September 11, 2026 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time. Lock and load. The Michael Derry Show
is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
25 years ago this morning.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
846.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
American Flight 11 goes into the North Tower. 17 minutes later,
United 175 hits the South. By then, the whole country
is watching.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
937.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Flight 77 goes into the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
959.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The South Tower comes down. 56 minutes after it was hit. 1003.
Over a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania... 40 passengers and crew
(01:00):
who had called home and knew, take the plane back.
It never reaches Washington. 1028, the North Tower falls. 102 minutes,
first plane to last tower.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
2,977 people.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Firefighters who went up while everybody else came down. And
more than 15,000 people who walked out of those towers
alive because somebody in a helmet was climbing the stairs
past them. 25 years ago this morning.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
This just into our newsroom, a plane has crashed into
the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They just played the tape again. It is horrific. A
second plane the size of a passenger jet flying into
the second tower of the World Trade Center.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our
nation into chaos and retreat.
Speaker 6 (01:56):
But they have failed. Our country is strong. Another plane
has been hijacked from out of Dulles. It's turned around
and it's heading for Washington. So immediately speculation begins. Is
it going to be the White House? The White House
is too small, too hard to find from the air.
The Capitol building is easy to see, but there aren't
a lot of people in the Capitol building at any
(02:18):
one time. The only building that is easy to find
from the air that has a lot of people in it,
the largest office building in the world, the Pentagon. Within
a couple of minutes, I began to hear the sound
of a jet engine, and it was pretty clear this
thing was on full throttle as if it were taken off.
(02:38):
But instead of the sound diminishing with time, it just
kept getting louder and louder and louder, and we realized this.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Is really happening.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve,
for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all
whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And
I pray they will be comforted by a power greater
than any of us. Spoken through the ages in Psalm 23.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
We made a decision as a show team to honor
the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Not with a bunch of
facts and figures, but with stories. The stories of real people.
Because that's what I remember. If you've ever seen a
Ken Burns documentary about the Civil War, he'll show you
(03:33):
the letters that men sent home to their families, men
who never made it home alive. And they'll tell you
the story of that guy, what he was doing before
he was a blacksmith in his town or he was
a farmer in his town. And you really feel it.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Because it's real.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Each of us is an individual life. We're not just
some statistic. Vincent Artolino and the boat lift. The thing
about Manhattan that nobody thinks about until the day it matters,
it's actually an island. It's Manhattan Island. That's why those
bridges are so important. On the morning of September 11th,
25 years ago, the bridges shut.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
The tunnels shut. The subway shut.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
Several hundred thousand Americans walked south until they ran out
of country and stood at the seawall with the water
in front of them and a burning city behind them,
and there was nowhere left to go.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And then the boats came.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Ferries, tugboats, dinner cruises, fishing charters, sightseeing boats, fireboats. Reminds
me of Dunkirk when they saved the Brits and some
Frenchmen and some Belgians who had been pinned in by
the Germans. And England sent.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Whatever seaworthy boat they could get to go get them
and get them off of there. Saved the war.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
Some of them got a Coast Guard call. A lieutenant
named Michael Day got on the radio and put out
the word for any boat that could help A whole
lot of them never waited for the call. They just came.
I want to tell you about one of them who came.
What kind of person who did not have to do this?
Vincent Artelino. He ran a charter fishing boat out of
(05:10):
Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn called the Amberjack Five.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
He was 48.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
He wasn't listening to a marine radio. He was watching
TV like everybody else in the country to see what
the hell is going on. He stood up and told
his wife he was taking the boat into the city.
And she said, and apparently this is verbatim, exactly what
she said. What are you going to do, you maniac?
(05:35):
He said, I'm going to take the Amberjack up into
the city and help. She said, because remember, we don't
know what's going on yet. But what if they attack again?
Vincent Artolino said, well, that's something I have to live with.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Untied his boat, off he went. He made dozens of.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Runs that day, which amounted to hundreds of people, ferried
them out of lower Manhattan to Brooklyn to Jersey, anywhere
that was not there, explained himself once. I want you
to hear how a working man from Brooklyn explains a
thing like that. I have one theory in life. I
never want to say the words I should have. Never
(06:16):
go through life saying you should have. If you want
to do something, you do it. Now multiply that by
150 boats because Vincent represents 150 boats. Somewhere between 300,000
and 500,000 people came off that island by water in
under nine hours. It is the largest waterborne evacuation in
(06:40):
the history of this country.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I'll say that again.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
It is the largest waterborne evacuation in the history of
this country. The best comparison I can give is Dunkirk, 1940.
The Brits pulled 338,000 men off that beach. And the
world has been making movies about it ever since.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And that took them nine days. Manhattan did it in
nine hours. Here's the difference.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
This is the part I want you to really focus on.
Dunkirk was a military operation. Planned, ordered, commanded. Nobody planned this.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It just happened.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
There was no chain of command, no budget, nobody handing
out assignments, no coordination from the British government. A bunch
of Americans with boats looked at the water and said,
here am I, send me. There's a ferry captain named
Rick Thornton who told a story about it. His deckhand
was standing there with one of those little clicker counters,
(07:41):
counting people coming aboard, and the legal limit on that
boat was $ 399, 000. The deckhand's clicking and yelling, we hit 399,
and they're still jumping on.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Wouldn't you? I would.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
And Captain Thornton told him, put the clicker away today.
