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 (21 page)

The telecom industry was tanking. But I had a stable income working for Telco Networks. It wasn’t as much as I was making with Network Plus, but I could depend on it, and I needed that for the wedding.

The summer flew by, and each day got more intense as we neared our wedding day and the first anniversary of 9/11.

Anniversary
. What a word for it.

Joy and I moved ourselves into a two-bedroom apartment in Jersey City. In September 2002, the phone was ringing even more incessantly than it had in the days just after 9/11.

This is crazy
.
The pace of my life is crazy
.
I need to have a normal life. Let me just be with Joy, have a normal job, and start building my life again. That’s what I want. Can I let go? Can I let go of 9/11 and just live like I used to live? Can I move past it? Can I just move on?

The week of 9/11, Telco Networks sent out a press release media-wide, industry-wide, and company-wide saying how proud they were to have me working for them because of what I did on 9/11. They seemed to really understand how hard it was for me around that time, being asked to do media, and getting married. I told them it was unnecessary to recognize me like that but that it was very nice of them to do it.

September 11, 2002, fell on a Wednesday.

Our wedding guests were arriving. People from twenty-six different states were coming into town. The schedule: Rehearsal dinner on Thursday night, 9/12. Wedding on Friday night, 9/13, and then a party for out-of-town guests on Saturday afternoon, 9/14. We’d be leaving for our honeymoon in Hawaii on Sunday morning, 9/15.

I accepted an interview on CBS’s
Early Show
with Dan Rather and Paulette Brown for 9/11. I had interviews lined up all day.

I wanted it to be over. I vowed that after this I’d put it all behind me. I couldn’t wait to be on that plane to Hawaii Sunday and start my new life with Joy.

My in-laws-to-be came to Ground Zero with me, outside the set where
The Early Show
was shooting. Also waiting to go on the show was another survivor, a man who had been badly burned. I ignored all the production assistants and producers and spoke with this man for as long as I could. I listened to his story and told him how happy it made me to see him. They took him away to prepare for his appearance. Sadness overwhelmed me when he left.
My god
.
What the hell am I doing here?

Soon it was my turn to go on the air. The interview felt forced, awkward. Everything flowed from an obvious production agenda: Question and answer and move it along. It’s a year later. Things were colder. Automated. There was less connection to September 11,
2001
. They said the word
anniversary
so many times I imagined some guy in a production meeting pitching an idea: “Morning show—9/11 anniversary. Get that wheelchair-story guy on the show.” That’s how it felt. Canned. Packaged. I wanted to talk about being thankful just to be there and looking toward moving forward and getting married in a couple of days. I knew they didn’t want to talk about that. I tried to mention it, at the end, but it sounded forced. They gave me the hook. I walked off the set feeling as though I had just failed a math quiz.

After that, I had to walk uptown for other interviews. The three-minute anniversary segments one after another left me feeling hollow and fatigued.

I had only one more appearance to do, and it would be like no other I had done that year.

That night, I spoke at a 9/11 memorial service at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Montclair, New Jersey, our family church—the church where my father was baptized, where I was
baptized, and where I’d been an altar boy for seven years. The chapel was packed, standing room only. I looked around and saw everyone I had grown up with. Mothers who had fed me lunch, fathers who had driven me home from football practice, men and women whom I had known since they were girls and boys. I was home. There were no cameras, no production equipment of any kind. I got up to the podium, and I said to everyone, “I’m going to tell this story in its entirety, and it’s going to be the last time I do it.”

This is it
.
This is the last time. No more after this.

These were the guys I knew. These were the people I loved. These were the people who had known me since I was a boy. They knew how I was raised. They had a part in it. They knew why the question “Why did you do it?” was a silly question. They were there to hear what I—one of their own—had to say and together memorialize what happened that day. If I had to choose a crowd, person by person, to tell the whole story to, this would be it. And I told all of it. I told what happened to me and how I felt. I told what happened with Tina and what happened after Tina. I told them about running under the truck, the blackness, the helplessness. No one had ever heard that,
that way
, from me before.

I told them everything I could remember and dragged out every emotion I had. I talked for a long time. The church was pin-drop quiet. There were a lot of tears. Tears from me. Tears from others. Before I even got to the podium, I sat in the pew, listening to the congregation sing “Amazing Grace,” and I surrendered to the first real cry I’d had in close to a year. My mother was sitting next to me. She knew I was spent. She knew this was the truth of me here in this church, splayed open, emotionally raw. I listened to the words of the hymn.
I was that wretch. I am the wretch
.
“Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come …”
I was saved.

I sunk my head down between my shoulders so no one could see me crying. I tried to keep it together, tried not to break into pieces. Everything had come to a head that night: a year of so much hurt, confusion, guilt, anger, and distance. It was time to let it all go. All of it. And I unloaded it all up on that pulpit.

My parents had been worried about me the whole year. They knew I had been holding so much in, trying to accommodate media requests, yet sublimating my feelings and keeping things looking good on the outside. This night was about honesty. Finally, and for the first time, I was honest about my experience on 9/11. And I promised myself it would be the last time I’d talk about it. No more speaking after this.

There is no recording of that night. I didn’t use notes. I stepped down from the pulpit after speaking for close to an hour. I looked at Joy, I looked at my parents, and then I looked straight ahead. The path was clear to go to my wedding and get on with my life.

The next night, Thursday, September 12, 2002, was our rehearsal dinner at my sister Maria’s house in Verona. We were out on the lawn. My mom cooked everything. We hosted people in our wedding party, as well as anybody who had arrived from out of town.

Joy’s father is a pastor. Before dinner, we all made a huge circle on the lawn and held hands while he led us in a prayer. We have a beautiful photograph of it. Seeing the important people in our life joined physically and spiritually was a beautiful way to begin our wedding weekend. My father was happy, gliding from guest to guest with his arm around someone everywhere he went. I saw parents talking to parents, friends talking to friends. My heart was happy and slowing down.

