story9414.xml

story9414.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-08-12

The story of 9/11/01 which I am about to tell you may sound hard to believe. To those of you who doubt just go to the bookstore and look for the book entitled "HERE IS NEW YORK".Just turn to page #305 and you can see my picture. Thats me with the red,dazed face. SEPTEMBER 11TH 2001 WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY.The view facing south to the bay from our offices in First Union Bank was fantastic. At the time of the first attack I was sitting in my managers office on a conference call with our home office in Charlotte N.C.. There was a huge explosion and everything began to tremble. As we all jumped out of our chairs, the building actually rocked back and forth. I thouht that it would topple over.Luckily it righted itself. Out side of the window I could see concrete, glass and what looked like pieces of machinery falling too the ground. There was millions of pieces of paper fluttering in the breeze. I have been to ticker-tape parades on Broadway but this was the most paper that I had ever seen. If any of you have seen say, a mouse run by you and doubt that you really saw one, then you will know the feeling I had seeing airplane seats,people and those certain pillows and blankets hurtle past our windows. Moving into our main floor all of the people were away from the windows and many were on the phones.When we contacted the lobby we were told to stay put. Many of the employees began to go thru the procedure of locking our vault after putting stocks and bonds away. The room began to get very smokey and I went to the emergency exit in the back of our office. I felt the doorknob with the back of my hand and it was warm. Also smoke was coming in from under the door.Clearly this was not the way to get out. I went to my desk and grabbed a wind-breaker jacket I wore that day and stuffed it under the door. As I write I realize this story is too long to write. To make a long story short. I am 1 of 20 people who survived after being buried alive under the tower collapse. I dug myself out but had 4 co-workers killed who were with me.