Vincent Artolino died in 2018. The Amberjack Five is still
tied up in Sheepshead Bay.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
They turned her into a restaurant. You can go have
dinner on that boat.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
25 years ago this morning, nobody ordered a single one of.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Them to go. But they did. 25 years. Not one
of them forgotten. The Michael Berry Show. The Michael Berry Show.
25 years ago this morning, the sky over New York
was an impossible blue. Wells Crowther was 24, 104th floor,
(08:40):
South Tower. He was also a volunteer firefighter. His father
gave him a red bandana when he was a boy.
He never went anywhere without it. At 9-12, he left
his mother a message. Mom, this is Wells. I want
you to know that I'm okay. Then he went back in.
(09:00):
On the 78th floor, they remember a voice behind a
red bandana. Everyone who can stand, stand now. If you
can help others, do so. He carried a woman down
17 flights, then climbed back up and again. They found
him that March in the lobby with the firefighters. 18
(09:22):
people are alive because of him. This week, the president
gave him the Medal of Freedom. The bandana is behind
glass in Manhattan this morning. A boy's handkerchief worth 18
American lives. 14 people were inside stairwell B of the
North Tower when it came down on top of them.
(09:44):
And all 14 lived. The reason they lived is a
59-year-old bookkeeper with a bad leg who was slowing everybody down, ironically.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
Her name was Josephine Harris. She worked for the Port
Authority on the 73rd floor. She'd had the job about
six months. When the first plane hit, she started walking.
And somewhere around the 20th floor, that's a long way down,
that leg just gave out. She could not move another step.
(10:18):
That is where Ladder Company 6 found her. Six New
York City firemen coming down out of that building after
the South Tower had already fallen, and their captain, a
man named Jay Jonas, made a decision. They put her
arms over their shoulders, and they started moving her down.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 5 (10:37):
I don't know how big she is, but two feet
on a step, then two feet on the next step,
because you ain't bounding down holding the body.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That's how you move a human being who cannot walk.
It's tough. I'm not speaking from experience, mind you. Two
feet on a step. Two feet on a step. It's
slow going.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
I want you to understand what that meant. Those men
were in a race and they knew they were in
a race. Every second they spent on Josephine Harris was
a second they were not spending on themselves. They want
to go home to their own wives and kids. And
they were losing that race. By the way, how many
times in your life have you been stuck behind somebody slow?
(11:20):
Grocery line, left lane. Ooh, that left lane on the
highway will get you.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Airport. Can you all move along, guys? Come on. What
went through your head was, come on, move. I've done it.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
You've done it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I'm not proud of it, but we've done it. We're impatient.
Speed up.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Six men in the worst hour in American history did
the exact opposite. They got to the fourth floor, and
she went down. She just collapsed. Could not hold her
own weight anymore. She told them, leave me here. But
you know what they did?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
They stayed.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
A couple seconds later, 110 stories of the World Trade
Center came down on top of them.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
And when the dust settled, J. Jonas looked up and
he saw a blue sky.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Can you imagine? They were on top of the pile.
That bottom piece of stairwell B held. It's the only
part that did. And they were standing in it because
they were exactly there at exactly that second. If Josephine
Harris had.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Been faster, they'd have been in the lobby under all
of it.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Dead.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Sal D'Agostino, one of those firemen, said it plainly. She
slowed us down just enough. J. Jonah said if she
wasn't there, we'd have been a little faster and we
wouldn't have made it. We live in a country as
part of a culture that worships speed.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I know I do.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
The strong one, the one who gets there first. And
on that morning, The slowest person in that building was
standing in the exact spot where six men would have
to stop. Make no mistake about what that was, folks.
They gave her a jacket afterwards, a green FDNY, Fire
(13:26):
Department of New York, jacket. And they had stitched on
it Josephine, our guardian angel. She kept it for the
rest of her life. She would die 10 years later
in 2011 of a heart attack. at her home in Brooklyn.
69 years old, a widow living on disability, and there
(13:47):
was no money for a funeral. A funeral director heard
about her story and gave her one anyway, no cost.
And the six men from ladder six carried her casket.
25 years ago this morning, six firemen stopped for a
(14:07):
woman who couldn't keep up. And she saved their lives.
You know, we spend every September 11th talking about New York.
But 184 people died at the Pentagon that morning. And
I want to tell you about three who did not.
(14:28):
Jerry Henson, 64, retired Navy commander, 72 combat missions over Vietnam.
After all that, he came back as a civilian and
worked a desk in the Navy Command Center. At 9.37,
Flight 77 came into that building.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Two corridors from where he was sitting.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
His words, it was like being hit in the head
with a baseball bat. When he came to, his own
desk was on top of him. He was pinned in
his chair with that desk wedged across the arms, and
on top of it was the ceiling and the bookcases
(15:13):
and the wallboard and the plumbing. His left ear was
pinned to his own shoulder. There was a fire raging
above him. There was a fire at his feet. Jerry
Henson figured he had about five minutes left, and looking back,
(15:33):
That was probably generous. A Navy captain named David Thomas
came through that smoke, found him, got his hands under the.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Pile, and couldn't move it. Grown man could not budge it.
