A different 9/11 story will be posted every day this week.  Please share.

The morning of September 1, 2001, I was in Lower Manhattan.  My colleague Jeffrey Lerner and I had just finished a short walk and were about to join a friend of his for breakfast when the doorman at the Gramercy Park Hotel told us an airplane had accidently flown into one of the World Trade Center Towers.  We were gorging on eggs and has browns when our server brought  the news that a second plane had hit another tower.  We rushed up to my room to watch Aaron Brown deliver the awful truth on CNN.  Jefffrey and his friend, a young cinematographer, headed for what would become known as “Ground Zero” to videotape what they could.  I stayed in my room, fantasizing a nuclear attack while frantically trying to reach my daughter, who lived in the City, and my wife, whose office overlooks the White House.

Thousands of police officers, firefighters, construction workers and medical personnel weren’t so self-absorbed or fearful: they picked up their tools and rushed downtown to help with rescue efforts, many of them losing their lives as a result.  A few months later, the actor (and trade unionist) Richard Masur and I visited Ground Zero and videotaped interviews with a dozen construction workers who were still working 24/7 in the recovery effort.  We used the material gathered to produce a video for the Building Trades Department, AFL-CIO, and I later created some composite characters and fiction work from what I’d learned.  My first piece was inspired by the fire fighters and police officers who go there first.  I told a part of their story through the words of a  of a restaurant worker from “Windows on the World’ who managed to escape before the twin towers collapsed.  I tried to confront the horror as well as my own failings of that day by melding her voice into a short poem:

                                                                     Body Parts

A hand lies trembling in the street.

             It has no mouth, it cannot speak;

             It cannot run, it has no feet.

Up they went,   hats and boots and legs and heads.

             Down they came, no shouts or screams, already dead.

Bodies was dropping everywhere, Daria said.

Me and someone else saw a shoe under a piece of car,

so we lifted it up  and there was a leg with nothing else attached..

There were strollers with babies in them, turned on their side.

I saw a rescue worker with his arm and shoulder blown off.

He was screaming and running and the policeman

was trying to stop him to help him, but he was panicked

because the blood was coming out of him.

I saw so many people jumping and falling out the building.

One couple took each other’s hands as they jumped..

Up they went, young and strong and full of heart.

             Down they came, broken picks and body parts.

A hand lies decomposing in the street.

            The living stare, but do not weep;

            The dead look down, but do not sleep.

-end-

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After finishing the roundtable discussion at Ground Zero (see previous blog posts), actor-activist Richard Masur and I interviewed a small group of government people, construction company executives and construction trades executives in a nearby office tower.  Among them was Mary Ellen Sachetti, who told us a harrowing and inspiring story of her experiences on 9/11 and the days that followed.  It is much longer than previous posts in this series, but it is worth the read.

Sachetti (excerpts, lightly edited): We actually had a job at the site.  We were doing the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Plaza.  I was down there for a final inspection and it was a beautiful day.  I remember that around nine o’clock or so I had gone inside and then all of a sudden I heard these people saying that a plane had hit.  We weren’t really sure what was going on.  I had stepped outside and all these papers were coming down all around us.  We didn’t know.  We couldn’t even fathom where the paper was coming from, and I said: “This is really serious.”  By the time I walked back into the building I had gotten a call from my main office telling me that we were, that something was terribly wrong, and that I needed to evacuate our building.

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This is the sixth installment in a series of verbatim excerpts from roundtable interviews with construction workers conducted by actor-activist Richard Masur at Ground Zero in March, 2002. We were one of the first outside film crews allowed on the site, producing a video for the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO.  Masur had an affinity for the workers because he’d been organizing other stars to visit the site since shortly after the terrorist attacks.  Greg Noland spoke up near the end of the three-hour session. 

Noland: [lightly edited] If I was to speak of a defining moment, probably about maybe seven or eight days into it, I realized we weren’t going to find anybody alive.  Something came over me and I thought we’re not going to find anybody here alive, and I started to detach from the people, from the body bags.

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Bobby Gray: (lightly edited) I was working as a tower crane operator about 50 stories in the air on Forty-third at Eighth and actually saw the first plane hit.  I know my perception was off a bit, but it actually looked like it was going to hit the tip of the boom [of his crane].  My first reaction was: “Why is this guy so low?”  Then, before I could even get that out, I was like: “And why is he over Midtown?” 

I kinda followed it [the plane] down and it tucked behind, I guess it’s the Sheraton building, and I said: “Oh, it’s just going to Newark.”  I couldn’t actually see the impact, but I saw the fireball and I, it was, you know, you were, it just didn’t process.  You couldn’t figure out how this could happen and on a clear day.  It was so crystal clear.  I actually called up my partner and said: “Can you come up?  I need to get down and see what’s going on.” 

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This is the fourth in a series of personal stories taken from on interviews with Ground Zero construction workers in March, 2002.  The material comes from a roundtable discussion that was conducted by actor-activist Richard Masur inside a trailer at the site for a video we were producing.  Most of the men, and one woman, had been working there  since shortly after the attacks.  Masur himself had been a constant volunteer, organizing other actors and personalities to visit and boost morale.  Phil Morelli was inside Tower On, beginning his normal workday, when the first plane hit.

Phil Morelli (lightly edited excerpts): The building I was in was Tower One and as I walk by 50A into the Secret Service parking lot, that’s when the big impact of whatever hit.  I didn’t know what was going on and the big impact threw me up against a wall in the corridor.

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This is the third installment in a series of seven excerpts from interviews with Ground Zero construction workers several months after 9/11.  They were part of a video we were producing, narrated by the actor, Richard Masur.  Most of the men, and one woman, had been working on the site since shortly after the attacks.  Masur himself had been a constant volunteer, organizing other actors and personalities to visit and boost morale.  Like many construction workers, Bob Bartels, Jr., an ironworker, realized his skills were needed and just showed up ready to work.

Bob Bartels (lightly edited):When we got here, everybody was just in shock.  It was just a horrible sight.  We had the acetylene tanks that were coming off, and the oxygen tanks were coming off and we just grabbed, put a set together, walked out and asked a fireman: “Where do we need to burn?”

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Several months after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the actor Richard Masur interviewed a group of construction workers inside a trailer at Ground Zero for a video we were producing.  Most of the men, and one woman, had been working on the site since shortly after the attacks.  Masur himself had been a constant volunteer, organizing other actors and personalities to visit and boost morale. Joe Rubido hustled down to the World Trade Center the moment he heard about the attacks.

Joe Rubido (lightly edited): I got down to the Trade Center at the foot of the South Tower probably six, seven minutes before it collapsed. I have some medical training. I used to work on an ambulance at one time, and I thought, there’s no way the city can respond with the amount of people that are probably gonna be hurt, and I thought I could be of some help. (More)

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Several months after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the actor Richard Masur interviewed a group of construction workers inside a trailer at Ground Zero for a video we were producing.  Most of the men, and one woman, had been working on the site since shortly after the attacks.  Masur himself had been a constant volunteer, organizing other actors and personalities to visit and boost morale.  Hugh Smith was there when the planes rammed the twin towers. 

Hugh Smith (lightly edited): I was here on that morning.  I was in the loading dock at about 6:30 in the morning and the company I was with was starting a job over in One Liberty.  I was going across the street to One Liberty to oversee the men, and I came back out and somebody told me a plane hit the Trade Center. I mean, this beautiful clear day, like today, and I couldn’t believe it.

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