NAT GEO 9/11 2021

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

ONE DAY IN AMERICA Hear the powerful stories of survivors and first responders. National Geographic’s four-night series debuts Aug. 29.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

REMEMBER WHEN TWO TOWERS FELL, WE ROSE AS ONE. The hope, resilience, and unity we shared after 9/11 are more important than ever.

Help pass these lessons on to a new generation by supporting the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a sacred place of remembrance, reflection, and learning.

DONATE TO NEVER FORGET NEVERFORGETFUND.ORG

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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Museum, memorial Pentagon survivor: stress the human Sacrifi ces must side of the history never be forgotten A visit to ground zero is a pilgrimage. Two giant reflecting pools occupy the footprint of the fallen towers. Inside, exhibits show us with powerful simplicity the people we lost that day.

Bill Toti, who risked his life to help others at the military’s headquarters, notes that the death toll there is frequently overlooked or ignored as 9/11 commemorations tend to focus on New York City.

Where were you on 9/11?

People involved with the production of “9/11: One Day in America” share their memories.

White House chief of staff Andrew Card delivers news of the attacks to President George W. Bush, who’d been reading to children while visiting a Sarasota, Florida, school. PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Maribel Perez Wadsworth Publisher and President, USA TODAY Network

Nicole Carroll Editor in Chief

Patty Michalski Executive Editor

Issue editors Lori Santos for USA TODAY; Chris Albert and Jennifer Driscoll for National Geographic

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Issue photo editor Emily Johnson for USA TODAY; Lydia Thompson for National Geographic

The unthinkable, from out of the blue

Issue designer

When the fi rst plane hit the World Trade Center, most people thought it was an accident. But after the second plane struck, there was no doubt: We were under attack.

Tracie Keeton

Design manager Jennifer Herrmann ISSN#0734-7456 A USA TODAY Publication, Gannett Co. Inc. USA TODAY, its logo and associated graphics are registered trademarks.

All rights reserved. Editorial and publication headquarters are at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22108.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center, pictured in 2000, were the tallest buildings in New York City and ranked second and third in the U.S. The site is now home to the tallest building in the country, One World Trade Center. MARK LENNIHAN/AP 9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

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Last man out of the twin towers

Goodness shines on darkest of days

The rescuer and the rescued

Starting from the 84th floor, Ron DiFrancesco made it to the bottom just before the collapse.

Meet Kathy Comerford, Jason Thomas and Ron Clifford and learn how they put others fi rst.

Frank Razzano was a lawyer. Jeff Johnson was a fi refi ghter. Their lives intersected amid chaos.

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Fighter pilot recalls desperate mission Heather Penney’s job that day was to crash into a hijacked plane before it could reach Washington.

ONE DAY IN AMERICA Hear the powerful stories of survivors and first responders. National Geographic’s four-night series debuts Aug. 29.

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Design: Tracie Keeton.

Image: Remains of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

The south tower of the World Trade Center in New York City collapses just before 10 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, less than an hour after it was struck by an airliner piloted by terrorist hijackers. The north tower, also hit by a hijacked jet, continues to burn and would collapse about a half-hour later. GULNARA SAMOILOVA/AP

National Geographic marks 9/11 anniversary with a docuseries told in survivors’ own words

THE UNTHINKABLE Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

It was a Tuesday. h That’s all it should have ever been — a day in September that dawned brilliantly. The people who glanced upward would forever remember that bright, cloudless blue sky. But New Yorkers don’t tend to look up as much as in front of them, quickly navigating their next steps. h The summer’s humidity and oppressive heat had lifted. Kids were in their fi rst full week of school, adults either at work or on their way there. Many in the fi nancial sector were already at their desks, checking overseas markets, prepping for work. It was a regular day. h Until 8:46 a.m. h Then the world changed and in such a horrifi c way that even as we saw it happening, we could not believe it.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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When the fi rst plane, later identifi ed as American Airlines Flight 11, struck the north tower of the World Trade Center, most people thought it was an accident.

But when United Airlines Flight 175 hit the trade center’s south tower at 9:03 a.m., there was no doubt. The United States of America was under attack.

At 9:37 a.m., a third hijacked jet, American Airlines Flight 77, struck the Pentagon. At 10:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew tried to wrest control off the plane from hijackers.

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Federal marshal Dominic Guadagnoli helps injured office worker Donna Spera after she escaped from the south tower. AP

When the terrorist attacks were over, 2,977 people were dead.

And Sept. 11, 2001, had become one of the darkest days in American history.

Reflecting on 9/11 The day has been well documented.

Many may feel they know all they need or can handle. Yet the 20th anniversary must be marked. The challenge is to remember the events without simply recounting them, to memorialize without politicizing or posturing, to show us the human cost and experiences of those caught in the carnage.

To accomplish that, National Geographic’s “9/11: One Day in America” — made by 72 Films in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum — weaves together archival footage and fi rst-person accounts. Beginning Aug. 29 on the network and the next day on Hulu, the fournight limited series shows people at the worst moments of their lives, bloodied, confused and terrifi ed. We also see the best of humanity, as fi rst responders and civilians risk their lives for others.

Seven hours for one documentary series is a signifi cant commitment from a network. Nat Geo’s Carolyn Payne, the commissioning editor, explains why it was so worth doing: “The clarity of the project felt like the right fi t, taking a really deep dive into just one day. Suggesting a six-part series just on the events of the day, a very modern way — no voiceover, and a pure archive and testimony — that was so appealing.”

For an event known globally, the project off ers a surprisingly intimate account. Filmmakers pored over 951 hours of archival footage and conducted 54 interviews to produce another 235 hours of material. Those 1,186 hours were culled to craft the seven in the fi lms.

Even as fi nal tweaks were were being made, David Glover, executive producer and co-founder of 72 Films, acknowledged his worries about a docuseries this long on a subject this painful.

“It makes me cry, and I’ve watched it many times,” Glover says. “I hope viewers can still get through it. ... I hope they do because it’s worth it.”

Even if, like most of the world, you were glued to a TV for days, even if you attended funerals or memorials for those killed, or watched documentaries and read articles and books, the series off ers new perspectives.

By delving deep into survivors’ experiences, profi les in courage and kindness emerge. Viewers learn about the people behind the statistics.

“To be pretentious about it, if you think of it like a Tolstoy novel, a Tolstoy novel has all these characters who you get to know, and they have their diff erent experiences on the battlefi eld or whatever, and then they come out sort of changed,” Glover says.

“I saw the potential to do a series that was kind of like that, looking down on 9/11 and seeing all the diff erent stories. Also, the fact it’s all contained in one day — a huge number of stories, but all contained in one day — was really interesting to me, in fi lmic terms. You have these incredible human stories crisscrossing each other, all in a single day.”

This one day served as a character Continued on next page

The toll Almost 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hundreds more have died from ailments linked to the event in the years since.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

The attack on the Pentagon, in Virginia just outside Washington, D.C., collapsed a portion of the western face of the building. H. DARR BEISER/USA TODAY

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study across the spectrum, and that also fascinated Glover.

“People can say that they’re this or that, but you only really fi nd out when they’re tested,” Glover says. “And I suppose that 9/11 tested people in horrendous and very, very intense ways, but in those moments, some of the very best of humanity came shining through, and that’s the real reason for doing it. In those moments, you fi nd out what really matters. You fi nd out that people don’t care about possessions or money or status.

They care about the people they love, and they also show an unbelievable capacity to help strangers and other people.”

That compassion, decency and bravery were exhibited throughout the day.

The fi lmmakers found people who stopped running for their lives to help others run for theirs. They also found those who were rescued. And “9/11: One Day in America” presents them intentionally unadorned.

“When the material is this strong and mysterious, this powerful, one doesn’t need any gimmicks or any kind of razzmatazz or any sugaring of it,” Glover says.

None is used. CGI and actors would be inappropriate and unnecessary. Nothing

How to watch National Geographic’s six-part series “9/11: One Day in America” will air over four nights beginning Aug. 29 on the network and the next day on Hulu.

could be more shocking than the reality.

The attempt to kill as many civilians as possible at American landmarks using passenger planes as weapons was such a depraved act of aggression that it shocked people worldwide.

Daniel Lindsay, an executive producer for the series, was a recent college graduate in 2001 who had moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in fi lm. His fi rst night of work was Sept. 10, 2001.

He never made it to his second day.

The need to cover this event was too great. Lindsay and a guy he met a few weeks before drove cross-country to document reactions to the attacks.

“So many people were saying to us, ‘Why would anybody do this to America?’ ” Lindsay says. “And so that footage was the beginning of what became my fi rst short documentary, called ‘White House,’ which was kind of exploring that question, which was very much about the geopolitical aspects of it.”

Lindsay was able to get to Shanksville, Washington and Manhattan within the week.

“I can’t forget the smell,” he says quietly, echoing an observation of many who were in New York after the towers fell.

Lindsay and T.J. Martin — they won an Oscar together for “Undefeated” and an

“In those moments ... you fi nd out that people don’t care about possessions or money or status. They care about the people they love, and they also show an unbelievable capacity to help strangers and other people.”

David Glover

executive producer

Emmy for “L.A. 92” — worked with 72 Films to craft this series. Everyone wanted to “do something that was archiveheavy, so they invited us into the process,” Martin says.

When the executive producers met, they found a shared sensibility, which, Martin says, is “humanizing the experience, almost like an oral history fi rst, and not a didactic deconstruction of the events from a bird’s-eye view. That becomes very dehumanizing, kind of acaContinued on next page

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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A fi refi ghter emerges caked in dust after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Health problems caused by exposure to toxins in the dust of 9/11 claimed lives well beyond 2001. RICHARD DREW AP

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demic and a little ... just callous.”

Instead, when survivors tell their stories, viewers relate. They know they are hearing extraordinary truths from ordinary people who went to work on a Tuesday — then all hell broke loose.

Understanding the unthinkable Having those caught in the attacks recount their stories mixed with footage of them from Sept. 11 reaches viewers on a visceral level. The attacks were so brutal and so fast, no one could be certain of what was happening. Still, so many people’s fi rst response was to help others.

By doing the series this way, Martin notes, “what you’re doing is you’re exploring human nature. And I do fundamentally believe human nature is holistic, right. Part of that is inherently you’re going to fi nd acts of extreme generosity, extreme kindness, extreme desires to help each other.”

Working on this project as producers was a departure for Lindsay and Martin, who usually direct their fi lms. For “9/11: One Day in America,” Daniel Bogado assumes that job.

Bogado was appreciative that this

Told in 6 parts Episode 1: “First Response” Episode 2: “The South Tower” Episode 3: “Collapse” Episode 4: “The Cloud” Episode 5: “I’m Coming for You, Brother” Episode 6: “It’s All Gone, Kid”

could be a series rather than a single twohour fi lm, given the magnitude of this day and the multiple perspectives.

“I just instinctively knew that, in an event like 9/11, there were so many things happening at the same time,” Bogado says. “It was just so intense. People were going into what was their normal day of work in a normal, modern, world-class city. And suddenly, they’re in the middle of a war zone.”

Once it was decided to tell the story through the survivors, mixed with archival footage and within the time constraints of the day, the guideposts for the fi lm were established. Episodes contain an advisory: “The following program shows the life and death events of 9/11.