It was too heavy.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
So he started screaming, help, help, somebody help me, help me.
I cannot lift this thing up. And here comes the doctor.
Lieutenant Commander David Tarantino, Navy physician, 36 years old, 6'4.
He rode crew at Stanford. He had been headed out
of the building and turned around and went back in.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Dr.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
Tarantino crawled into that, got flat on his back underneath
a collapsed desk and a wall of debris and leg.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Pressed it off the floor. with his legs, held it up.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
About a minute after they got out, the whole space
caught fire and collapsed.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
25 years ago this morning, everybody in the North Tower
went down the stairs. Three men on the 27th floor didn't.
Ed Beah had used a wheelchair since he was 21.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
27 flights. It wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Abe Zalmanowicz sat at the desk beside him, 12 years,
side by side. He sent Ed's aide down the stairs
and said he'd wait with him for the firemen. Then
he held the phone up so Ed could call his mother.
Captain Billy Burke of Engine 21 came up, ordered his
men out of the building, and stayed. At 1028, the
(17:11):
North Tower came down on the three of them. Three
days later, at the National Cathedral, the president said this.
Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have
saved himself stayed until the end at the side of
his quadriplegic friend. They found Ed and Abe together. They
never found the captain.
Speaker 5 (17:33):
Howard Lutnick turned 40 in the summer of 2001. You
know Howard Lutnick as the Commerce Secretary under President Trump today,
but at that time he was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.
which occupied floors 101 through 105 of One.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
World Trade Center. That's a big deal. They were going
and blowing. They were a big deal. Big company. Big, powerful,
important company. That's the top of the North Tower. This
is Howard Lutnick, now Commerce Secretary, with Anthony Pompliano. He was,
of course, at the time, the head of Cantor Fitzgerald.
(18:12):
You probably know that name already because their company story
is one of those that is often told.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
We're only hiring our friends. I own the company. I'm
putting all my money into the company. The company's incredibly successful.
It's killing it. We are growing fast and furious. I'm
hiring all the talent in the world. We're making a
million a day. That's a lot. I'm a super rich guy.
I have the famous $ 100 million set aside just in case.
(18:44):
Like super rich, super rich. And the rest of my money,
just feed the beast. Feed the beast, golden goose, feed
the golden goose. Kenneth Fitzgerald has no debt. Howard Lutnick
has no debt.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Why make a lot of money?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Why would I need debt?
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
No debt.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Rockstar company winning in every way on the top of
the World Trade Center have expanded, expanded, expanded. 101st to
the 105th was the World Trade Center.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Right?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
September 11th. I've heard all my friends. My brother works there.
My best friend, Doug, works there. My roommate from college,
his brother works there. My other best friend, his brother-in-law
works there. And my other best friend, his brother-in-law works there.
I turned 40 that summer. So before then, it's April
(19:36):
of 2001. I'm going to turn 40 during the summer.
I declare victory. I win in life. I'm making all
the money in the world. It's my company. I work
with all my friends and they work with all their friends.
Everybody works with their friends. Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I win.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I take each of my senior executives, six of them,
out to dinner alone. Each one alone. I get up
from my table. I walk around the other side and
I kiss him. I tell him I love him. I said,
but I win. So here's, and I give him each,
I don't know, 20, 25 million bucks worth of stock.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I said, I win.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
So here's the way it's going to go. Every day
my kids are out of school, I'm out. I'm going
to live my life with my kids. When they're in,
I'm in. Same as I always am, but I'm just
going to be out way more often. You guys are great.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Here's the stock. I give them mine.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
That's April.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I have my birthday party that summer. About 65 couples
in my birthday party. So it's my 40th birthday. So
your 40th birthday, 120 people come.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
120, 130 people. It's a nice party.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
And, uh, And then September 11th, it's July. July 14th
is my birthday. And three months later, 20 people are
at my party get killed.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
It's my friends.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
My brother gets killed. My best friend, Doug, gets killed.
All those people I listed before, they all get killed.
We employ 50 sets of brothers. And we lose more
than a dozen brothers, meaning mom loses two sons. I
have one father who lost two daughters. Because they work together.
And 658 people out of 916 in New York, 658
(21:20):
people get killed. 658 people get killed.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's the stories that get me. Then there is this story.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Brian Birdwell, 39, Army Lieutenant Colonel, Desert Storm veteran, staff
officer at the Pentagon. His office was on the second
floor of the E ring at Corridor 4, the newly
renovated wedge, which is the exact spot Flight 77 hit.
(21:55):
At about 9.35, he was standing in that office with
two co-workers watching the towers burn on TV. Two women,
Cheryl Sincock, Sandy Taylor. Brian Birdwell stopped and prayed with
those two women out loud for the firemen in New York.
(22:18):
Then he told them he'd be right back, and he
walked down the hall to the men's room. Those are
the last words he ever said to either one of them,
because both women were killed. He came back out and
got seven or eight steps down that corridor at 9.37 a.m.
(22:38):
The nose of that airplane came into the building 15
to 20 yards from where he was standing.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
He said, I was tossed around like a rag doll.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
The next thing I know, I'm trying to get up.
