My last position at the Port was Engineering Program Manager New York Airports with an office on the 73rd floor. At the end of 2000, I had taken the buyout, intending to take it easy and live on the pension and savings after thirty years with the agency. I lasted three months. A phone call to a friend got me a position as a project manager at the New York office of Lockwood Greene, one of the oldest engineering firms in the country. The office was on Lexington Avenue at 32nd Street on the 11th or 12th floor with a terrace on the Lexington Avenue side. Looking down the avenue, you could see the World Trade Center in the distance. Although I had met friends, former colleagues, for lunch downtown, I had not been up to my former office. The World Trade Center was a part of my life. I had worked on th demolition drawings of the old H&M structures and contemporary construction inside the buildings. For all its faults, I was fond of the place and of my colleagues.
I was in my small office on the side street when a shout went up that something had hit one of the World Trade Center Buildings. I joined other people on the terrace and saw material flying out of the north side of Tower two. I think I saw smoke from Tower one, but my memory is not accurate. I remembered that the Empire State Building had survived an aircraft hit, but this looked worse and the damage to both buildings indicated an attack rather than an accident. One of my Lockwood colleagues told me that I had told him the buildings would fall, but I don’t remember that and I think that he was mistaken. But, they did fall.
I was so upset that I do not remember seeing them go down; I think I blocked it out. I had left one hundred and forty people in my group on the 73rd floor and friends in almost every department of the PA in the building. I did not know whether any had survived. I walked uptown, stopping at a Red Cross blood donation center. They were not taking any blood donations. I kept walking stopping at a bar. Had a double scotch, which had no effect. I was going to walk over the 59th Street bridge (I still cannot bring myself to call it the Ed Koch bridge) but by the late afternoon the Flushing Line was running into Queens and I got home.
It was important to find out who had survived so where I had home email addresses, I started getting in touch with people and we started a chain e mail and began to establish lists. Old friends in TB&T had decided to stay behind and help. They did not make it. My guys (I include the women in that) did. We lost people above where the plane had struck in Tower one, but most- at least in Engineering- who were below the plane, got out. The lists of those saved and those lost got longer.
I could not bring myself to go down to the site and when discussions of how to rebuild began I just wanted the buildings replaced, only taller. I still miss them. I miss the friends I lost. I miss the buildings that I spent much of my life in. The Calatrava structure is wonderful, but it is not my World Trade Center.
