Ken Berwitz
Fourteen years ago today, I had gone to my office early and was sitting at my desk working, when the phone rang.
It was our older son. He said, “Dad, do you have the TV on”? I told him I did not. He said, “Put it on. It won\’t matter which channel”.
He then told me that he, too was in his office, and heard a huge crash across the street. When he looked out of his 34th floor window he saw the middle of one of the trade center towers – no more than a couple of hundred feet away – was on fire.
As I watched the TV coverage, our son surmised that it must have been either a major explosion of some kind, or possibly a plane had crashed into the building.
He did not say a word about terrorism. For those first few moments, neither he nor I nor, I suspect, most other people, thought that way.
He then said he would hang up and call mom so she would know he was OK.
While he was speaking to my wife – and now, of course, looking out of his window at the towers – he saw the second plane hit. Then he and everyone else knew what it was.
The phone went dead. And for hours, long after both towers had collapsed and disintegrated, we frantically tried to call him every way we knew how, but the phone lines were hopelessly jammed and we could not get through.
Finally, in the early afternoon, we got a call from his then-girlfriend (now our beautiful daughter in law), telling us she had gotten through to him. He and others in his office rushed out of the building – while both of the towers were still standing. Once outside, our son headed in the opposite direction from the towers (which may well have saved his life, since so many people died from falling debris.) and walked/ran from there all the way to their Upper East Side apartment.
Only days later did we find out that our younger son, who had just graduated from college, had a job interview, scheduled for 9:00AM, at a very famous company – one you would easily associate with this disaster – on a high floor in one of the towers.
But the interview had been canceled the day before.
We can\’t know for sure, but we believe that, since the interview was arranged as a courtesy by one of his friend\’s father (who was an executive at the company), our son just wasn\’t that important to them, so they had no problem better-dealing him and moving the interview to a later date. If he had a few years\’ experience – i.e. if he were more significant to the company – they never would have done so, and he would have been in the building.
We have two sons. We almost lost both of them on 9/11/2001. And even now, 14 years later, barely a day goes by when I don\’t think about how lucky we were.
Almost 3,000 other families were not so lucky.
Never forget.