It's black except for the ambient light of fires. I'm
on fire. His uniform was polyester. An officer who found
him later said, if you've ever taken a match to polyester,
you know it turns into a molten glob. That was
(23:14):
his pants onto his legs. He tried to stand up, fell,
tried again, fell, couldn't see, couldn't balance, and he was burning.
Brian Birdwell decided he was going to die in that hallway.
And by all rights, he probably should have. It's amazing
(23:36):
that we're telling this story and he didn't. So he
made a decision about how. He hollered as loud as
he could, as much as he could get out of
his mouth.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Jesus, I'm coming to see you. And then he lay
down on the floor of the Pentagon to die. And
then he felt something run down the side of his face.
He said it was cold. It was water. He had
collapsed completely. underneath one of the only sprinkler heads in
that corridor that was still actually working. And it put
(24:14):
him out. He was no longer on fire.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
He got up, walked with a hand on the wall
toward a light, fell down in front of an army
colonel named Ray Wallace. Wallace and three other men picked
him up and his skin came off in their hands.
More than 60% of his body, his face, both arms
grafted completely. They gave him less than a 1% chance
(24:45):
of survival. 24 days on a ventilator. 92 days in
a hospital.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
39 operations over four years. His wife, Mel, did his
wound care at home. I'll come back to that. She said,
One thing since that I want every married person listening
to hear. We never walk out the door without saying goodbye.
(25:12):
25 years ago this morning, a man prayed for somebody
else's fireman.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Lost him. Two minutes.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
And those two minutes are the only reason he's alive.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
2,977 Americans. 25 years.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The Michael Berry Show. Everybody remembers the firefighters. 25 years on,
almost nobody remembers the man with the bullhorn. Rick Rescorla
was 62, born in Cornwall, made himself an American, Army Colonel.
(25:48):
He's the man on the cover of We Were Soldiers.
He ran security for Morgan Stanley, South Tower. For eight years,
he made 2,700 people practice walking down the stairs. They
thought he was crazy. That morning, The Port Authority told
everybody to stay at their desk. Rescorla picked up his
bullhorn and sang them down. A Welsh battle hymn, floor
(26:12):
after floor, all the way to the street. 2,687 people
got out. Then he turned around and went back up,
last seen on the 10th floor, climbing. He'd called his wife.
Stop crying. If something should happen to me, I want
you to know I've never been happier. You made my life.
(26:35):
25 years today, they still haven't found him.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
20 people were pulled alive out of the rubble of
the World Trade Center.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
20.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Out of all of it.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Janelle Guzman was the last one. 30 years old, born
and raised in Trinidad, office job with the Port Authority
on the 64th floor of the North Tower. When the
plane hit 29 floors above her head, the announcement told everybody.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Stay put.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
So about 15 of them stayed, taped the doors, and waited.
They waited an hour. Then the other tower came down.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
And they went.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
She started down stairway B, holding hands with a co-worker
named Rosa Gonzalez, counting the floors out loud.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
47, 46, 40, 35.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
She was wearing two-inch heels. At the 13th floor landing.
13 floors from the street, she let go of Rosa's
hand to reach down and yank a shoe off her foot.
(27:56):
She said, when we reached the landing on the 13th floor,
I let go of Rosa's hand to yank off my heels.
That's the moment the North Tower came down. Rosa Gonzalez
did not survive. Janelle Guzman spent the next 27 hours
buried about 30 feet underground. down in that pile of rubble.
(28:20):
Her head was wedged between two slabs of concrete. Her
right leg was crushed. She was buried to her thigh.
She could move her left hand, but that was it.
She couldn't even get her voice to work to yell
for help. 27 hours. And she kept praying. God, please
(28:45):
save my life. Give me a second chance. I will
change my life. I will do your will.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
The part that deserves to be told to you straight
is sometime in there, she worked her left hand up
through a gap in the concrete, and a hand took
hold of it, warm, bare, no glove, and a man's
(29:12):
voice said, I've got you, Janelle. She asked who it was.
He said, my name is Paul. They dug her out
and around the middle of the day on September 12th,
rescue two out of Brooklyn. And when she asked those
men about Paul, not one of them knew who she
(29:36):
was talking about. In 2009, a retired fireman turned up
at her house and read off the names of the
crew that dug her out of the rubble. One of
them was a firefighter named Paul Soman. Her book's co-author
(29:57):
says that settles it. She has never quite said so.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Last year, 24 years later, she was still telling audiences
she is looking for Paul. I'll let you sort that out.
I know what I think, but you can sort that
out for yourself. Roger McMillan proposed to her in that
hospital bed. They married at City Hall that November. She
went back to work for the Port Authority, and she
(30:21):
is a supervisor at LaGuardia Airport today. She says, I
was given a new life. 25 years ago today, this morning,
she stopped to take off her shoe and it saved
her life.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
Tribute through stories, the individual stories. Next, this is a
story of Frank DiMartini and Pablo Ortiz. Frank DiMartini was
an architect. He studied at Pratt in Brooklyn. He restored
old brownstones. I love brownstones.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
He loved motorcycles and sailboats and Italian food. 49 years old.
Frank DeMartini. What do you expect?