With intense scenes of suff ering and trauma. Viewer discretion is advised.” h Episode 1, “First Response,” briefl y reminds viewers that the day began as most Tuesdays do. There’s footage from Jules Naudet, a French fi lmmaker who was making a documentary about fi refi ghters and happened to be trailing battalion chief Joseph Pfeifer in lower Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11. h Episode 2, “The South Tower,” introduces people who made their way down to the lobby in the south tower after the north tower was hit by a plane but before

the true extent of what was happening became apparent. Some returned to their offi ces; no one thought there was any need to worry. h By Episode 3, “Collapse,” both of the towers are on fi re. Airspace has begun to clear as all commercial fl ights are ordered to land. Two planes, however, do not comply. One hits the Pentagon; 22 minutes later, the south tower collapses. Four minutes later, the last plane crashes in Pennsylvania. h In Episode 4, “The Cloud,” lower Manhattan looks post-apocalyptic. Offi ce workers stumble out of the wreckage and make their way toward the water, where ferries can at least take them across the Hudson River to New Jersey. h Episode 5, “I’m Coming for You, Brother,” shows the unbreakable bond of fi refi ghters. They would not leave anyone behind — not civilians, not their comrades. Some 343 fi refi ghters, 37 Port Authority police offi cers, and 23 New York Police Department offi cers were killed, making it the deadliest day for fi rst responders in the country’s history. h Episode 6, “It’s All Gone, Kid,” details the heroism of two men no longer in uniform — one a paramedic, the other a MaContinued on next page

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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rine. Their sense of duty and compassion still strong, they headed to the smoldering piles to fi nd survivors.

Ultimately, only 18 people were rescued from the rubble.

Tom Canavan emerged from the towers banged up, his face and head bloodstreaked. He later worked as a caretaker at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which he considers a cemetery because remains of more than 1,100 people killed that day were never identifi ed.

“It’s hard, sometimes, just to go through everyday life without thinking about that day,” Canavan says in the fi nal episode. “People say, ‘Well, you’re alive, get over it.’ There is no getting over it.”

The survivors speak The fi lms logically follow the day’s chronology. It may be diffi cult to remember now, but for 102 chaotic minutes, it was terrifying. No one knew what would come next. President George W. Bush was at a Sarasota, Florida, elementary school

United Airlines Flight 175 closes in on the south tower of the World Trade Center as smoke billows from the north tower, hit 17 minutes earlier.

CARMEN TAYLOR/AP

when an aide whispered the news in his ear. The president kept his composure as he left the children.

Air traffi c halted. Manhattan was cut off . Cell phone networks weren’t working.

Survivors counted themselves lucky if they could fi nd a public phone to call home. People from more than 90 countries were killed.

Sometimes the only person the fi lmmakers could turn to for a story was a loved one of a victim. Mark Bingham was on United Flight 93, which took off from Newark, New Jersey, and was supposed to land in San Francisco. Minutes after takeoff , hijackers stormed the cockpit.

Bingham called his mother, Alice Hoagland, in San Francisco. Hoagland recounts her fi nal conversation with her son, one of the four men known to have fought the terrorists. His last words to her were, “There are three guys on board who have taken over the plane, and they say they have a bomb. You believe me, don’t you, mom?”

Of course she did. The call dropped.

Hoagland glanced at the television (it was only 6:37 a.m. PT) and realized that

her son was trapped in a coordinated onslaught. She called him to let him know.

“If you possibly can, try to overpower these guys if you can ’cause they’re hellbent,” was Hoagland’s fi nal message to her son. “Try to call me back if you can.”

She never spoke to her son again. Hoagland has since died.

If survivors were up to recounting their stories, everyone making the fi lms recognized the impact it could have.

“There’s something very powerful if we do it right,” Bogado says. “It becomes this grand narrative, where you just see one story building upon another; it’s about humanity, but it’s also about how in this incredibly terrible time, people were just being kind to each other or doing these incredible acts of self-sacrifi ce.

And I think that’s sort of symbolized at the end, with everybody coming back to say the names of those they lost.”

Telling the story over this expanse is “sort of like the diff erence between a novel and a chapter of a book,” Bogado says.

“And here we’re doing this kind of grand narrative about what happened that day.”

It is, though, a narrative without a narrator. Many documentaries rely on an omniscient voice to take us through the story. This series deliberately avoids it.

“The idea of testimony was something that I think that we talked about very early on,” Lindsay recalls. “Actual, personal testimony. There’s something about looking right into the camera and being able to connect with that person in that way. Again, also lean into that idea of humanizing experience; the camera is not an observer as much as an active participant in the conversation.”

The person often there, leaning in, was series producer Caroline Marsden. She was the fi rst to start work on this project in 2018, going through footage and articles to fi nd the dozens of people featured.

Marsden then interviewed survivors. It took them time to steel themselves. They were revisiting trauma. Many had PTSD. When they start to talk, they need to tell their story carefully, thoroughly, as if to make sense of the horrors they endured.

After all of the research she had done, Marsden considers what she learned making this. “I feel almost silly saying this, but: just the horror of what people saw that day, the trauma,” Marsden says.

She says survivors spoke of comments from people who witnessed 9/11 only from a distance taking an attitude of “ ‘OK, a few hours, you got out, what’s the problem?’ But we interviewed photographers who were taking pictures of dismembered hands. People who were driving over bodies. People who were just Continued on next page

They rushed to help Sept. 11, 2001, was the deadliest day for fi rst responders in the country’s history: 343 fi refi ghters, 37 Port Authority police officers and 23 New York Police Department officers were killed.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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standing at the window when the fi rst plane hit. The extent of the horror that people saw that day was something I hadn’t really considered. I spent the fi rst two weeks on my own in the offi ce working on this just crying. Just reading stories and crying.”

Although injured people are shown being carried out of the Pentagon and stumbling from the towers’ wreckage, the fi lm is not gory; it does not focus on body parts. As fi refi ghters observed, there were hundreds of people clinging to the towers. Realizing they were otherwise going to burn to death, many jumped. Firefi ghters remain haunted by a sound they did not recognize. It was the thud of bodies hitting the ground.

Twenty years later, fi refi ghters still stop when they recount those deaths.

Inside the towers, many people did not know what had happened other than walls and ceilings had given way. It was pitch black, and if they could get to a window, they could see smoke billowing, metal and glass raining down. They knew they had to get out. Daphne Carlisle climbed down from the 82nd fl oor of the

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Julie McDermott, center, and other survivors make their way through the debris at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. AP

north tower with her co-worker, Muyiwa Onigbogi, who would not let her stop.

They were the last people out before the north tower collapsed.

WABC reporter N.J. Burkett was on the scene. As he speaks to Onigbogi and Carlisle, it’s clear they do not know about the terrorist hijackings. Carlisle’s black dress and hair are caked in ash and debris. Someone hands her a bottle of water, guides her to sit down. She’s coughing, exhausted, and now stunned.

Someone tells her this was deliberate, that terrorists hijacked the planes and fl ew them into the buildings.

“In America?” Carlisle asks. “I don’t know what to say.”

Carlisle’s reaction haunts Marsden.

“I thought, ‘That’s so true,’” the producer says. “It’s just the sort of senseless act of violence and the eff ect of those senseless acts of violence, just the repercussions of that, not only 20 years later; this will have eff ects for generations.”

Loss and legacy Sept. 11, 2001, is a watershed. So much of life today can be broken into before 9/11 and after. While everyone who was

old enough to understand what was going on has a distinct memory of the attacks, hearing about this from eyewitnesses gives viewers history on a personal level — a level on which they can connect. And that, say the fi lmmakers, was the goal.

Ultimately, Martin says, “we were trying to create a more kind of holistic understanding of the events that go beyond the geopolitics of it because there’s always room for that narrative. It’s just I fi nd that this narrative is the one for us to help make sense of it, to understand the human experience at the center of it.”

Even those who followed the news and will never forget the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, will learn more about that day.

“Over the years, I watched so many things about 9/11,” says Nat Geo’s Payne.

“I learned new things. I had new understanding of what it must have been to be there. ... I hope we can give people a deeper understanding of that day. I have a 19year-old stepdaughter; she knows about 9/11 but doesn’t know. I hope she can watch it and get it. And, I hope it is something people can look at and say, ‘I get it.’ ” For everyone needs to know that this was not just a Tuesday.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

At the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York, twin reflecting pools mark the exact sites where the World Trade Center towers stood. Above is the pool on the site of the south tower. Rising behind it is the new One World Trade Center, now the tallest building in the United States. 2014 PHOTO BY ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY

THE MEMORIAL 9/11 museum takes visitors on a respectful tour

We go to museums to revel in beauty, to admire art and to celebrate creativity. A visit to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York, however, is diff erent. It’s not an outing; it’s a pilgrimage. h The memorial, which drew 3.1 million visitors in 2019, sits across from The Oculus, the gleaming white transit hub that replaced the subway station destroyed in the attacks. One-acresquare refl ecting pools mark the footprints of the fallen towers. Even in this bustling part of ManJacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY hattan, there’s a hushed quiet at the memorial as 30-foot waterfalls cascade. Mourners leave fl owers next to the names of victims, etched onto the bronze parapets.

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The memorial design — chosen from more than 5,200 proposals — is titled “Refl ecting Absence,” explains Cliff ord Chanin, executive vice president and deputy director for museum programs.

It’s impossible to walk these streets and tour the exhibitions without feeling a pervasive sense of loss.

“We made the decision to create a memorial museum, and the use of the word memorial is a directive for us,” says Alice M. Greenwald, the museum’s president and CEO. “We were always trying to operate in a commemorative mindset, but we also felt an obligation to present what happened. Our goal was to tell history from a human point of view.”

And so, the terrorist attacks are presented in a straightforward, accessible manner. Visitors get a sense of the people who were killed and learn how the day unfolded.

As we brace ourselves for the 20th anniversary of the attacks, the pain from those losses remains. On that day, 2,977 people were killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the fi eld in rural Pennsylvania where one of the hijacked planes crashed. Buildings that should have stood for centuries were shattered on that impossibly sunny morning, as was the nation’s sense of security.

On the steamy Thursday before the Fourth of July, people lined up to pay homage and learn about the once-unimaginable ugliness man has wrought.

Unlike at most museums, visitors are silent as they make their way through the cavernous building.

Chanin points out two steel “tridents” — architectural features of the columns that once held up the twin towers.

Viewed in the museum, they provide a frame for the new One World Trade Center, originally dubbed Freedom Tower, the elegant glass-and-steel offi ce building that opened in 2014. But it is the ruined metal, and where it came from, that draw people to the 16-acre site. That and a place to mourn.

Of the 2,753 people killed at the Twin Towers, the remains of more than 1,100 have not been identifi ed.

A place for mourning and healing Greenwald is extremely sensitive to the fact that the memorial and museum are on sacred ground. That awareness manifests as a sense of respect, the other most pervasive feeling in this 110,000square-foot museum.

After a career working in Jewish museums and at the U.S. Holocaust Memo-

Sept. 11, 2011: On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, President Barack Obama visits the memorial with his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was president on 9/11, and their families.

ROBERT DEUTSCH/

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The museum includes artistic interpretations, including Spencer Finch's “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” It’s made up of nearly 3,000 watercolor tiles, one for each victim, surrounding a quote from Virgil: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” 2015 PHOTO BY MARY ALTAFFER/AP

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rial Museum, Greenwald was suited for the delicate and essential task of leading this one.

“When I was a child, thinking about what I wanted to grow up and do, it never occurred to me that I would run museums dedicated to some of the worst atrocities of human history,” Greenwald says.

Curated with tremendous public input, this museum displays the mundane and the unique. The collection includes a ticket for the New York Yankees’ game that had been scheduled for Sept. 11 (against the Chicago White Sox), cards children left for their murdered parents, and a portion the original “slurry” wall built to keep the Hudson River out of the development when it was fi rst under construction in the 1960s.

The museum lays out what was, what happened, and to whom. And unlike the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened 48 years after World War II ended, this place came together while the

Still missing Of the 2,753 people counted as killed at the twin towers, the remains of more than 1,100 have not been identifi ed.

events were still fresh. Preservation began on objects related to 9/11 before September 2001 was over.

“The actual work to imagine and create this museum began in the spring of 2006,” Greenwald explains. It opened in 2014.

