. This gave me a special insight and awareness. I always knew. I didn’t have to be told. I was protective to a fault sometimes. I got into a few scrapes with people who aren’t as sensitive and not as understanding. You know how kids are.

I remember attending events at Susan’s school for disabled children, with Maria and Angelo. We used to run around with all these kids with Down syndrome or autism or whatever. We had a blast. Some people get a little skittish around disabled people—
people like that.
I just treat them like anybody else. As a result, everybody has fun.

As siblings go, we grew up literally closer than most. Angelo and I shared the same room until we went to college. Our twin beds were so close together we could stretch out our arms and
practically shake hands. My sister Maria shared the same room with Susan almost up until the time she was married. Maria and Susan still live in the same house, and Maria, like my parents, looks after her just like she always has.

My family holds tight to an ethic of taking care of each other. We are truly each other’s keepers. There was never any question of that. People ask me, “If Susan had not been disabled, how would the dynamics of the family been different?” Well, if she wasn’t who she is, she wouldn’t be my sister Susan. I know we are richer for having her. It has given us more insight into what life is all about. It has given us a better understanding of how everybody isn’t born with the same abilities as everybody else. You have to consider yourself fortunate. Look, I grew up with a crew of tough guys, and I would cringe when I heard the word
retard
. But there are only so many battles you can fight. This sensitivity is a gift Susan has given me—given our whole family. It has made me realize that I have abilities—physical, analytical, intuitive—that other people don’t have. When you see someone struggling with something, something that would be a snap for you because of your strength, size, or intellect, then help them out! Whoever has the ability to care, takes the care. I live that imperative because I learned it young. I was blessed with being in a position to help—to give strength, lend intelligence, provide defense—when I could. So I did.

That Sunday, a little after 10:00 p.m., Joy and I left Angelo’s house after an episode of
The Sopranos
, a show that always left me ambivalent. In the thirty-minute drive back to Jersey City, I was already feeling the onset of my “Sunday night blues,” as Joy called it. It was more like Sunday-night anxiety derived from the cold, hard fact that I had to get up insanely early for the weekly Monday morning Network Plus conference call the next day. There were fourteen Network Plus sales offices up and down the East Coast.
Where your office finished in sales for the previous week determined what time you got your call. The earliest call began at 5:00 a.m., and the latest one at 7:45 a.m. Any way you sliced it, it was an early wake-up. And Monday was all about clockwork.

I’ve never been someone who, as soon as he moves into a new apartment, kicks into
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
mode. I’m more college dormitory
anti
-chic. My basement apartment in Jersey City reflected this interior design philosophy. I’d positioned the bed in the obvious spot, slid in a couple of end tables, and made sure the TV was viewable from every angle in the apartment. I had no couch in this small space, so I watched TV from bed. It was a railroad-style apartment. First car was the living room / bedroom; then you hit the kitchen, then the bathroom. There was a door to the back patio area. My building was an old one that, to my knowledge, had never been refurbished.

I don’t like getting up early. So I didn’t like my 5:00 a.m. start on Mondays. I tried to make my morning rituals as unconscious as possible. I shaved. (I hate shaving. I tried to shave every other day, but it didn’t really work.) I threw on a suit, I grabbed my backpack—which I used the way most people use a wallet—and I was out the door.

The advantage of taking the PATH train before rush hour was that the trains weren’t crowded. The disadvantage was there weren’t very many trains running. So if the PATH didn’t come in on time, I was late for the Monday-morning call. Then I’d start off the day and my week in a bad mood. In my head, I would already be in a bad mood just worrying about being in a bad mood. Welcome to my Monday-morning commute.

The PATH train was, for all practical purposes, my only way to work, to the World Trade Center. I took it every day. The PATH Pavonia-Newport Station was about a half-mile walk from my apartment. It’s a ten-minute ride—two stops—to the World Trade Center. I typically bought a number of tokens in advance. When I first began working at the World Trade Center office, the PATH cost $1. Now it’s like two bucks and rising, but still a pretty good deal.