Speaker 5 (31:04):
He came to work in the World Trade Center after
the 93 bombing when Muslims attacked then. Came in to
assess the damage and never left. By 2001, he was
the Port Authority's construction manager for the entire complex. He
did well. 88th floor of the North Tower. Pablo Ortiz
was his construction superintendent. Also 49 years old.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Navy veteran. Been married about 18 months.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
On the morning of September 11th, 25 years ago, Frank
Demartini's wife, Nicole, was up there with him.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
They dropped the kids at.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
School and driven in together, and they were drinking coffee
on the 88th floor when the airplane hit five floors
above their heads. He made sure that floor had a
clear way down. He walked his wife to the stairwell,
and she stopped three steps down and said, Frank, I'm
not leaving until you come.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
He told her he'd be right behind her.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
No.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Here's what Frank Demartini and Pablo Ortiz did instead. The
impact had twisted the door frames on every floor around them,
warped the steel.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
So all over that building.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
There were people standing behind doors that would not open.
Trapped in their offices, trapped in elevators, panic, pounding on
the inside of a building that was burning hot, burning.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
And these two men went.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
And got crowbars. Crowbars, flashlights, axes, hammers, walkie-talkies, whatever was
in the maintenance closet. And then they went up, not down, up.
89th floor, a law office, 23 people behind a jammed door.
Pablo Ortiz put a crowbar in the doorframe, tore it open.
The first thing those people saw was a man in
(32:47):
a hard hat they had never met in their lives.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yelling, we have to go now. 90th floor, three more.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
91st floor, 18 more, including three electricians.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
And here is, this is important. The 91st floor of
the North Tower is the highest floor in that building
that anybody came out of alive. Anybody.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
Because two Port Authority men with hand tools walked up
there and let them out. Otherwise, they stay inside and
burn to death. They go up when they already know
they're 90 floors up, the building's on fire, it's been
crashed into, and they're going to have to make it
down 90 floors, but first they go up to save lives.
86th floor, six more. 78th floor, a man stuck in
(33:30):
an elevator. Up and down, up and down, prying open doors,
sending strangers to the stairs to get out. They are
credited with saving at least 50 5-0 people. Some accounts
put it as high as 77,000. I'll tell you, honest answer,
which is that nobody will ever know, because the two
(33:52):
men who could have told you did not come home.
And nobody up there was keeping a list. Frank Demartini
was last seen at the 78th floor sky lobby, still working,
still headed.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
The wrong way. Neither of them was ever found, not
a trace of their bodies. 50 people, maybe 77.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
Went home that night to be with their families because
two guys who could have safely walked down and made
it out alive decided to go get a crowbar and
save those lives.
It's that time. Lock and load. The Michael Derry Show
is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
25 years ago this morning.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
846.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
American Flight 11 goes into the North Tower. 17 minutes later,
United 175 hits the South. By then, the whole country
is watching.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
937.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Flight 77 goes into the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
959.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The South Tower comes down. 56 minutes after it was hit. 1003.
Over a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania... 40 passengers and crew
(01:00):
who had called home and knew, take the plane back.
It never reaches Washington. 1028, the North Tower falls. 102 minutes,
first plane to last tower.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
2,977 people.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Firefighters who went up while everybody else came down. And
more than 15,000 people who walked out of those towers
alive because somebody in a helmet was climbing the stairs
past them. 25 years ago this morning.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
This just into our newsroom, a plane has crashed into
the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They just played the tape again. It is horrific. A
second plane the size of a passenger jet flying into
the second tower of the World Trade Center.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our
nation into chaos and retreat.
Speaker 6 (01:56):
But they have failed. Our country is strong. Another plane
has been hijacked from out of Dulles. It's turned around
and it's heading for Washington. So immediately speculation begins. Is
it going to be the White House? The White House
is too small, too hard to find from the air.
The Capitol building is easy to see, but there aren't
a lot of people in the Capitol building at any
(02:18):
one time. The only building that is easy to find
from the air that has a lot of people in it,
the largest office building in the world, the Pentagon. Within
a couple of minutes, I began to hear the sound
of a jet engine, and it was pretty clear this
thing was on full throttle as if it were taken off.
(02:38):
But instead of the sound diminishing with time, it just
kept getting louder and louder and louder, and we realized this.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Is really happening.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve,
for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all
whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And
I pray they will be comforted by a power greater
than any of us. Spoken through the ages in Psalm 23.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
We made a decision as a show team to honor
the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Not with a bunch of
facts and figures, but with stories. The stories of real people.
Because that's what I remember. If you've ever seen a
Ken Burns documentary about the Civil War, he'll show you
(03:33):
the letters that men sent home to their families, men
who never made it home alive. And they'll tell you
the story of that guy, what he was doing before
he was a blacksmith in his town or he was
a farmer in his town. And you really feel it.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Because it's real.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Each of us is an individual life. We're not just
some statistic. Vincent Artolino and the boat lift. The thing
about Manhattan that nobody thinks about until the day it matters,
it's actually an island. It's Manhattan Island. That's why those
bridges are so important. On the morning of September 11th,
25 years ago, the bridges shut.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
The tunnels shut. The subway shut.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
Several hundred thousand Americans walked south until they ran out
of country and stood at the seawall with the water
in front of them and a burning city behind them,
and there was nowhere left to go.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And then the boats came.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
Ferries, tugboats, dinner cruises, fishing charters, sightseeing boats, fireboats. Reminds
me of Dunkirk when they saved the Brits and some
Frenchmen and some Belgians who had been pinned in by
the Germans. And England sent.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Whatever seaworthy boat they could get to go get them
and get them off of there. Saved the war.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
Some of them got a Coast Guard call. A lieutenant
named Michael Day got on the radio and put out
the word for any boat that could help A whole
lot of them never waited for the call. They just came.