“Our circumstances were diff erent, but the questions were very much the same,” Greenwald says, comparing a museum devoted to 9/11 to those focusing on the Holocaust. “How do you present traumatic history in the public space of a museum? How do you do that with consideration and sensitivity to those who lost loved ones, friends and family members?

How do you take a story that aff ected immediate families, a community, a city, a nation, and the world and make it a story that everybody says, ‘Yes, that’s the right story,’ when everybody has their own experience of it?”

It was clear then, as now, that a nonprofi t museum serves a vital function to educate.

The museum’s daunting mission included fi guring out how to move beyond

the shocking pictures and present the narrative without limiting the experience to familiar news footage. Tapping into personal accounts became vital.

“What you had with 9/11, in terms of the dominant media, were audio recordings,” Greenwald explains. “You had voicemail messages. You had cockpit recordings. You had radio transmissions between fi rst responders. You had this tremendous amount of audio content.

And so we realized we had this extraordinary opportunity to tell a story from the point of view of witnesses, the people who were there.”

Those voices, many speaking their last words, are carefully presented in the museum’s historical exhibition. People needed to let their families know they would always love them. Some took their last breaths still reassuring their loved ones that everything was going to be fi ne.

“All we had was the human experience of this historical event, and that dominates the way you experience this muContinued on next page

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seum,” Greenwald says. “It’s human history. It’s personal history.”

Remembering those lost As it needs to, the museum reminds us of the original buildings in their majesty, so enormous that they merited their own ZIP code. A large photo, snapped in the purple glow of twilight when New York City is at its most glorious, freezes them in time. The lights on some of the 110 fl oors cast an orange glow. The towers dwarf all else.

A large map of the eastern United States displays the routes taken by the hijacked planes. There is information about the 19 al-Qaida terrorists who weaponized the four jets, but it is kept brief. Next, visitors see images of what was to become the universal pose of Sept. 11: people in shock, witnessing the devastation, their hands covering their mouths as if to keep in the screams.

Exhibits at the museum include the last structural column removed from the site and a portion of the “slurry wall” that kept the trade crenter from flooding.

SPENCER PLATT/ GETTY IMAGES

Exhibits are presented without editorializing, without fanfare. What could be added to dramatize? Everything is displayed simply. Artifacts are smartly spaced, allowing visitors to catch their breath.

Some of the museum’s pieces were iconic even before they were installed.

At any other time, in any other setting, “The Last Column” might be overlooked as nothing more than a hunk of steel covered in graffi ti. Like everything at the museum, it is steeped in meaning. The graffi ti reads, “PAPD 37, NYPD 23, FDNY 343, SQ 41.” These represent fi rst responders from the Port Authority Police Department, the New York City Police Department, the Fire Department of New York, and Squad 41 of the fi re department. They died trying to save others.

When this column, the last piece of the 1.8 million tons of debris, was removed from the site on May 30, 2002, it was placed on a fl atbed truck under a black shroud covered with an American fl ag.

The fi rst responders and workers on the

pile stopped and came out to pay respects one last time, escorting it from the site with an honor guard.

Staring at it is a powerful reminder of what was. A few feet away, a bomb-sniff ing dog being led on rounds is a powerful reminder of what is.

Forensic work to identify victims’ remains continues to this day. The New York City Offi ce of Chief Medical Examiner maintains a repository, not open to the public, behind the wall that presents Spencer Finch’s artwork “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.”

Finch painted 2,983 watercolors in varied shades of blue. The number represents the victims who died on 9/11 plus six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The blues represent how diff erent people might remember the color of the exquisite shade the sky had been that morning.

The tiles surround metal letters forged

by New Mexico sculptor and blacksmith Tom Joyce from steel from the wreckage.

They spell out a quote from “The Aeneid”

by Virgil: “No one shall erase you from the memory of time.”

Projected on other walls are images of posters seeking information about people who were missing. Immediately after the attacks, these posters popped up everywhere, taped on buildings, stuck in gates. Long after hopes were dashed, these sheets of paper, bleached from the sun, wrinkled by the rain, remained at suburban train stations and on inner-city bodega windows.

On a typical poster, “MISSING” is written on top. A photo of the person is beneath, often with a basic physical description. The plea for anyone to call if they see the person is below. On those chaotic days, sons who thought their mothers would return, widows still thinking of themselves as wives, and many others copied these sheets and tacked them up wherever they could.

Desperate, they clung to the notion that those missing were simply lost. Perhaps if people recognized the person, they could help. Maybe their loved one could be found.

No one made it home.

Moving forward, together Among the challenges in explaining atrocities is taking the statistics and reminding us that behind each number was a person. “In Memoriam,” a gallery of portraits, does that. Photos show every shade of human. Offi cial FDNY portraits share space with prom photos and wedding shots.

Continued on next page

How to donate The Never Forget Fund, a fundraising campaign to ensure future generations learn what happened, has been established for the 20th anniversary and will be ongoing.

To learn more, visit www.never forget fund .org.

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Continued from previous page

“We wanted to celebrate them for how they lived their lives, not for how they died,” Greenwald explains. “We were asking for portraits the families loved.”

Arranged alphabetically, the pictures are stacked to the ceiling. It’s a powerful tribute to the lives taken. The wall also includes photos of the six people killed in the 1993 bombing.

“The minute you walk in, you understand viscerally that this is a microcosm of the world,” Greenwald says of the exhibit. “You have ages 2 to 85. You have people from over 90 nations, every ethnicity imaginable, every faith tradition imaginable. Muslims were killed on 9/11.

Of course, you have every sector of the economy. This is us.

“The minute you see yourself in the story, it changes the way you understand the story,” she continues. “And this is a story about all of us, but we honor the people whose lives were taken. And when we are in the inner chamber — we call it the inner chamber for want of a better word — it’s almost a sacred space.”

15

The collection includes an original model by the trade center’s architect, Minoru Yamasaki.

The model, whose towers rise 7 feet, was created in the 1960s.

ROBERT DEUTSCH/ USA TODAY

An area in the middle of this hall of photos is darkened. Under the glass fl oor is a rocky white surface. It was the south tower’s foundation. Visitors sit on benches while a slide show is projected on the walls above them. Victims’ names, photos, bios and life dates (each ending on Sept. 11, 2001, or Feb. 26, 1993) are displayed. Someone who knew the victim provides a brief audio remembrance. By their nature of being unremarkable — the victim liked to fi sh or shop, for example — they are relatable.

Among the installations is a TV playing a message from the only American not on the planet that day. NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was on the International Space Station. The cloud of smoke was visible from space, and NASA had fi lled him in on the attacks.

“I just wanted the folks to know that their city still looks very beautiful from space, and I know it’s very diffi cult for everybody in America right now,” Culbertson said. “And I know folks are struggling very hard to deal with this and recover from it, but the country still looks good, and for New Yorkers, your city still looks

great from up here.”

“That to me is that pivot between the horror of what happened and the impulse to provide comfort,” Greenwald says.

“That theme is woven again and again and again and again throughout the exhibits. You tell the story from the inside, from the human perspective, but where you go with it is to compassion. Hope, resilience, empathy, because that’s how we responded. I guess the biggest question you have to ask when you leave this museum is: Does it take an event as horrible as 9/11 to show us what we are capable of as human beings? We make choices in the aftermath of these events. These events happen. Terrible things — COVID, pandemics, fl oods, horrible things — happen. Buildings collapse. How you respond is what you have control over.”

“Why can’t we be the best that we can be?” Greenwald asks. “Because we know we can. We’ve seen it demonstrated. I always insist the museum is as much about 9/12 as it is about 9/11. That’s really what this is about, and it is as we attest to the loss of precious human beings who are people just like us.”

16

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

‘FORGOTTEN 9/11’

Smoke pours out of the western face of the Pentagon after a hijacked jet crashed into it on Sept. 11, 2001. The attack left 125 people dead at the Pentagon, in addition to the 59 passengers and crew on the plane. The Pentagon, the world’s largest office building, sits across the Potomac River from Washington. ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES Jacqueline Cutler

Navy Capt. Bill Toti, seen in 2002, survived the attack on the Pentagon.

He notes that the death toll there is frequently overlooked or ignored in 9/11 commemorations, which tend to focus on New York City. GARY C. KNAPP AP

Special to USA TODAY

Bill Toti knew. h First, he knew that the plane crash at the World Trade Center was no accident. “I was in my boss’s outer offi ce in the Pentagon,” says Toti, a Navy captain at the time stationed at the military’s sprawling headquarters outside Washington. “We have TV running continuously in the offi ce, and it had CNN on. And so we saw the plane hit the fi rst tower. We saw the smoke rising.” h While many early reports assumed it was pilot error, Toti didn’t buy that for a moment. “Yeah, on a clear day — right,” he says. “No way. So we knew that it was intentional.” Then the second plane hit and erased all doubt. h There were reports of another hijack too: An American Airlines fl ight that had left Washington’s Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles had reversed course. h Toti knew that he and everyone else at the Pentagon were next.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Continued from previous page

“People were saying that it’s going to go for the White House,” Toti recalls. “I used to fl y airplanes, and I’ve fl own over D.C. It’s hard to fi nd the White House. I said no. The White House is too hard. And the Capitol building is easy to see, but there aren’t many people in the Capitol building. What’s a building that’s easy to see and has a lot of people in it? The Pentagon.”

He called down to the command center. Capt. Gerald DeConto answered.

They had been classmates, friends and fellow physics majors at the U.S. Naval Academy. Toti wondered why he hadn’t heard any alarms or announcements.

“We’re still tracking,” DeConto told him.

“We don’t know what to say yet. We’ll give you information as we have it.”

Within a few minutes, the information was all too apparent.

The jet was barreling toward the Pentagon, the world’s largest offi ce building.

“My fi rst thought was, ‘Damn, I wish I hadn’t been right,’ ” Toti says. “And because you don’t know what the plane is going to hit, you don’t know anything. I didn’t know whether these are the last moments in my life.”

There was very little time to react; Toti estimates less than 30 seconds. The noise became deafening. Although Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is less than 3 miles from the Pentagon, and the sounds of jets were common

17

Chaos reigned outside the Pentagon after the crash. “It took an enormously long period of time for the fi rst real response,” recalls Bill Toti.

H. DARR BEISER/ USA TODAY

there, they never roared like this.

“When the plane is on full throttle taking off , the sound decreases with time,” Toti explains. “In this case, you can hear the plane on full throttle, but it was increasing in intensity.

“And that’s when it hit.”

It hit where his academy classmate had been. DeConto was among the 184 killed at the Pentagon, including the passengers and crew on American Airlines Flight 77. (Five hijackers also died.)

Toti jumped into action and helped carry out the injured.

“We were on our own,” he recalls. “It took an enormously long period of time for the fi rst real response. There were fi re departments on the scene there from Fort Myer. There’s always a fi re truck there for the Pentagon helipad, but it was already on fi re itself, from the impact.”

Had people been evacuated earlier, Toti wonders how many deaths could have been prevented. He notes that thousands of civilians work at the Pentagon.

As a career Navy offi cer, Toti had been trained in fi refi ghting.

“One thing that distinguishes the Navy from the other services is when you have a casualty at sea, there’s no fi re department to call,” he explains. “You are the fi re department. See, you’re trained for the recovery of people. I was trained to fi ght fi res.”

In this tragedy, his training kicked in.

Toti isn’t sure how many people he saved and estimates he assisted between

20 and 25. Still, he was haunted by those he could not help and blames himself for not rescuing more.

He often thinks back to a man and woman he helped rescue from the wreckage. Practicing triage, he focused his attention on the woman because he viewed her as more likely to survive.

“It plagued me for years,” he says. “Because the guy I thought might not survive — he looked like he was in much worse shape — he did. And the woman, who I thought was in better shape, did not.”

Paramedics took both of the victims.

Later, when the man asked to meet him, Toti declined. He felt guilty — felt he should have done more.

