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For Port
Authority retirees, bittersweet memories remain
Ken Philmus, a former Port Authority executive, used to make this drive every day. Driving his blue Lexus SUV along Routes 1 & 9, past the boxy warehouses and port facilities, he looked across the river, where the Twin Towers stood. As he ascended the Pulaski Skyway, a thought seized him, and his eyes reddened. The memory: Philmus and Dwight Darcy, a labor attorney, negotiating with a union of automotive technicians in the early 1980s. Darby was on the 66th floor of the north tower and died in the Sept. 11 attacks. "He didn't get a lot of the attention other people got, post-9/11," Philmus, 56, said. "He was just sort a quiet kind of guy. Very capable." The sky was clear and blue, just like that day five years ago, when 12 of his civilian employees were killed. They worked in the north tower.
Philmus was at a conference in Boston on Sept. 11, 2001. The conflicting feelings of guilt and good fortune pushed him into a frenzy of activity. He managed a rehabilitation of the Holland Tunnel, counseled the wives of fallen colleagues and attended so many Catholic funerals that he felt he could recite every word in the Mass. Although he has been gone for more than a year, Philmus still thinks about the Port Authority. His new office in Iselin, where he works for the national transportation firm DMJM Harris, is decorated with reminders of the Port Authority's indispensable bridges and tunnels.
Medallion recovered After a PATH ride into the World Trade Center station, he walked to a restaurant, Dominic on Greenwich Street, to meet some Port Authority friends who had retired before 9/11. Jim Kelly and Maxine Finkelstein were waiting outside. They all hugged. Moments later, Arnold Karvasarsky and Bob Isaacs arrived. They are 60-somethings who retired on the same day in 1999. Along with Kelly, their repartee is reminiscent of a buddy comedy. On their first day of retirement, Kelly and Isaacs called Philmus from the Cranbury golf club and "asked him if he was having a good day, too," Isaacs said. Laura Radin, another retiree, joined them. They sat at a long table and ordered lunch and sangria made with white wine. "You think there are going to be bagpipes today?" Philmus asked. "Very possibly," Karvasarsky said. The conversation was not all so glum. They shared many laughs about old colleagues and professional bloopers. Finkelstein recalled a time before the Port Authority mastered unfurling its massive American flag from the George Washington Bridge. The first device to mechanize the process actually fell hundreds of feet onto a car, she said. The group is a family now. If they didn't feel that way before the 1993 attack, they did afterward. Many spent their entire careers in the World Trade Center, starting in the early 1970s. Karvasarsky, 64, viewed one of the first finished floors in 1973 and ended his career in 1999, showing the buildings to prospective buyers. "I was telling all those people the buildings were impervious to a 707 jet," he said, "and truly believed it." The group walked the 10 blocks back to St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street, where politicians took turns talking before a marble pulpit. When the bagpipes began, Philmus bit his upper lip and looked up. Why was he away that day? At some point, Philmus said, he decided that God had a different plan for him. Maybe it was helping to lead people through a crisis. But he doesn't know if that were the plan and decided he never will. Still, Philmus believes he could have made a difference. This was how he spent his career, he said. "I am absolutely confident I would have told those people to leave," he said, leaving the church and heading to Ground Zero. Philmus caught up to some of his friends. Together, they walked the long ramp toward the bottom of the pit, where their office once stood. Lately, he has been thinking of going back. Private-sector work is lucrative and important, he said. But Philmus misses working for the public. "I was in the middle of things," he said. "I don't feel that way now." E-mail: michaels@northjersey.com
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On Monday, Philmus went
to see some fellow Port Authority retirees. They
attended the agency's annual remembrance service.
Philmus was dressed for the occasion, wearing a
chalk-striped gray suit, silver cuff links and a red
tie. "Today is going to be tough," he said. "I
hope they don't play the bagpipes." Two of his
closest friends at the agency, Stephen J. Fiorelli and
Patrick A. Hoey, were killed five years ago. Philmus
believes he might have been the last person to talk to
Hoey, an engineer who worked on the 64th floor. Philmus
urged him to leave the building, but the police may have
told him to stay. Then the connection was gone.