I want to tell you about one of them who came.
What kind of person who did not have to do this?
Vincent Artelino. He ran a charter fishing boat out of
(05:10):
Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn called the Amberjack Five.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
He was 48.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
He wasn't listening to a marine radio. He was watching
TV like everybody else in the country to see what
the hell is going on. He stood up and told
his wife he was taking the boat into the city.
And she said, and apparently this is verbatim, exactly what
she said. What are you going to do, you maniac?
(05:35):
He said, I'm going to take the Amberjack up into
the city and help. She said, because remember, we don't
know what's going on yet. But what if they attack again?
Vincent Artolino said, well, that's something I have to live with.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Untied his boat, off he went. He made dozens of.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Runs that day, which amounted to hundreds of people, ferried
them out of lower Manhattan to Brooklyn to Jersey, anywhere
that was not there, explained himself once. I want you
to hear how a working man from Brooklyn explains a
thing like that. I have one theory in life. I
never want to say the words I should have. Never
(06:16):
go through life saying you should have. If you want
to do something, you do it. Now multiply that by
150 boats because Vincent represents 150 boats. Somewhere between 300,000
and 500,000 people came off that island by water in
under nine hours. It is the largest waterborne evacuation in
(06:40):
the history of this country.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I'll say that again.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
It is the largest waterborne evacuation in the history of
this country. The best comparison I can give is Dunkirk, 1940.
The Brits pulled 338,000 men off that beach. And the
world has been making movies about it ever since.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And that took them nine days. Manhattan did it in
nine hours. Here's the difference.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
This is the part I want you to really focus on.
Dunkirk was a military operation. Planned, ordered, commanded. Nobody planned this.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
It just happened.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
There was no chain of command, no budget, nobody handing
out assignments, no coordination from the British government. A bunch
of Americans with boats looked at the water and said,
here am I, send me. There's a ferry captain named
Rick Thornton who told a story about it. His deckhand
was standing there with one of those little clicker counters,
(07:41):
counting people coming aboard, and the legal limit on that
boat was $ 399, 000. The deckhand's clicking and yelling, we hit 399,
and they're still jumping on.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Wouldn't you? I would.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
And Captain Thornton told him, put the clicker away today.
Vincent Artolino died in 2018. The Amberjack Five is still
tied up in Sheepshead Bay.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
They turned her into a restaurant. You can go have
dinner on that boat.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
25 years ago this morning, nobody ordered a single one of.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Them to go. But they did. 25 years. Not one
of them forgotten. The Michael Berry Show. The Michael Berry Show.
25 years ago this morning, the sky over New York
was an impossible blue. Wells Crowther was 24, 104th floor,
(08:40):
South Tower. He was also a volunteer firefighter. His father
gave him a red bandana when he was a boy.
He never went anywhere without it. At 9-12, he left
his mother a message. Mom, this is Wells. I want
you to know that I'm okay. Then he went back in.
(09:00):
On the 78th floor, they remember a voice behind a
red bandana. Everyone who can stand, stand now. If you
can help others, do so. He carried a woman down
17 flights, then climbed back up and again. They found
him that March in the lobby with the firefighters. 18
(09:22):
people are alive because of him. This week, the president
gave him the Medal of Freedom. The bandana is behind
glass in Manhattan this morning. A boy's handkerchief worth 18
American lives. 14 people were inside stairwell B of the
North Tower when it came down on top of them.
(09:44):
And all 14 lived. The reason they lived is a
59-year-old bookkeeper with a bad leg who was slowing everybody down, ironically.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
Her name was Josephine Harris. She worked for the Port
Authority on the 73rd floor. She'd had the job about
six months. When the first plane hit, she started walking.
And somewhere around the 20th floor, that's a long way down,
that leg just gave out. She could not move another step.
(10:18):
That is where Ladder Company 6 found her. Six New
York City firemen coming down out of that building after
the South Tower had already fallen, and their captain, a
man named Jay Jonas, made a decision. They put her
arms over their shoulders, and they started moving her down.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 5 (10:37):
I don't know how big she is, but two feet
on a step, then two feet on the next step,
because you ain't bounding down holding the body.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That's how you move a human being who cannot walk.
It's tough. I'm not speaking from experience, mind you. Two
feet on a step. Two feet on a step. It's
slow going.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
I want you to understand what that meant. Those men
were in a race and they knew they were in
a race. Every second they spent on Josephine Harris was
a second they were not spending on themselves. They want
to go home to their own wives and kids. And
they were losing that race. By the way, how many
times in your life have you been stuck behind somebody slow?
(11:20):
Grocery line, left lane. Ooh, that left lane on the
highway will get you.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Airport. Can you all move along, guys? Come on. What
went through your head was, come on, move. I've done it.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
You've done it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I'm not proud of it, but we've done it. We're impatient.