When reinforcements arrived, Toti tried at one point to go back into the Pentagon to see who else he could help. A law enforcement offi cer blocked him. Toti admits that it almost resulted in a fi stfi ght.

“With 20/20 hindsight, he was right,” he says. “At that point, the smoke was even worse. It was smoky in there when I went in, and in fact, I still suff er from lung disease from that. But you know, he was right. We could not have gotten in at that point. And they were likely already dead.”

Toti’s bravery on Sept. 11 earned him the third of his seven Legion of Merit awards.

Although he could have retired by then — he had already put in 22 years of service — the attacks spurred Toti to re-up.

“I spent another fi ve years on active duty,” he says. “Out of fury. Out of rage.

But I did eventually retire.”

Toti started a security fi rm, dabbled in photography, moved to Florida. He says he has wanted to attend various 9/11 ceremonies but was never invited, although he acknowledges he sometimes talked his way in. Toti remembers the attack on Washington that day, even though he believes that others do not.

The Pentagon attack is, Toti says, “the forgotten 9/11.”

“When you say you’re a 9/11 survivor, 100% of the time they assume you were in New York. And New York deserves to get most of the attention. Almost 3,000 people died, and hundreds of fi refi ghters and law enforcement, and so I don’t begrudge that at all. But you have to remind people a plane hit the Pentagon, too.

“I went to see a pulmonologist maybe fi ve years ago during one of my lung infections,” Toti continues. “And he says, ‘Where are you on the monitoring program? The 9/11 Monitoring Program.’ And I said, ‘I was in the Pentagon. There is no 9/11 Monitoring Program for the Pentagon people; it’s only for New York.’ And so, things like that, people forget about.

That’s why I’ve been willing to talk about it, not because I want to relive these memories.”

Hear more of his story Bill Toti is featured in the limited series “9:11: One Day in America” premiering on National Geographic Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT, and streaming next day on Hulu.

18

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

FIRST RESPONDER

Joseph Pfeifer was the fi rst fi re chief on the scene at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He’d seen the fi rst plane crash — a fi lmmaker with him that day caught it on video — and he knew it was no accident. His brother, Kevin, was among the 343 New York fi refi ghters who died at the trade center. DANIEL BOGADO/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Routine shift turned into a nightmare for his city, his department and his family

Joseph Pfeifer had already put in 20 years on the job with the Fire Department of New York. He could have retired six days earlier. h Instead, Sept. 11, 2001, found Pfeifer as battalion chief for lower Manhattan. h Pfeifer was the fi rst chief on the scene, shortly after the fi rst hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. He set up a command post as other units raced downtown to join him.

Jacqueline Cutler

That morning, Pfeifer was being followed by French documentarian Jules Naudet, who, with his brother, Gédéon, was making a fi lm about fi refi ghters. Jules Naudet was with Pfeifer on a call when American Airlines Flight 11 roared overhead, then crashed into the north tower, a scene Naudet captured with his camera. The Naudets kept fi lming, documenting that day and chronicling fi refi ghters’ incredible valor. As Pfeifer sped to the scene, he remained unfl appable.

The Queens, New York, native, has devoted his life to helping people. His calm bravery is evident in “9/11: One Day in America.”

Special to USA TODAY

The coat and helmet worn by Pfeifer were part of a traveling exhibit by the Smithsonian Institution. The helmet is now at the 9/11 museum in New York.

2003 PHOTO BY AMY CONN-GUTIERREZ/AP

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

19

“I saw the plane aim and crash into the World Trade Center. It was so low I could read ‘American Airlines’ on the fuselage.”

Joseph Pfeifer

fi rst fi re chief on the scene at the World Trade Center on 9/11

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The morning began with Pfeifer investigating a routine gas leak. By the next day, he had delivered the agonizing news to his parents that his younger brother, Kevin, a FDNY lieutenant, was among the 343 New York fi refi ghters killed.

Three years ago, Pfeifer fi nally retired from the fi re department as its chief of Counterterrorism and Emergency Preparedness. Today, he lectures, writes and consults. What follows is a conversation, edited for clarity, with the soft-spoken Pfeifer refl ecting on that hellacious day.

Many people thought the fi rst plane crash was a freak accident. Did you?

We were at a gas leak, kind of a routine emergency. And then we heard the roar of jet engines, which, as you know, you never hear (in that location). And then I saw the plane aim and crash into the World Trade Center. It was so low I could read “American Airlines” on the fuselage. We had seen the plane going down the Hudson at a low altitude, and then when it reappeared, I literally saw it turn into the north tower. There was no doubt in my mind (that it wasn’t an accident).

How well did you know these towers?

When I was assigned to the 1st Battalion and worked in lower Manhattan in 1997, I got to go into the buildings hun-

Joseph Pfeifer, by then the FDNY’s counterterrorism chief, escorts French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve at the 9/11 memorial in 2016.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

dreds of times. So I knew the buildings better than most people. Each fl oor is about an acre. If you laid it out, it would take up a good part of lower Manhattan.

How are people supposed to be rescued from buildings 110 stories tall?

We get there by elevators because that’s the fastest way. We have special keys that we use to control the elevators.

Now, that day, the elevators in the north tower weren’t working. So that meant people had to climb. And it takes a long time to climb.

As diffi cult as it is to climb all those fl ights, fi refi ghters carry so much gear.

What’s the minimum weight of equipment that the fi refi ghters are carrying?

About 60 pounds. So it takes a minute to two minutes (per fl ight) depending on how fast you climb. It gets slower as you go up more and more fl ights.

As the fi rst chief on the scene, what was your immediate responsibility?

The plan was to mobilize resources, evacuate the building, and then rescue those who couldn’t get out. So, it was a very defi nitive plan.

Are there lessons to be learned from 9/11?

Little things make a big diff erence. For example, as people were coming down, fi refi ghters were going up, and they were telling them stuff like, “Don’t stop. Keep going. You can make it out of here.” And people who made it out, they said be-

cause the fi refi ghters did that, they continued and got out of the building. The other thing is there needs to be a unity of command, which there wasn’t that day.

We all turn into our own groups naturally, and I call that organizational bias. Everybody was trying to do the right thing, but naturally, they turned into their own group. So over the 17 years post (until retirement), I worked very closely with NYPD on how to change that, the set of conditions for working together.

Since you arrived just after the fi rst plane hit, how long were you there?

I got to the fi rehouse the night before because I was working (a 24-hour shift).

So I was there all night, the whole day.

And I didn’t get home until a little bit before midnight, and there was a gathering with my wife and my kids and a lot of tears because they thought I was dead.

Were you not able to reach them all day?

It took me six hours. All the cell phones were knocked out, so for six hours, she didn’t know.

When did you have to talk with your parents and tell them about your brother, Kevin?

I did that the next day. I went back to the site. There’s a whole bunch of things.

I had debris in my eyes, so at 6 o’clock that morning, I called my college roommate, who’s a doctor, and he set me up with an eye specialist. For three weeks, every day, like 6 in the morning, they came in special for me. They ended up picking 50 pieces of debris out of my eyes. So it was a little crazy. But by the second day, at the end of the day, I realized we weren’t going to fi nd anybody else. I think it had been 22 hours since the last person we rescued.

What are you doing this Sept. 11?

I’ll do what I always do. I get dressed up in uniform, and I go to the site for the memorial. Then I visit my fi rehouse and then my brother’s fi rehouse. And, of course, I see my parents...my sister. And then I take a long walk with my wife on the beach.

Pfeifer is featured in the series “9/11: One Day in America” premiering on National Geographic Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

20

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

‘I woke up all my roommates’

‘It is unbelievable’

I had just moved to Los Angeles after college to pursue a career in fi lm. I knew no one in this business and was looking for a job. I ended up getting hired at The Gap as a virtual merchandising manager. I was in charge of putting the store together when they would get a new line of clothing or whatever. You do the changeover in the middle of the night after the store closes, and it happened that my fi rst day of work was Sept. 10, 2001. So I fi nish up around 5:30 the next morning and walk back to my apartment. As a means of falling asleep, I turn on the news and see the fi rst tower being hit. And I’m sitting there watching that, and then the second plane hit. And then I woke up all my roommates.

I was about to go into work — I was actually standing outside a tall building, the ITV building (in London) — when a colleague told me what happened. But I don’t think I really understood what 9/11 meant until I watched some of the documentaries for the one-year anniversary. It was such a profound thing, so outside my understanding of the world. It is unbelievable, and that is why this is important to understand and for the next generation to understand.

Daniel Lindsay Executive producer, “9/11: One Day in America”

Carolyn Payne Commissioning editor, National Geographic

9/11 ATTACK

WH WER ON

Smoke hangs over lower Manhattan on Sept. 12, 2001, a day after history’s deadliest terrorist attacks. In a time before smartphones were ubiquitous, some learned of the attacks w

‘The country is under attack’

‘Anything can happen now’

‘I remem

I was driving up to school. I must have been getting ready to go back for the fall quarter, and my mom called and told me. She was like, “The country is under attack.” My mom can be hyperbolic, so I had no idea what she was talking about. She said, “You have to turn on the news,” but I was in the car, so she talked me through what was going on, what she was witnessing on TV. And again, my brain was trying to make sense of this, and then we hung up, and I listened to NPR on the drive but still not seeing a visual of it. So I had no point of reference. This notion of being attacked on American soil is just so fundamentally foreign for most of us in terms of having some kind of understanding of what that means. I don’t think I saw any footage of what was happening on the ground, both in terms of the planes hitting the buildings and seeing what New Yorkers were experiencing visually, for a good 10 hours because I was also in college, so I didn’t have a TV. By the time I got to school, I had started searching for a visual representation of not just what New York was going through but also, ultimately, what the entire psyche of the country was going through. By the time I fi nally saw the footage of the planes, it was worse than I could have ever imagined.

I was in London in a small flat with a girlfriend who was American, from L.A. I had just started my career as a fi lm and TV composer, and I was actually working on a short fi lm. I can’t remember who phoned and said, “Turn on the TV.” I think in America, it’s been different, but it was quite recent that we had these 24-hour news channels. This was the kind of start for me of that 24-hour news. So I was in this flat, and then we were planning to go. I had a studio back at my parents’ home, and we were going to go there. And then we were rooted to the spot. A few friends came around. We were watching it. I do remember I drove later down through London to my parents’ house, and we saw Canary Wharf, which was at the time the tallest building in London. We’re driving quite near to it, and I was thinking, “Oh, my God!” Feeling that kind of fear of “anything can happen now.” It felt like obviously much more for anyone in New York, but at that time, we were quite complacent in the West and feeling quite kind of safe. It was before I’d heard of al-Qaida. It took quite a lot of days to process it, even from London.

I was in Lond ical breakthr sort of stopp And rememb ing to conta member tha

T.J. Martin Executive Producer, “9/11: One Day in America”

David Schweitzer Composer, “9/11: One Day in America”

I was schedu ing on, and m from going. was actually I remember after — and tributes out It was an ext stories that

David Glove Executive Pro

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

KS 20 YEARS LATER

HERE RE YOU N 9/11?

21

‘Everyone was a New Yorker’ ‘Have you seen what’s happening?’

I was in Montreal. I was at university at the time, and I had a boyfriend in England. He was up earlier because of the time difference, and he was like, “Oh my God, have you seen what’s happening?” And I had to turn on the TV. When I got to class, the professor said, “This is a really hard time. I know there are a lot of people with connections to New York; feel free not to attend today or even this week.” And there was a girl in my class from New York, and she didn’t know what had happened and we had to tell her. That’s my memory of that day.