I stayed out late that night with Jeff Fernandez, my best man, who dropped me off back at my place in Jersey City. Joy was already fast asleep at her apartment. There were so many things I wanted to say to her right at that moment. Tomorrow, we’d say everything.

Joy and I drove separately to the Pleasantdale Chateau early the next day. She got ready in a separate parlor with her bridesmaids, me with my groomsmen. All arrangements had been made. There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. Before we knew it, it was time for the ceremony.

Three officiants worked our ceremony: Pastor Reyes Osuna, Monsignor Capozelli, and Father Thomas Petrillo from Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Joy’s father incorporated an old Mexican wedding tradition called “lasso,” which involves the bride and the groom kneeling down while encompassed in what looks like a huge rosary-bead lasso. As I knelt down in my tux, tied together with Joy by the lasso, I felt for the first time in a long time like a little kid—like a little innocent boy, stripped of all worldly concerns. I actually felt that I was in a circle of protection. I wanted that lasso to envelop us and make us invisible. Kneeling there on that platform, I felt that I was being transported back to my simplest and most fearless form. It peeled away all my hard bark.

I stared at Joy.
This is it. We can start over.
Joy’s father gently removed the lasso. We stood and faced each other, our friends seated on the lawn in front of us.

We said “I do.” And finally, after all we had been through, we were married.

Joy and I were whisked into a private room, and the cocktail hour began. They sent in things for us to taste. The food was off the charts. Joy’s cousin’s little daughter, six-year-old Alessandra, wandered in. Joy said, “Let’s be alone.” I said, “Let her stay.”

The three-piece orchestra and vocalist we’d hired for our ceremony continued playing into the cocktail hour. We left our little room and walked out into the grandeur that is the Pleasantdale—a perfectly kept hundred-plus-year-old French château. We pushed open the ballroom doors, which led out to the sprawling lawn set against a perfect, beautiful starlit night. It was like a cinematic peeling away of the curtains: everyone dressed up, drinks, music, laughter. I knew that this was what I wanted, not just what I wanted for my wedding.
This was life.

Everyone was there. My whole family. Joy’s family. All my college buddies—Billy Hayes, Jeff Fernandez, Ruby, Sleepy, Paul Morfogen, Sully,
JP
, Joe Osborne. Boozer was there. The guys from home—the Lever brothers, the Michura brothers, the McKeowns. The Network Plus gang—Kevin Nichols, Mark Reinstein, Neil Lucente, Felix Kiliski, Ryan Raynor, Heidi Inzerrillo, Scott Jenkins, Rob Norton, John Cerqueira. So many more.

Tina was there with her fiancé, Calvin. She didn’t want me to feel obligated to invite her. Same old Tina. We had done so much together during that year. She got to know Joy and got to know me. She followed along with my life, the wedding plans, etc. For that whole year she tried very hard to remain a private person. She didn’t like doing interviews. She never wanted to make that big of a deal out of it. But just like on the stairwells of the North Tower, she and I had come too far together. This was no obligation. She was part of my life. And she was part of this perfect day.

I whooped it up. The boys from home, guys from Brown, the gang from Network Plus—I danced with them all. It was everything I ever wanted out of a wedding. The night flew by in a dizzying whirl of dreamy reverie.

The band left, the bar closed, but I couldn’t let it end. We took a cooler onto the veranda, still partying with the remaining core. Joy had a migraine headache throughout the entire wedding. I didn’t know. She went up to our room, and all the wives were like,
Get up there, buddy
. So I did.

The next day we went to Paul Morfogen’s house, where he hosted a barbecue for all of the out-of-town guests.

The following morning we flew out to Hawaii. I got on the plane and said,
That’s it
.
It’s all behind me now. This thing that happened, the media, the sleeplessness, the anger, the guilt, the “hero” stuff—it’s done. It’s time for a new chapter.

We spent a week in Maui and then a week in Kauai. We hiked the Napali Coast, traveled the Road to Hana, watched the sunset atop Mount Haleakala.

I am refreshed. I am renewed. I am ready to go forward.

Hero gets the girl. Hero gets his life back. Fade to credits.

*
The night before I handed in my final edits on this manuscript, Osama bin Laden was killed by American special forces in Pakistan. Just shy of ten years after 9/11, he was “brought to justice.” How did it feel for me so many years later? It was a mix of feelings—welcome relief, honest surprise, some anger, but mostly immense pride in our military and government. Bin Laden’s death cannot recover even a fraction of the loss. I know now that whatever I have become since 9/11, whatever growth I have achieved had and has nothing to do with him.

ACCESS DENIED
.

That’s all my computer would say to me. I tried to log on. Punched in my password again. Still:
ACCESS DENIED
.

This was Monday morning, first day back from my honeymoon. I strolled into my office at Telco Networks in Newark, whistling a happy tune. I said good morning to the receptionist, said cheery hellos to everyone in the office, planted myself at my desk. I had gotten in early to get a jump on whatever piled up while I was away. It looked like my first call would be to an IT guy.

The IT guy said I should call the regional manager. I spoke to several regional managers—none of whom made any sense— until one finally said I ought to call our VP. My VP was totally nonchalant. It must’ve slipped his mind, he said. Then he said the person who was supposed to be in my office when I arrived today should’ve been there. “Look,” he sighed, “I’ve got to run to a meeting, but here’s the bottom line: In the last two weeks”— the two weeks I was on my
honeymoon
—“your sales region was dismantled, which basically means we had to eliminate your position.”
Jeezus Christ, I’ve been fired. I was actually fired before I even walked in the door.
“Sorry, Mike, but I really gotta run.”