The New Road

9/11 Story

I had another fascinating Jetblue conversation. Another passenger was interested in my laptop so we got to talking. How we got up on 9/11 I don't know, but he had a fascinating story to tell.

Turns out he works for Morgan Stanley and he was on the 60th floor of Tower 2 on 9/11. He was giving a morning briefing to his traders when he saw over his shoulder the first plane headed directly towards Tower 1. He said, "What the fuck was that?" to all of the traders, and the person next to him said, "You can't say that." He looked back and said, "What the fuck was that?" pointing out the side of the building. At which point he saw the explosion in the other building. It blew out some windows and a trader on the floor was sucked out of the side of the building. They looked up and saw the fire.

His brother is a fire fighter so he knew what to do (e.g., never use the elevators, keep low, bring water, take off high heels). They started down the stairs and got to the observation lounge on the 44th floor. The speakers in the building then told them to return to their offices because the problem was with the other building. He told the people around him not to go but 130 or so of his people got on the elevators. They were killed by the fireball when the second plane hit their building. The building reeled and shifted the doors around so that they couldn't open them. They tried and tried but weren't successful opening the door.

He then heard a thud, thud, thud on the wall and saw silver axes coming through the wall. It was ladder 1010 and they created a whole big enough to get 137 people out of the building.

Now at this point I could see he was choked up as he talked about the firefighters. One of whom told him to "tell Ghami I love her". He then trudged up towards the 44th floor to save his firefighter friends, never to be seen again. He says he told Ghami that the fireman loved her weeks later at the medal ceremony.

I asked him whether he would vote for Bush and he said no. That he couldn't tell the difference between the parties but it was obvious that Bush had failed in his war on terror. Three years later the terrorists are still there. He said, "Like Donald Trump I would say 'Your fired!'".

I was amazed, so I asked again. "You were there. On 9/11. In the building. You saw people die around you. And you wouldn't vote for Bush?" And again he said, "No."

Continuing on he said that he was part of the ceremonial army crew that keeps guard on the President and that he thinks the terror warnings are bogus. He cited as an example the Reagan funeral ceremony. He said that you could look around the cathedral and see almost the entire power base of the world, both former and present. Given his experience he says that if Al Qaeda had been a real threat that this convergence never would have happened. I would have been too much of a security risk.

Just before we split up to board the plane he said that he would vote for Kerry because of the stem cell issue. It's an issue for his family and on that issue along Kerry "bought his vote". I don't think he's a single issue voter, but I hadn't heard stem cell law being mentioned as a deciding factor before.

It was nice to hear from someone who was there that they don't suffer from the Republican jingoistic nonsense which has swept the nation after 9/11.