Caroline Marsden Series Producer, “9/11: One Day in America,” 72 Films

while watching TV or listening to the radio, others in panicked calls from friends or loved ones. DOUG KANTER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

mber going down to ground zero’

don on my way to interview a scientist about her medrough. As I walked out, I remember seeing everyone ping and watching the TV in bars and all over the place. bering I had a friend who worked in New York and tryact him and check that he was OK. I vividly, vividly reat.

uled to go to New York for another program I was workmy boss at the time said, “Nothing is going to stop us We’re going to go about our normal business.” So, I y on one of the fi rst planes that were allowed to fly. And going down to ground zero — this is about six days seeing all the dust and these missing posters, and the tside the fi re stations, and a peace rally in Union Square. traordinary thing, but there are a lot of extraordinary came out of that day.

er oducer, “9/11: One Day in America”; co-founder, 72 Films

‘It’s the end of the world’ I was in London. I was there for about a year and really trying to fi nd myself, you know. I had no money, no real prospects, but I’d just come back from an interview at a comic book shop. I thought it had gone well, and I might get a job there. And then a friend called and said, “You need to turn on the TV. It’s the end of the world.” I turned on the TV and just kind of spent the whole day watching it. I tried to get in touch with my parents because I knew my mother, like mothers around the world, would be worrying: “Maybe he was on a plane for some reason. Maybe he’s in New York.” So I had to call them and tell her, “Look, I’m in London, and I’m fi ne.” And then, talking to my father, we were wondering, how many people died?

10,000? 20,000? Nobody knew. And nobody knew how much things would change. You know, the whole world we’re living in now, in so many ways, just kind of stems from that day.

Daniel Bogado Director, “9/11: One Day in America,” 72 Films

We had literally just moved to D.C., and I’m at the house with the carpenter who is building the radiator covers. And my husband, who is on a train to New York for meetings, calls and says, “What’s going on? They’ve stopped the train outside of Philadelphia. Nobody’s telling us anything. Can you please turn on the news?” So I turn the TV on, and it’s after the fi rst impact. I thought it was a plane crash. I tell my husband, “You may not be getting to New York,” and we say goodbye, and I turn back to the TV. Then I see the second impact.

And the carpenter is watching it on TV with me, and we see that, and this man — whose name I don’t remember, although I remember him vividly — we just looked at each other and grabbed each other. It was the most human reaction. You just needed to be with someone, even a complete stranger.

We’re watching the towers fall, and I’m thinking: Those people, those poor people. And realizing, like everyone else, we’re under attack.

That was my day of 9/11. But if you ask “what’s your 9/11 story,” it’s a different day. It’s our 25th wedding anniversary.

For our honeymoon, we had spent one night at the Plaza because it was all we could afford, and so for our 25th, we had made a reservation, months before, to come back for another night.

Now we wondered if we should still go.

But we did, and we’re driving up the Jersey Turnpike, and suddenly we see the Manhattan skyline. And it’s still smoldering. Seeing that void the towers left, it was absolutely visceral. Then we get to the Lincoln Tunnel, and we see fi refi ghters collecting money for the widows and orphans, and that’s a double-whammy. And fi nally, we get to the Plaza and get out of the car, and the doorman just hugs us.

So really, my story is what we call a 9/12 story. It’s about the way people reacted after the event; it was about the way New York was in those days and weeks and months following. The city was a different place. There was no difference between people, regardless of color or age or gender or sexual preference or economic status. Everyone had been hurt. Everyone was in need of a hug. Everyone was a New Yorker.

Alice M. Greenwald President and CEO of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum

22

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

MISSION WAS TO DIE FOR OTHERS Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Heather Penney was 26 when she climbed into the cockpit of a fi ghter jet, ready to die so that others could live. h It wasn’t an abstract commitment. Penney was on a suicide mission. h It was Sept. 11, 2001, and United Airlines Flight 93 was headed for Washington, D.C. Penney’s job would be to crash into the tail of the hijacked plane.

Air Force pilot Heather Penney’s mission on Sept. 11, 2001, was to stop a hijacked plane from reaching Washington, D.C. But there wasn’t enough time to arm her fi ghter with missiles. If she and fellow pilot Marc Sasseville were going to bring down United Flight 93, they’d have to ram it. STEFAN WIESEN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Marc Sasseville — then director of operations for the 121st Fighter Squadron, District of Columbia Air National Guard at Andrews Air Force Base and now vice chief of the National Guard Bureau — was going to ram the cockpit.

Together, they would take it down.

By then, there were no other options. “‘Lucky, you and I, let’s go,’” Sasseville told her, using the nickname Penney was given when she had very recently earned her combat mission-ready status.

“Here’s a man with a beautiful wife and two phenomenal kids, but he’s not going to just send someone else,” Penney says. “He’s going to take that risk, too. He knew if we were successful, we wouldn’t be coming back.”

The mission was complicated by bureaucracy. Usually when National Guard forces are activated, the governor of their Continued on next page

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

23

“They hadn’t planned on being a hero.

It was just an ordinary, everyday Tuesday morning flight. But they rose to the occasion. They answered the call of our nation.”

Heather Penney Air Force pilot

Continued from previous page

state is involved. But the District of Columbia is not a state, which left it to the feds. And it wasn’t as if meetings could be called to debate what to do. Action had to be taken. Now. “As the D.C. National Guard, our chain of command goes directly to the president,” Penney says. “And you can imagine he was pretty busy at that point in time. It wasn’t until after the Pentagon got hit that Vice President Cheney said, ‘Wait a second. Don’t we have fi ghters at Andrews? Somebody get them airborne.’ ” That morning, Penney had been in a meeting, planning the fl ying schedule for the rest of September 2001. It was, after all, a regular Tuesday. An enlisted servicemember interrupted the meeting, “which is really verboten,” she notes.

A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, he reported.

Penney’s initial reaction was the same as most people’s.

“What a bozo,” she remembers thinking about the pilot of the crashed plane.

“We thought it was like a small Cessna, one of the little tourist airplanes fl ying up and down the Hudson. Everyone knows little airplanes like that can’t cause any damage. They bounce off buildings; it’s the people on the streets below that need to watch out. So we didn’t really take it seriously until he came back the second time and said, ‘Another aircraft hit the other tower.’ It was on purpose. And we

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in this fi eld in rural Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the terrorists.

Above, recovery efforts continue two weeks after 9/11.

GENE J. PUSKAR/AP

got up out of the room.”

They headed for the nearest TV. “We saw what every other American saw that day,” she recalls. “And we knew immediately that our nation was under attack, and we knew immediately that we had to get airborne. But we had to solve those two problems right: getting the authorization to launch and getting missiles on the jets. So, I have to really give all the credit to our leadership there in the squadron, in the wings, for what they were doing.”

Realizing that everyone is not as steeped in the details of military aviation as the daughter of a retired Air Force colonel, Penney explains why they planned to ram the plane rather than shoot it down.

“People are like, ‘How come you don’t fl y around with weapons on your jets?’ ” she says. “Well, when we’re in the United States, we’re training. We project power overseas to protect our nation, but I don’t think that the vast majority of Americans in suburbia would appreciate knowing that there were live bombs and missiles fl ying overhead.”

Time was of the essence. The fi ghter jets had to take off , unarmed.

Flight 93 had left Newark, New Jersey, that morning bound for San Francisco.

Forty-six minutes into the fl ight, four alQaida terrorists stormed the cockpit of the Boeing 757 and forced a sharp turn toward Washington, D.C. Passengers decided to fi ght back. Assuming the plane was going to crash,

some had already called loved ones to say goodbye. Then they took action.

The plane went down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, before the fi ghter jets could get to it. It was the only one of the four hijacked planes not to reach its target. Forty passengers and crew died in the crash, as did the hijackers.

Though she was ready to die for others, Penney, now a defense analyst at a think tank, maintains she is no hero.

“When I think about the passengers on Flight 93 — they hadn’t raised their right hand, they hadn’t sworn an oath like we had,” she says. “They were just moms and dads and aunts and uncles. They were going on a business trip. They were coming home from vacation. They hadn’t planned on being a hero. It was just an ordinary, everyday Tuesday morning fl ight.

But they rose to the occasion. They answered the call of our nation.”

On the 20th anniversary, Penney has a few speaking engagements. However, the most important engagement for her is “to refl ect upon the meaning of 9/11,” she says. “It’s not about voyeurism. It’s not about sensationalism. It’s not about revisiting trauma. It’s about how do we live as ordinary Americans? How do we practice that heroism on a daily basis?”

Small acts of courage and community add up to improve the world.

“I truly believe that passengers on Flight 93, and the fi rst responders who ran into the buildings and not out, to just the strangers who were helping each other on the street, or you think about what was going on inside the Pentagon, that’s the spirit that we all need to plug into every day,” Penney says. “Not this divisiveness and hate and cancel culture and judgment. That’s not what we need. And that’s not what our nation is about.

“That’s not the best of us,” she adds.

“We need to tie into those better angels, and those angels were the passengers on Flight 93. Those angels are the fi rst responders who gave their lives that day, the workers in New York who cleaned up the buildings afterward.”

Penney is featured in the series “9/11: One Day in America” premiering on National Geographic Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

LAST MAN OUT Ron DiFrancesco was at his office high up in the south tower of the World Trade Center when jets slammed fi rst into the north tower and then the south. He would make it down to the bottom just before the building collapsed. He woke up three days later in the hospital, burned and battered but alive. DANIEL BOGADO/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

He was told he was safe on 84th fl oor. He didn’t believe it.

Jacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY

Ron DiFrancesco began the day as a money-market broker in the south tower of the World Trade Center. He ended it as the building’s last survivor. h On Sept. 11, 2001, he had, as usual, caught the 5:42 a.m. train from Mahwah, New Jersey, to Hoboken, the city on the Hudson River with spectacular Manhattan views. There, he switched to the PATH Train, which took him to the World Trade Center. h He was at his desk, at Euro Brokers on the 84th fl oor, by 6:50 a.m. h It seemed no diff erent from any other day. A little less than two hours later, it became a day like no other. And DiFrancesco would be one of only four people from above the 84th fl oor to survive the terrorist attacks.

Continued on next page

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

25

“There was a big, gaping hole in the side of the building. There are people and just fi re, and then you saw some people jump.”

Ron DiFrancesco

who was in the south tower when the north tower was hit

Continued from previous page

Within a year of 9/11, DiFrancesco had returned to his native Canada. He’s now director of operations for a real estate company and a consultant for mentalhealth initiatives, including one called Effi cient Happiness, which is focused on making people happy at work.

In this interview, which has been edited for clarity, DiFrancesco talks about what it was like working at the World Trade Center and what he recalls from that day, before he wound up at St. Vincent’s Hospital for nearly two weeks.

Let’s go back, for a moment, before the terrorist attack. For someone who worked in fi nance, what was it like being in the twin towers?

It was a rush. Even just the energy of getting off the train and in Hoboken, everybody running down into the PATH, everybody getting on the train. And the stoic faces, and then running up the stairs and getting into your offi ce, and taking the elevators from zero to 78. That took about three minutes to get up. And then you got off and got on the smaller elevators. When you walked into our trading room, there are 300 brokers — yelling, screaming, sitting so close to each other, right, so everyone’s packed in.

It was a kind of fun energy. We had drive, but the New Yorkers — the New York mentality, like some of those people would have sold their mothers for a trade.

You were already at your desk when the north tower was hit. What did you see, and how did you react?

We saw a big fl ash beside us. And then we saw a big fi reball and then all these papers fl oating around and stuff . But, you know, being considered a dumb Canadian, I just never even thought of terrorism.

It didn’t cross my mind. Some of the guys in the offi ce, they knew right away, and they left. But I didn’t, and I went over and saw what was going on.

It was way over to the right side, so we went over there, and it was horrible.

There was a big, gaping hole in the side of the building. There are people and just fi re, and then you saw some people jump.

What sort of information were you receiving after the fi rst plane struck?

As smoke and flames fi ll the upper floors of the World Trade Center’s north tower on Sept. 11, 2001, people lean out of broken windows to breathe and hope for rescue.

Some would jump rather than burn to death.

