Remembering 9/11

The old Oliver Ames did not have much access to the outside world. One Social Studies classroom could get network TV and there was a TV in the Guidance Department's lunch room. I don't remember how I heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, but Principal Wes Paul asked all the department heads to go around to their classrooms and start a news blackout. We were told we'd monitor the situation at the Guidance Department and to tell the teachers that a plane had crashed into the WTC, but that things were going to be OK. As I walked around, I was thinking of King Kong on the Empire State Building which, when I was a kid,  I used to confuse with the very real crash of a B-25 bomber there in 1945. Bombers crashed into buildings and they didn't collapse so, of course, everything was going to be OK. I made my rounds and headed back to the Guidance Office to join a small group of teachers as we watched the first tower collapse. Things were definitely not going to be OK, and I had just lied to a whole bunch of students. Despite the news blackout students quickly learned everything by using their cell phones in the bathrooms.

Oliver Ames lost one alumnus in the tragedy. Stephen Adams was a 1968 graduate of our school. He was a sophomore when I was a senior. I remembered him a little-a quiet kid who had moved to Easton from Brockton. He had been named the beverage manager at the Windows on the World restaurant complex about a year before 9/11. Windows on the World occupied the 106th and 107th floor of the North Tower of the WTC. At the time of the attack it was the highest grossing restaurant in the United States. At 8:46 the North Tower was the first one struck. The plane went in at an angle impacting the 93rd to 99th floors. Stephen was one of over 1,300 people who became trapped on the floors above the impact. Christine Olender, the assistant manager of the restaurant had gathered all the breakfast guests and employees like Stephen on the 106th floor when she called the Port Authority (operators of the tower complex) 15 minutes after the attack. The three emergency stairwells were already full of smoke.

"We are getting no direction up here," she said according to phone transcripts released in 2002. "We need direction as to where we need to direct our guests and our employees as soon as possible." The police officer told her the fire department was on the way and asked her to call back in two minutes. Olender would call back four more times. Five minutes after this call she reached her boss' wife at home and told her "The ceilings are falling. The floors are buckling."

In a later call to the Port Authority she said "Hi, this is Christine, up at Windows. We need to find a safe haven on 106, where the smoke condition isn't bad. Can you direct us to a certain quadrant?" Again she was told help would arrive as soon as humanly possible. People were told to wet towels and wrap them around their faces, but the water pipes were broken so the little water in flower vases were pressed into service.

In her last call she said "The fresh air is going down fast. I'm not exaggerating." The officer at the other end of the line responded "Ma'am, I know you're not exaggerating," said the officer. "I have you, Christine, four calls, 75 to 100 people, Windows on the World,  106th floor."

Oleander responded "Can we break a window?" She was told to do whatever she had to do to get air. "All right," were her final words. With the windows broken some made it onto the ledge outside the restaurant. Some jumped to their deaths. Others died from the smoke or when the building collapsed. Everyone in the restaurant perished. A famous photograph called "The Falling Man" shows a man dressed in white chef's vest falling head first from the building. He is believed to be Jonathan Briley an employee at Windows on the World. The North Tower collapsed 102 very long minutes after it was struck.

Until researching this post I had always hoped that my classmate Stephen Adams had been killed instantly. I can't imagine the horror in that restaurant as hope of rescue faded away. Here's a quote from the documentary about the Falling Man photo, I think it's a fitting way to end this blog:

"Did that person have so much faith that he knew God would catch him, or was he so afraid to experience the end up there? That's something I'll never know, because that happened to him."