My daily commute had become a matter of repetition. I can still recall every step as if I’m doing it right now:

Once I go underground to catch the PATH, I never feel the outside again. Ten minutes later, the PATH doors open, and I am in the basement of the World Trade Center. I walk up a small flight of stairs and step onto a giant escalator bank, which carries me up to the main shopping area in the North Tower, or Tower 1. I walk right by the Verizon Wireless kiosk where I bought my cell phone. I walk briskly through the shopping corridor, which looks like a subset of any top mall in the country: Banana Republic, Gap, Godiva, Borders. Invariably, I stop at American Coffee and grab a cup of black with sugar. I leave the shopping area and enter the North Tower lobby. It is an enormous lobby. Off to the right is a whole row of twenty to twenty-five security desks. Turning to the left, I flash my security pass to the guard stationed behind the battery of turnstiles lined in front of the elevators. From there, I take one of several main elevators that hold up to fifty people and rocket from the lobby to the 78th floor in forty-five seconds. My ears pop every time I ride that damn elevator. I walk off the express elevator and take a “local” one to the 81st floor, which deposits me right outside the door to the Network Plus office.

We occupied the southeast corner office, seven thousand square feet with large wooden doors at the entrance. Bank of
America had just moved in across the hall. They were the only other company on the floor. If you walked a straight line to the back of our office and took a hard left, you walked into our conference room, which was located in the physical corner of the building. The view from the conference room was breathtaking. From the east window, you could see across the East River to Brooklyn with full views of the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and Manhattan bridges. From the south window, you could see the southern tip of Manhattan Island, the Statue of Liberty, and parts of New Jersey. It felt about as New York City as any office could feel.

Kevin Nichols, the regional manager, was an early riser, and always the first in. That Monday was no exception. I grumbled as I walked by him, thinking about what I might need to address on the conference call: New sales? Big sales? New hires? New fires? What did I have in the pipeline? Was it a bad week, and why? Would I get a lambasting or a kudos? I tried to anticipate the CEO’s mood. These were my big concerns.

I dropped my bag in my office, gathered some documents, and went to Kevin’s office for the call. After escaping the conference call relatively unscathed, I prepared for a meeting with my entire staff at 8:15 a.m. They had to be in by 8:00 a.m. That was the rule. Whoever came in past 8:00 a.m. paid $2. If I was late, I paid $10. I got my thoughts organized about what I wanted to say to the team. I created a handout that noted the top sales of the week and included bullet points for discussion—what we had gone over during the managers’ conference calls, new training, what to look for in the marketplace, product promos. I printed out forty copies.

We gathered in the conference room. I ran the meeting— delivered the information, motivated them, and prepared them to go sell for the week. I also reminded them that we needed to
meet quotas and, of course, of what they needed to do to win an open bar. I always ended the meetings with some type of relevant inspirational or motivational quote. Whoever guessed the author earned a free lunch. Monday is an in day, so they hit the phones, made calls, and set up appointments. My door, I told them, was always open.

We all took the same lunch hour: 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. There was no flexibility with that. But man, did we treasure that hour. The courtyard of the World Trade Center was such a vibrant area. (Maybe people forget that now.) Your every want could be fulfilled in a one-to-two-block radius. The World Trade Center had its own mall with top-notch retail stores and food. If you needed a clean shirt or a new tie, Century 21 was across the street. Borders was next door. We went out to lunch as a crew. We’d grab cheap Chinese on Fulton Street or tasty Cuban from Sylvia’s on Greenwich. If we didn’t want to walk very far, we’d buy the tandoori chicken–basmati rice combo or something else delicious off a truck just a few yards from the North Tower’s front door. Tables were set up around the courtyard’s fountain. We liked eating there, outside. That time of year, that Monday, they still had bands playing near the fountain in front of the Towers.