AMY SANCETTA/ AP

On the PA system, they were saying, “Please go back to your desks.” Right. And who knew that it was a terrorist attack?

We all thought that a plane had gone off course and crashed into the World Trade.

So I went back to my desk, and all my accounts and friends are calling: “What’s going on? What’s happening?” And I said, “No, no, they told us Building 2 (the south tower) is secure.” And then a good friend of mine here in Toronto called me and just started screaming: “Ronnie, get out of there! Get the hell out of there, man.” And he sort of incited a bit of panic in me. And that’s when I called my wife and said I was leaving and that I would call her when I got downstairs.

At that point, you needed to get from the 84th fl oor? How did you do this?

As I was leaving the trading room, the plane hit our building, so I was still on the fl oor. All the ceiling tiles came down, and we got knocked over, and there were all kinds of debris coming down. We got back up and met a few other colleagues, and then we went into the stairwell.

We’re lucky that we picked the right stairwell, but we started to go down. And then we met some people coming up. And they said the fl oor down below was impassable. So the plane went from (fl oors) 77 to 85 and sliced through our trading room, but it also took out some of the stairwells.

We started to climb down, and then I was with another colleague, and we had heard some cries for help. So, Brian (Clark) and I started to assist this man, Stanley (Praimnath), and get him out.

And then I was overcome by the smoke.

And so I started to go up with some

of my other colleagues.

At one point, you had to head back up because the stairway was blocked?

I guess we got to the 91st fl oor. And then I realized that we couldn’t get out on any fl oor because they’re locked from the inside for security reasons. So, at that point, true panic really started to set in.

What could you do at that point?

People started to lie down to get beneath the smell. I don’t know if you believe in a higher being, but somebody called me, and I went towards the fi re and fl ames, and I pulled back a sheet of drywall and saw that it moved. And then I pulled back and saw the stairwell below, so I used the sheet of drywall and slid down, and I ran through three fl ights of stairs that were on fi re and then ran all the way down. I guess about halfway down, I ran into three fi refi ghters that were coming up. And I was complaining that I was having trouble breathing. And, you know, I didn’t know how bad my injuries were, but they just said go down, and you’ll get some help down below.

And then you were fi nally able to get to street level?

There were Port Authority workers who said, “You cannot do that,” that it was “like a war zone out there.” There was debris and bodies, and so they made us go underneath in the PATH (station). And as I went downstairs, I ran into another colleague of mine, and we started walking together. And as we started to walk, the building started to come down. I looked to the right-hand side and saw a Continued on next page

26

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION Continued from previous page

fi reball coming out. Then I just yelled at John to run. And I woke up three days later in the hospital. I had burns all over my body. There’s a big gash on my forehead.

My contacts were melted to my eyes.

Your wife, like so many spouses waiting for information, must have been beside herself with worry. When did she know that you had survived?

At about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. They said, “Your husband’s here at the hospital.” And she was just elated. We had four very young kids, and she had to call the school and said, “Please don’t let my kids watch the TV. They know their father works in the World Trade.” But she was so elated that she hung up, but she didn’t know where I was.

Everyone was in a panic, fi ght or fl ight mode, right, so it’s just like, “OK, call the next person.” She called our families back here in Canada to tell them. And then she didn’t know where I was, and so she didn’t fi nd out until about 11 that night.

And you decided to return to Canada within the year?

I had gone back to work part time in March and full time in April, and the kids would be in the window every time, asking if I were coming home. We decided to pull the plug and go back to Canada.

Will you return for the 20th anniversary and be at the site?

No, I don’t think so, to the site. My wife and I did go back to New York for the fi fth, 10th, 15th anniversaries. We will go back.

We just want to be there. I left my heart there. We just go and refl ect and remember our colleagues, our friends, and spend some time there. My brother-in-law and family are in the city, so we will spend a bit of time with them and probably go back to Jersey and see a few friends.

You survived something extraordinary, and it had to change your outlook on life. What are some of the lessons you took from the dreadful day?

I guess (to have) a positive outlook on life. I saw the positivity of people, how great people were in America and around the world, how everybody rallied around to support people through this trauma. I struggled for a very long time with my physical health and my mental health. I didn’t want to see anybody. People were labeling me a hero. I’m just lucky. I lost 61 colleagues in a matter of minutes, but I got 20 more years of life.

I got to see my kids grow up. If I was to go tomorrow, I would be OK with it. So you take every day as a bonus.

DiFrancesco is featured in the documentary series “9/11: One Day in America,” premiering on National Geographic Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

Where a 110-story building once stood, only a few twisted sections of metal skin remained upright as the massive cleanup began.

JIM WATSON/ U.S. NAVY

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

27

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

GOODNESS RISES AFTER EVIL DESCENDS On a day of horrors stemming from the worst impulses of humankind, we also saw humanity at its best. h There will never be any excuse for the evil wrought by the 19 terrorists who coldly killed 2,977 people on Sept. 11, 2001. h Yet we must never forget the profound acts of compassion and heroism that unfolded. Sometimes, it was co-workers grabbing one another’s hands to help them along. Or someone pausing — even when the next second of their life could have been their last — to make sure another person was all right. h These are but a few selfl ess, beautiful examples of what it means to be a human being. h Jason Thomas put on the uniform of his country again, just after being discharged. Ron Cliff ord, an architect and tech executive, stopped to tend to a woman who had suff ered horrifi c burns. Kathy Comerford, going into full mom mode, herded people to safety. h They exhibited the sort of goodness we all hope we would show in such dire circumstances. Here are their stories.

Jacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY

Parental protective instincts kicked in, saving lives

Kathy Comerford was just being a mom. Or, as she puts it, she was in Adrenaline Mom Mode.

Sept. 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m., found her where she was every Tuesday morning — in a conference room on the 70th fl oor of the south tower of the World Trade Center, running a staff meeting of Morgan Stanley’s event planning group.

“Then we saw debris fl y,” Comerford says. “We felt something.”

Ever since the 1993 bombing of the trade center, which killed six people, Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley’s security director, had been convinced there would be another attack. He also thought it would come by air. So the company employees spread among 22 fl oors in the south tower were trained to evacuate.

Comerford’s great-uncle was an architect, and her family story is that he worked on the design for the very top of the building. She had worked in the twin towers her entire career, starting in January 1984. She was there when the 1993 bombing occurred.

So Comerford knew this building, and she told everyone to get moving, although at that point no one thought they were in immediate danger.

Comerford went down 11 fl ights. Announcements couldn’t be heard in the stairwells, so she stepped into the hallway on the 59th fl oor to check for any up-

Disregarding assurances that the south tower was safe, Kathy Comerford told her co-workers to evacuate, then led them down 70 floors to safety.

DANIEL BOGADO/ NATIONAL

Continued on next page

GEOGRAPHIC

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

29

Unforgettable kindness Sixteen years after 9/11, Kathy Comerford was working in Midtown Manhattan when a stranger hesitantly came into her office.

“You don’t know me, but it was my fi rst day in marketing, and I was staying at my desk because that’s what I thought I had to do,” the woman said. “I would have stayed there and died. But I heard you yelling, ‘Everybody get up.’ And you pointed to me, and you said, ‘Get up and get your stuff.’ ” It says much about Comerford’s kindness and how she treats everyone that she didn’t recall the woman.

Continued from previous page

dates. People told her everything was fi ne; she could return to work.

“Hell, no,” Comerford replied.

“We got back in the stairwell and started down the stairs again,” she says.

“When we got to 44, we stepped out — and the second plane hit.”

She was knocked out of her shoes, dislocating her shoulder and injuring her neck.

“Imagine standing up on a roller coaster as it’s bucking and going up and down,” she recalls of the moment of impact. “When the building fi nally righted itself, and some of the emergency lighting came on, I was like, ‘I’ll be goddamned if this building is going to make my children orphans today.’ ” Comerford found her shoes and kept going.

She was right by a cafeteria and saw a huge cup of ice. In full Adrenaline Mom Mode, she grabbed that cup, thinking, “If it gets hot in there, if we have this ice, we can suck on the ice or chew the ice. To this day, I can’t chew ice anymore.”

Continuing down the stairs, she encountered a woman having an asthma attack. The woman was giving up. Comerford rummaged in her purse and found one of her kid’s inhalers. “She took some puff s and got up and started walking,” Comerford recalls.

There was a man with prosthetic legs, unable to go any further. He, too, gave up and sat down.

“And these two men were like, ‘Not to-

day! No way, you’re not dying in here,’ ” she says. “I gave him some ice. They picked him up and basically carried him the rest of the way down. We had to still be 30 fl ights up.”

Comerford continued walking down.

She remembers that the staircase was very hot. When she got to the 22nd fl oor, “the integrity of the building was going, and all of a sudden it went, and everything twisted. The wall started to crack, and we felt the stairwell twist.”

They had to pick up the pace. To keep one another motivated, people would call out what fl oor they were on and urge each other down. Of course, as Comerford and thousands of workers were running down, fi refi ghters was running up. She pauses to marvel at their bravery.

Everything Comerford did to evacuate on Sept. 11 resulted from her training from Rescorla — who died as he remained in the tower to guide others to safety.

Etched into her memory is an eerie calmness in that stairwell and the sounds of elevators imploding. Finally, at ground level, she was directed to stand across the street. Comerford still didn’t feel safe, so she ran — just a bit more.

In the street, Comerford saw people with burned skin falling off their bodies.

She stopped to help a woman and fl agged down an ambulance for her, struggling to get into it as the south tower collapsed.

“The cloud was hitting us,” she says. “I could see the other two people I was with running, sort of getting hit with the cloud, but they didn’t know to get in the ambulance. But I got this woman in. And we

Kathy Comerford worked at the World Trade Center for Morgan Stanley, whose security director had long expected a terrorist attack and had trained employees in how to evacuate.

DANIEL BOGADO/ NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

were the last ambulance to get into Beekman Hospital. There were life-and-death decisions by the second that day.”

Once the woman she had helped to the hospital was squared away, Comerford saw a pay phone. She kept trying to call home but could not get through because so many people were calling her husband to ask about her.

Even in the hospital, Comerford kept helping others. A fellow Long Island resident was stranded. Although she didn’t know how she would get home herself, she took him along. They walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, where she fl agged down a cab to take her to her brother’s home in Park Slope. Kindness was here, too. The driver refused any attempt to pay.

When Comerford fi nally got a ride home to Bethpage, she collapsed in the driveway. Her husband took her to the ER. Comerford was treated for cuts and injuries to her neck and shoulder. Doctors at Syosset Hospital had been waiting for World Trade Center survivors all day. She was the fi rst.

After all that, exhausted as she was, Comerford still could not sleep. The next day, she went to Mass — twice — at her daughter’s Catholic high school then at her two younger children’s parochial school. Leaning on a cane, wearing a neck brace, banged up, she insisted on sitting in the front row so everyone could see she was all right. “They need to know that life is OK,” Comerford says.

And she went back to work because the terrorists were not going to win.

With 20 years’ perspective, Comerford knows the lessons of Sept. 11.

“Stop sweating the small stuff , and be thankful,” she advises. “And do for others.

Pay it forward. I don’t think I did anything special that day. I just was being a mom.”

Comerford is featured in “9/11: One Day in America,” premiering on National Geographic on Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

30

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

As thousands were trying to get out of lower Manhattan, Jason Thomas was trying to get in. Just three weeks out of the Marine Corps, he put on his uniform and headed to ground zero, feeling duty-bound to help in whatever way he could — including searching the rubble for survivors. STEFAN WIESAN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Marine’s sense of duty sent him to the wreckage

Jacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY

Once a Marine, always a Marine. Jason Thomas proves it.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Thomas had been a civilian for all of three weeks. His uniform was still in his car trunk. He had just moved and had a 2-month-old. As anyone who has cared for a newborn knows, in those early months, organization falls by the wayside.

