About 12 years ago, my little company started up a SEP-IRA so employees could share in what little profits we make and defer some income for retirement. For me, it represents my entire retirement savings, and what I’ve been able to put away is invested in various Fidelity mutual funds. Like lots of other people, I got clobbered after 9/11 when the stock market went south, then again when the high tech bubble burst. Since January, I’ve experienced steady losses in value as the recession took hold and this week the bottom dropped out of the stock market again following the Freddie-Fannie-Lehman-Merrill meltdown. I just recalculated what I have against what I need and concluded I’ll now be able to retire at age 85. (More)

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Mary Ellen Sachetti, safety director for a large NYC construction company, was at the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11.  Her story is as harrowing as it is inspirational. 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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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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Hugh Smith, a carpenter, was working at the World Trade Center 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. (More)

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This past Sunday may go down as the day pigs flew over Washington, DC. Conservative President George W. Bush, in what the New York Times said “may become the biggest government funded bailout of private industry in American history,” ordered the virtual nationalization of the home mortgage industry. Bush wannabe John McCain agreed with him (as always), then called for more government oversight of the financial free markets, and told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” that he intends to take several Democrats with him into the White House. To cap off the morning talk shows, Jack Nicholson showed up on “Meet the Press” to argue with Tom Brokaw about Iraq and to declare that he’d be a better vice president than Sarah Palin, and one national candidate continued giving an awful impression of Richard Pryor. (More)

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 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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This is the third in a series of verbatim excerpts from  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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 This is another excerpt from interviews with Ground Zero construction workers several months after 9/11. Phil Morelli, a laborer, was inside Tower On, beginning his normal workday, when the first plane hit.  After barely escaping with his life, he would return to Ground Zero to work for many months on the recovery and deconstruction efforts.  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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