Speed up.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Six men in the worst hour in American history did
the exact opposite. They got to the fourth floor, and
she went down. She just collapsed. Could not hold her
own weight anymore. She told them, leave me here. But
you know what they did?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
They stayed.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
A couple seconds later, 110 stories of the World Trade
Center came down on top of them.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
And when the dust settled, J. Jonas looked up and
he saw a blue sky.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Can you imagine? They were on top of the pile.
That bottom piece of stairwell B held. It's the only
part that did. And they were standing in it because
they were exactly there at exactly that second. If Josephine
Harris had.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Been faster, they'd have been in the lobby under all
of it.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Dead.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Sal D'Agostino, one of those firemen, said it plainly. She
slowed us down just enough. J. Jonah said if she
wasn't there, we'd have been a little faster and we
wouldn't have made it. We live in a country as
part of a culture that worships speed.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I know I do.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
The strong one, the one who gets there first. And
on that morning, The slowest person in that building was
standing in the exact spot where six men would have
to stop. Make no mistake about what that was, folks.
They gave her a jacket afterwards, a green FDNY, Fire
(13:26):
Department of New York, jacket. And they had stitched on
it Josephine, our guardian angel. She kept it for the
rest of her life. She would die 10 years later
in 2011 of a heart attack. at her home in Brooklyn.
69 years old, a widow living on disability, and there
(13:47):
was no money for a funeral. A funeral director heard
about her story and gave her one anyway, no cost.
And the six men from ladder six carried her casket.
25 years ago this morning, six firemen stopped for a
(14:07):
woman who couldn't keep up. And she saved their lives.
You know, we spend every September 11th talking about New York.
But 184 people died at the Pentagon that morning. And
I want to tell you about three who did not.
(14:28):
Jerry Henson, 64, retired Navy commander, 72 combat missions over Vietnam.
After all that, he came back as a civilian and
worked a desk in the Navy Command Center. At 9.37,
Flight 77 came into that building.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Two corridors from where he was sitting.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
His words, it was like being hit in the head
with a baseball bat. When he came to, his own
desk was on top of him. He was pinned in
his chair with that desk wedged across the arms, and
on top of it was the ceiling and the bookcases
(15:13):
and the wallboard and the plumbing. His left ear was
pinned to his own shoulder. There was a fire raging
above him. There was a fire at his feet. Jerry
Henson figured he had about five minutes left, and looking back,
(15:33):
That was probably generous. A Navy captain named David Thomas
came through that smoke, found him, got his hands under the.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Pile, and couldn't move it. Grown man could not budge it.
It was too heavy.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
So he started screaming, help, help, somebody help me, help me.
I cannot lift this thing up. And here comes the doctor.
Lieutenant Commander David Tarantino, Navy physician, 36 years old, 6'4.
He rode crew at Stanford. He had been headed out
of the building and turned around and went back in.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Dr.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
Tarantino crawled into that, got flat on his back underneath
a collapsed desk and a wall of debris and leg.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Pressed it off the floor. with his legs, held it up.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
About a minute after they got out, the whole space
caught fire and collapsed.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
25 years ago this morning, everybody in the North Tower
went down the stairs. Three men on the 27th floor didn't.
Ed Beah had used a wheelchair since he was 21.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
27 flights. It wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Abe Zalmanowicz sat at the desk beside him, 12 years,
side by side. He sent Ed's aide down the stairs
and said he'd wait with him for the firemen. Then
he held the phone up so Ed could call his mother.
Captain Billy Burke of Engine 21 came up, ordered his
men out of the building, and stayed. At 1028, the
(17:11):
North Tower came down on the three of them. Three
days later, at the National Cathedral, the president said this.
Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have
saved himself stayed until the end at the side of
his quadriplegic friend. They found Ed and Abe together. They
never found the captain.
Speaker 5 (17:33):
Howard Lutnick turned 40 in the summer of 2001. You
know Howard Lutnick as the Commerce Secretary under President Trump today,
but at that time he was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.
which occupied floors 101 through 105 of One.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
World Trade Center. That's a big deal. They were going
and blowing. They were a big deal. Big company. Big, powerful,
important company. That's the top of the North Tower. This
is Howard Lutnick, now Commerce Secretary, with Anthony Pompliano. He was,
of course, at the time, the head of Cantor Fitzgerald.
(18:12):
You probably know that name already because their company story
is one of those that is often told.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
We're only hiring our friends. I own the company. I'm
putting all my money into the company. The company's incredibly successful.
It's killing it. We are growing fast and furious. I'm
hiring all the talent in the world. We're making a
million a day. That's a lot. I'm a super rich guy.
I have the famous $ 100 million set aside just in case.
(18:44):
Like super rich, super rich. And the rest of my money,
just feed the beast. Feed the beast, golden goose, feed
the golden goose. Kenneth Fitzgerald has no debt. Howard Lutnick
has no debt.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Why make a lot of money?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Why would I need debt?
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Right?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
No debt.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Rockstar company winning in every way on the top of
the World Trade Center have expanded, expanded, expanded. 101st to
the 105th was the World Trade Center.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Right?
Speaker 4 (19:13):
September 11th. I've heard all my friends. My brother works there.