Having his uniform at the ready turned out to be helpful — although after listening to Thomas during a long Zoom video chat, it’s evident he would have been a hero in whatever was handy.

Like every true hero, Thomas would not describe himself that way. But what else do you call someone who climbs into a pile of smoking rubble to rescue strang-

ers? The strangers turned out to be Port Authority police offi cers trapped in the ruins of the twin towers.

Like so many New Yorkers, Thomas had a personal connection to the World Trade Center. When he was on the planning committee for his Long Island high school prom, Thomas chose Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant on the 107th fl oor of the north tower.

“It was breathtaking,” Thomas recalls.

He smiles, reminiscing about the panoramic views and the beauty of that night. Then, his face grows serious as he segues into talking about returning to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. It took away his breath again — for all the wrong reasons.

At the time, Thomas wanted to beContinued on next page

“My parents would always tell me that I was my brother’s keeper: Never leave your brother behind.”

Jason Thomas

former Marine who searched for survivors on 9/11

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Continued from previous page

come a police offi cer. He was attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Midtown. While packing his baby’s bag for the day, Thomas watched the news.

Nothing was happening when he left for the seven-minute drive from his house in Uniondale, Long Island, to his parents’ home. But he knew something was wrong when he pulled into the driveway.

His mom was waiting on the porch.

She told him that a plane had just fl own into the World Trade Center. A second plane followed, hitting the other tower.

The TV was on, and he saw the footage.

“I knew that it was a terrorist attack from there,” Thomas says. “Just how the plane lined itself up.”

He changed into his uniform, knowing it would help him get through roadblocks.

Then he headed downtown.

Uncharacteristically, Thomas wound up getting lost. “I remember seeing one building standing, and it did not make sense to me,” he recalls. “But, depending on how you came in, one facility, one building, could be tucked behind another.” Soon enough, Thomas realized the confusing view was not the result of his vantage point.

One building was gone.

While other civilians, which he tech-

31

nically was, were doing everything they could to fl ee lower Manhattan, Thomas was racing there. He managed to drive with a police convoy speeding to the scene. As he neared the site, he saw people running on the West Side Highway.

Shortly after he parked, the other tower collapsed.

The noise was so loud that he felt the rumble as much as he heard it. Then a massive cloud of ash and debris engulfed all in its path. Thomas breathed into his shirt, relying on survival skills, then went to see who he could help.

“I felt very confi dent in my training and what I learned in the Marines,” Thomas says. “But I also knew that my parents raised me a certain way. And my parents would always tell me that I was my brother’s keeper: Never leave your brother behind.”

During his eight years in the Marines, Thomas “had been to some hot spots, but nothing, nothing, like nothing, like that,” he says. “So my training was more along the lines of pretty much taking care of others or maybe being in a combat situation — you know, training for that environment.”

Still, it did not occur to him to turn back. He walked toward the smoking ruins of the buildings, not sure what he would do but knowing he had to help.

Fewer than two dozen survivors were pulled from the rubble at ground zero after the towers collapsed.

Fires would continue to burn for weeks.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY

Thomas recalls helping set up a triage station, moving supplies. “I remember running into a lot of those buildings and assisting (people) that way, get them out into the street,” Thomas says.

Along the way, he met another Marine, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes. By evening, the two of them were scaling the debris pile, which was so hot that Thomas’ boots were sinking into rebar.

A fi refi ghter warned him off the pile.

His response? “We are Marines. We do not go backward. We move forward.”

The colossal debris pile cast an eerie glow, given the embers from deep below the ghastly remains of the buildings.

Thomas decided this was his mission, and he was going to complete it.

“I took it personal,” he says quietly. “I don’t want to get into the details. Sometimes you just have to act spontaneous and step outside of your comfort zone, and just do.”

Inside that pile, Port Authority police offi cer Will Jimeno was trapped with colleagues within what he called a concrete cocoon. Jimeno was certain that he was going to die and prepared for the end. He placed his hand in the American Sign Language sign for “I love you” so that when his body was found, his wife would know he died thinking of her.

But it wasn’t his time.

Thomas had been searching for hours and yelled into a hole, “This is the United States Marines. Is anyone down there?”

Jimeno and John McLoughlin were still alive.

“It was so hot in that hole,” Thomas recalls. “It was horrible. It wasn’t a pretty hole. The ash was hot. Everything was hot to the touch.

“Every bit of the metal pieces of debris was still yellow in color.”

Thomas was determined to free them.

He began digging in the middle of this hellscape. By now, he was joined by a former paramedic, Chuck Sereika, another civilian called to duty.

They called for help, and it took a while, but fi rst responders from many agencies arrived and helped free the Port Authority offi cers.

Late that night, Thomas made his way back to Long Island. He removed his encrusted uniform in the yard and hosed himself down before going inside for a shower. He collapsed for a few hours.

Then he drove back to the city.

“I went right back to that same hole, that same pile of rubble and conducted a search and rescue,” Thomas says. “You know, there was no one else there.”

Thomas is featured in the limited series “9/11: One Day in America” premiering on National Geographic on Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

Rush to help The pull to help in any way was strong after the attacks.

Five thousand units of donated blood were collected by the New York Blood Center in the fi rst 24 hours — three times the normal amount.

Source: USA TODAY archives

32

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Ron Clifford was at the World Trade Center for a meeting on Sept. 11. His sister and niece were on one of the planes that hit the towers. DANIEL BOGADO/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

As chaos swirled, he knelt to comfort a stranger

Jacqueline Cutler Special to USA TODAY

All Ron Cliff ord could off er were prayers and loving kindness.

He knelt on the marble fl oor of the lobby of the Marriott hotel adjacent to the twin towers, comforting a woman severely burned from the plane crashing into the north tower.

At that moment, Cliff ord had no idea what had happened, only that “the building was rumbling, and I was kind of worried,” he recalls. “That’s when I found Jennieann Maff eo.”

“She stumbled through those revolving doors,” he recalls. “Oh my God, she was a ghost-like fi gure, kind of incinerated, and obviously in terrible pain.”

Cliff ord would not fi nd out for hours that his beloved sister Ruth and 4-yearold niece Juliana were on the next plane that crashed into the towers. Paige Hackel, his sister’s best friend and godmother to his niece, was on the fi rst plane. She

was such a close family friend that they had spent many holidays together. Hackel and Cliff ord’s sister and niece were all en route to Los Angeles for a vacation.

All Cliff ord knew at that moment was that a woman who had been waiting outside for a bus wound up in the lobby where he had been walking around until it was time for his meeting. Maff eo had been doused in burning jet fuel from the crashed plane. “Jesus, Sacred Heart of Mary, help me,” she said.

Cliff ord, a staunch Catholic, asked if she were Catholic. Maff eo was, and together, they said the Hail Mary and the Lord’s Prayer. He ran to the bathroom, found a plastic bag, and fi lled it with water to help her. He fl agged a waiter at the nearby restaurant for a tablecloth, something to cover Maff eo, whose clothing had been burned off .

Most important, Cliff ord stayed with her to comfort her.

Continued on next page

“She stumbled through those revolving doors.

Oh my God, she was a ghost-like fi gure, kind of incinerated, and obviously in terrible pain.”

Ron Clifford

who prayed with a woman injured in the attacks

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Continued from previous page

“That’s what we do, as Irish,” he says.

“You’re responsible for somebody, well, that goes all the way to the ambulance. I was responsible for this woman’s life now. I felt that.”

Cliff ord was still attending to Maff eo, shouting to fi rst responders for help as they ran into the building, when the second plane hit.

As the building shook violently, a fi refi ghter ran in and yelled at him to get out — now. Cliff ord guided Maff eo out and into an ambulance. She gave him her boss’ name and number, asking Cliff ord to contact him. Her parents were elderly, and she didn’t want to upset them.

Later, Cliff ord visited Maff eo at the hospital, where he met her father, who embraced him. Cliff ord left his yellow tie, which he had been wearing on 9/11, next to her, a talisman that perhaps would bring strength and healing. At least it would let her know that this stranger cared about her and treated her with loving-kindness.

She clung to life for 41 days.

That yellow tie, a pop of color, originally had been his sister’s suggestion, along with a matching pocket square, for his big meeting.

Cliff ord had felt great that morning — until 8:46 a.m.

He was excited about a potentially career-enhancing meeting. At 6:30 a.m., Cliff ord was home in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, when a call came in, asking to

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Two days after the attacks, New Yorkers stage a candlelight vigil for the dead and missing in Union Square, about 2 miles north of the World Trade Center site. GABE PALACIO/ GETTY IMAGES

switch the meeting from Midtown to the Marriott at the World Trade Center complex. It was an easier commute for Clifford, and he was happy to be able to avoid Penn Station. He splurged on taking the ferry instead of the train.

The towers glinted in the morning sun.

An architect by training, Cliff ord always appreciated their magnifi cence in ways others didn’t. He read about them going up and was impressed by “the fantastic amount of materials that were used, the superstructure. They were always fascinating to me.”

A native of Cork, Ireland, Cliff ord fi rst saw the towers in 1977. “And I wondered if those two sticks would alter the rotation of the Earth,” he says.

Whenever family and friends visited New York, Cliff ord took them to the twin towers. He never tired of these buildings and loved how they could be spotted from diff erent vantage points around the metro area.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Cliff ord had arrived early. He wanted that extra time before the big meeting, and spending some time there had always been a joy, “just looking at everything,” he recalls.

“It was fantastic docking there, walking through that harbor with all those mega yachts,” he recalls. “And then making my way up the steps then into the Marriott hotel.”

He pauses. Recounting that day is never easy, nor should it be. He pauses, then acknowledges that on the way in, gazing at his beloved sticks against an azure sky

and on the water, he “felt very alive.”

Within hours, death was everywhere.

Once Cliff ord delivered Maff eo into the care of paramedics, he began his journey home.

His daughter, Monica, was turning 11 on Sept. 11, 2001. He had to get home to her and his wife, Bridget.

The trip back across the Hudson River was fi lled with shocked people. Some were on their knees praying. Then a day that was already dreadful got worse. The ferry passengers watched the south tower collapse. Cliff ord heard from other passengers that Washington, D.C., had also been hit.

No one knew what was going on, other than that the United States of America was under attack.

During that horrible morning, cell service was down. Cliff ord had not been able to reach his wife. He hadn’t been able to reach his sister either, but didn’t think much about that.

Finally, he arrived home. Just as he was about to shower, his brother-in-law called, saying Ruth and Juliana had been on United Airlines Flight 175, which had left Boston and fl ew into the south tower.

Their dear family friend, Hackel, was on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the north tower.

Cliff ord adored his sister and niece and realized that the plane carrying them struck above as he was saying the Lord’s Prayer with Maff eo. He sank to his knees, crying.

Shortly after, Cliff ord went into therapy. It helped. For a while, even hearing the loud rumbling sounds of a motorcycle could trigger the memories.

He wants people to know that his sister, niece and friend “were excellent people. Their example has helped me and my family lead better lives.”

Cliff ord recounts this story from a boatyard, where he’s renovating a classic sailboat. He doesn’t talk about this as often as some do. He also doesn’t attend the memorial ceremonies; it’s just too much.

With 20 years’ perspective, Cliff ord says there are lessons to be taken from Sept. 11.

“America should have taken the threat seriously,” he says evenly.

Diff erent government agencies should have communicated better. Offi cials should have taken these threats as real.

There were so many red fl ags that were ignored. Still, such tragedy inevitably must teach us. And the most vital lesson?

“Family is very important,” he says.

“Friends are important. Just look — life is important.”

Cliff ord is featured in the series “9/11: One Day in America,” premiering on National Geographic Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

THE RESCUER AND THE RESCUED

Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

“ anyone there?” h Frank Razzano called out “Is iinto the darkness and chaos as the World Trade Center crumbled around him. h A voice anC swered. It was Jeff Johnson, a New York City fi refi ghter. h “If he hadn’t responded at that time, I don’t know what I would have done,” Razzano recalls. “I may have well have just stayed there and died.”

Razzano, an attorney, had been in his suite at the Marriott hotel nestled between the twin towers when he heard a loud bang. Through his window, he saw papers fl uttering through the air. A plane had hit the north tower of the trade center, but Razzano didn’t know it. No alarms were going off . So he started to go about his day, showering and dressing.

A second hijacked jet had struck the south tower by the time Razzano made his way into the hallway. Then the south tower collapsed onto the hotel.

That anyone survived at all is astonishing. The hotel looked as if it had been bombed — repeatedly. Within the collapsed fl oors and sheared-off sections of the building were small pockets where a few people congregated. Fewer would know how to navigate out.

Johnson led them to safety.

“He got me out,” Razzano says. “I mean, he didn’t physically carry me out of the building, but if he wasn’t there, I think I would have been like a deer caught in the headlights, not knowing what to do. He told me what to do. He showed me the way.”

A former federal prosecutor in New Jersey who later worked with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Razzano was in private practice in Washington, D.C., for decades until he retired last May. Johnson spent his entire career at Engine 74 on West 83rd Street in Manhattan until he retired in 2007.

Although they are both New Yorkers — Razzano grew up in Queens, Johnson’s a lifelong Bronx resident — they may have never crossed paths. But Sept. 11, 2001, brought them together.

Johnson’s fi re station was called to the trade center at 9:14 a.m, 28 minutes after

Frank Razzanno was in his room in the Marriott hotel at the World Trade Center when the buildings were struck by hijacked jets. He escaped thanks to fi refi ghter Jeff Johnson. STEFAN WIESAN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Continued on Page 36

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

Continued from Page 34

Standing on Broadway in lower Manhattan, fi refi ghters watch smoke rise from the collapsed World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Between them and the trade center is St. Paul’s Chapel of Trinity Church. Built in 1766, it’s the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan and was almost completely undamaged. It later served as a rest center for fi rst responders and recovery workers at ground zero. MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

the fi rst crash and 11 minutes after the second. He had been on duty since 6 p.m. on Sept. 10. That was about the time Razzano had checked into the Marriott.

Engine 74 was called on the fi fth alarm.

The highest number of alarms Johnson had experienced before that day was the World Trade Center bombing of 1993.

He had answered that call, too “We got sent down there to search the garage,” Johnson recalls of the 1993 attack. “There was a big hole where the parking garage was, and all the alarms were going off . No one was sure if someone was in the cars and trying to honk to signal us, so we searched as many cars as possible. Nobody was in there.”

Seven and a half years later, he was racing downtown to the twin towers again. “That morning of 9/11, the cops had all the side streets shut down, and we were just shooting straight down at 80 mph,” Johnson says. “We got there kind of quick.”

No response would likely have been fast enough to prevent the worst, but no one could know that yet. It looked dreadful from the moment Johnson arrived.

“I had known that one of the problems was debris falling from high altitudes,” he says. “There were body parts in the median of the West Side Highway, and glass coming down, and paper and smoke.”

“We knew we were going into something catastrophic,” he adds. “Whatever we do, we do together as a team. We stay together. As soon as I saw where our rig had stopped and what was happening, I said, ‘Just grab everything you can.’ ” His unit’s job was to respond to the Marriott. He joined about 40 other fi refi ghters in the hotel’s lobby.

“The chief is going little nuts,” Johnson recalls. “He’s got a lot of stuff going on. Everybody is standing fast; he’s telling us what he wants us to do. We did not know exactly what it was, but we heard these explosions. It turns out it was bodies (hitting the ground) between the MarContinued on next page

Firefi ghter Jeff Johnson’s unit was called to the World Trade Center after the second plane hit.

His job was to search the Marriott hotel at the base of the the towers.

BRANDON WIDENER / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

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“The fi remen and the policemen and the emergency responders should be treasured by our society.”

Frank Razzano

who was rescued on 9/11 by a fi refi ghter

Continued from previous page

riott and the south tower. There was a mezzanine area with glass; people were jumping and hitting the top of the mezzanine. We told the deputy chief, and he gave us our orders to go to the top fl oors and start searching the Marriott.”

Safety protocols mandate that fi refi ghters go to the level below where they need to be in case fi re has compromised the fl oor. So Johnson rode up then walked up the last fl ight to the 22nd fl oor, where the hotel’s spa and gym were. A lieutenant saw what he thought was part of an air conditioning system in the whirlpool.

In fact, it was part of a jet’s landing gear.

No one was there, so Johnson started down the stairs to check the fl oor below.

“From the time we exited the stairwell on 21, it was about a minute of relatively quickly banging on the doors,” he says.

“And all of a sudden, the building started shaking, and I got knocked down, and everything turned turn pitch black. It was pretty bad. Everything got dusty, and I could hardly breathe.”

The south tower had collapsed.

Rubble was everywhere. The search and rescue took on even more urgency.

“All we knew was we were hit with something and could not search,” Johnson recalls. “We were blocked; our hallway, from the fi re stairs to the wall of debris, normally would have 100 yards of hallway. We were stopped. All we knew was we could not go any further. We are

screaming and yelling for him.”

“Him” was Ruben Correa, a fi refi ghter from Johnson’s unit who was now unaccounted for. Correa was one of the 343 New York fi refi ghters killed on Sept. 11.

Amid the destruction, darkness and chaos, no one knew that yet.

So Johnson was calling out, looking for someone to save.

Razzano was calling out, looking to be saved.

Johnson instructed Razzano to follow the sound of his voice and go down the stairs. They continued down until they found the stairs blocked. Johnson found a hole in the wall. They climbed through it and wound up in a banquet hall.

It was then that the north tower collapsed.

Razzano describes it as a “freight train from the sky.”

Separately, Johnson says, “I don’t want to sound clichéd, but it sounds like a freight train. All I did was yell to the guys, ‘Get in the doorway!’ You don’t want to be in the middle of a big open room when the ceiling is coming down. I just yelled, ‘Get to the columns,’ which were 6 feet in diameter. I just knelt on one knee. I prayed.

I was just praying: ‘Please don’t let me go like this.’ ” When the violent shaking stopped, Johnson peered outside onto a mountain of debris. The “ground” was now 20 feet higher than street level because it was stacked with slabs of the shattered building. Still, they were 8 feet above that.

Firefi ghter Gerard McGibbon of Engine 283 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, grieves after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed.

The dead included 343 fi refi ghters.

MARIO TAMA/ GETTY IMAGES

“I am looking down and leaning against something. It was a curtain,” Johnson recalls.

That curtain was now their lifeline — they’d use it as a rope to lower themselves down. Through a hole, feet fi rst, Johnson told them. “Go!” So Razzano followed directions and went, feet fi rst and balancing on a metal beam. He fi nally was free. Johnson told him to walk over to the Hudson River. The fi refi ghters would remain at the site, helping more people.

“That was the last I saw of Jeff on that day,” Razzano says.

Johnson’s voice is steady when he recalls: “I was the last one out. As they went through the hole, they kind of disappeared. As I came out of the hole, it looked like center fi eld of Yankee Stadium — one big light going. I see some fi remen heading toward that one rig, so that’s where I headed.”

But when he mentions being among his own, fi refi ghters, and urgently telling them who was missing, his voice catches: “All I know is, I am missing people.”

He recalls that gut-wrenching search for fi refi ghters who had already perished.

This bond they have for one another is unbreakable. Both of Johnson’s sons followed him into the department.

“The fi remen and the policemen and the emergency responders should be treasured by our society,” Razzano says.

“I don’t think I gave much consideration to policemen, fi remen or emergency workers, until that point in time when I needed them. And they were there.”

Later, when Johnson received an award from the New York Post for his bravery, Razzano’s nephew read the story and called his uncle, saying he had found his hero.

The lawyer and the fi refi ghter reconnected.

Razzano’s daughter had become engaged shortly before the attacks. On Sept. 11, he realized he might not make it to her wedding, set for 2003. But not only did he make it, so did Johnson.

Soon, Johnson’s daughter will marry.

Razzano and his wife plan to attend.

Razzano and Johnson’s story is featured in the limited series “9/11: One Day in America” premiering on National Geographic on Aug. 29 at 9 ET/8 CT and streaming next day on Hulu.

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

“The characters’ stories are often harrowing and gutwrenching, but they are the stories of real people. I was most keen to avoid anything musically which felt manipulative or over the top.”

9/11 ATTACKS 20 YEARS LATER

David Schweitzer composer

FINDING THE SOUND Jacqueline Cutler

Special to USA TODAY

They were the sounds of nightmares in hell. Planes crashing into buildings, bodies hitting the pavement, people crying, sirens wailing, and a noise unlike any other — two of the world’s tallest buildings collapsing. h These are the sounds of destruction, despair, death. No one can listen to just that for seven hours. And so, the documentary series “9/11: One Day in America,” premiering Aug. 29 on National Geographic, required a score that would allow viewers to exhale and that would complement the story without overwhelming or camoufl aging it.

“I could think of nothing worse than scoring these genuinely terrifying stories with something overblown and bombastic,” says composer David Schweitzer.

The music he created for the series is unobtrusive, never dipping into sentimentality or urgency. None is needed.

Schweitzer, who has scored other documentaries (“Moon Landing Live”) and animated series (“Angry Birds Stella”), recalls how he approached this project.

“I don’t generally make a huge distinction between writing for drama or documentary,” he says from London. “In both

David Schweitzer composed for “9/11: One Day in America.” It makes use of silence as a central element.

JOE LOVELOCK

cases, you’re trying to pull the viewer into the emotional arc of the characters, to express their inner world. However, with this project, I did feel that a more particular and sensitive approach was needed.

The characters’ stories are often harrowing and gut-wrenching, but they are the stories of real people. I was most keen to avoid anything musically which felt manipulative or over the top.”

There’s also the judicious use of silence — because sometimes, no music is right. Audiences may not always realize how much soundtracks guide us, yet

such guidance often works best when we don’t know what’s coming. Here, sadly, we do — and as survivors recount their experiences, Schweitzer was keenly aware of what he needed to compose.

“The stories were often so powerfully told that music wasn’t needed for a long time,” Schweitzer says. “Sometimes there is little noticeable score — though plenty of subtle underscoring — for 20 minutes or so. And then a moment where you just have to sit back and refl ect on what you’ve been hearing and get pulled into the events of the day.”

While working, Schweitzer watched the news footage from Sept. 11. So much of the footage is through a screen of smoke, haze and debris; people, cars and buildings were covered in it.

“A lot of the visuals from the footage are grainy and unclear — murky and distorted fi gures seen through a pall of gray smoke,” Schweitzer says. “In these cases, the sound tells you as much as the pictures. As well as the voices, and the crackle of the emergency workers’ walkie-talkies, there was often a constant thrum or an indistinct rumble in the background of the fi lms. I was interested in creating a sense that the music came organically out of this sound world.”

Schweitzer found himself drawn to the sorrowful tones of cello and violin. Other haunting sounds deftly creep into the score, too. If we could hear angels mourn or the sirens’ enchanting songs, they might sound like what we hear in the background.

“On one of the early tracks, I recorded myself humming very low and quietly, and multitracked this to create a very muted and imperfect choir,” Schweitzer explains. “Later, I took a soprano voice and pitched it down to a point where it was hard to tell whether it was a man or a woman’s, though it was clearly human, and this gave it an otherworldly quality.”

“While there’s quite a range of musical themes and moods across the series,” Schweitzer adds, “I feel that because of this limited palette, it has a coherence and distinctness.”

The real thing David Schweitzer wound up using snippets of actual sounds from Sept. 11 and slowing them down to create an ambient mood that’s mournful without becoming a dirge.

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