My best friend, Doug, works there. My roommate from college,
his brother works there. My other best friend, his brother-in-law
works there. And my other best friend, his brother-in-law works there.
I turned 40 that summer. So before then, it's April
(19:36):
of 2001. I'm going to turn 40 during the summer.
I declare victory. I win in life. I'm making all
the money in the world. It's my company. I work
with all my friends and they work with all their friends.
Everybody works with their friends. Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I win.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I take each of my senior executives, six of them,
out to dinner alone. Each one alone. I get up
from my table. I walk around the other side and
I kiss him. I tell him I love him. I said,
but I win. So here's, and I give him each,
I don't know, 20, 25 million bucks worth of stock.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I said, I win.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
So here's the way it's going to go. Every day
my kids are out of school, I'm out. I'm going
to live my life with my kids. When they're in,
I'm in. Same as I always am, but I'm just
going to be out way more often. You guys are great.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Here's the stock. I give them mine.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
That's April.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I have my birthday party that summer. About 65 couples
in my birthday party. So it's my 40th birthday. So
your 40th birthday, 120 people come.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
120, 130 people. It's a nice party.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
And, uh, And then September 11th, it's July. July 14th
is my birthday. And three months later, 20 people are
at my party get killed.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
It's my friends.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
My brother gets killed. My best friend, Doug, gets killed.
All those people I listed before, they all get killed.
We employ 50 sets of brothers. And we lose more
than a dozen brothers, meaning mom loses two sons. I
have one father who lost two daughters. Because they work together.
And 658 people out of 916 in New York, 658
(21:20):
people get killed. 658 people get killed.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's the stories that get me. Then there is this story.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Brian Birdwell, 39, Army Lieutenant Colonel, Desert Storm veteran, staff
officer at the Pentagon. His office was on the second
floor of the E ring at Corridor 4, the newly
renovated wedge, which is the exact spot Flight 77 hit.
(21:55):
At about 9.35, he was standing in that office with
two co-workers watching the towers burn on TV. Two women,
Cheryl Sincock, Sandy Taylor. Brian Birdwell stopped and prayed with
those two women out loud for the firemen in New York.
(22:18):
Then he told them he'd be right back, and he
walked down the hall to the men's room. Those are
the last words he ever said to either one of them,
because both women were killed. He came back out and
got seven or eight steps down that corridor at 9.37 a.m.
(22:38):
The nose of that airplane came into the building 15
to 20 yards from where he was standing.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
He said, I was tossed around like a rag doll.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
The next thing I know, I'm trying to get up.
It's black except for the ambient light of fires. I'm
on fire. His uniform was polyester. An officer who found
him later said, if you've ever taken a match to polyester,
you know it turns into a molten glob. That was
(23:14):
his pants onto his legs. He tried to stand up, fell,
tried again, fell, couldn't see, couldn't balance, and he was burning.
Brian Birdwell decided he was going to die in that hallway.
And by all rights, he probably should have. It's amazing
(23:36):
that we're telling this story and he didn't. So he
made a decision about how. He hollered as loud as
he could, as much as he could get out of
his mouth.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Jesus, I'm coming to see you. And then he lay
down on the floor of the Pentagon to die. And
then he felt something run down the side of his face.
He said it was cold. It was water. He had
collapsed completely. underneath one of the only sprinkler heads in
that corridor that was still actually working. And it put
(24:14):
him out. He was no longer on fire.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
He got up, walked with a hand on the wall
toward a light, fell down in front of an army
colonel named Ray Wallace. Wallace and three other men picked
him up and his skin came off in their hands.
More than 60% of his body, his face, both arms
grafted completely. They gave him less than a 1% chance
(24:45):
of survival. 24 days on a ventilator. 92 days in
a hospital.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
39 operations over four years. His wife, Mel, did his
wound care at home. I'll come back to that. She said,
One thing since that I want every married person listening
to hear. We never walk out the door without saying goodbye.
(25:12):
25 years ago this morning, a man prayed for somebody
else's fireman.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Lost him. Two minutes.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
And those two minutes are the only reason he's alive.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
2,977 Americans. 25 years.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The Michael Berry Show. Everybody remembers the firefighters. 25 years on,
almost nobody remembers the man with the bullhorn. Rick Rescorla
was 62, born in Cornwall, made himself an American, Army Colonel.
(25:48):
He's the man on the cover of We Were Soldiers.
He ran security for Morgan Stanley, South Tower. For eight years,
he made 2,700 people practice walking down the stairs. They
thought he was crazy. That morning, The Port Authority told
everybody to stay at their desk. Rescorla picked up his
bullhorn and sang them down. A Welsh battle hymn, floor
(26:12):
after floor, all the way to the street. 2,687 people
got out. Then he turned around and went back up,
last seen on the 10th floor, climbing. He'd called his wife.
Stop crying. If something should happen to me, I want
you to know I've never been happier. You made my life.
(26:35):
25 years today, they still haven't found him.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
20 people were pulled alive out of the rubble of
the World Trade Center.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
20.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Out of all of it.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Janelle Guzman was the last one. 30 years old, born
and raised in Trinidad, office job with the Port Authority
on the 64th floor of the North Tower. When the
plane hit 29 floors above her head, the announcement told everybody.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Stay put.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
So about 15 of them stayed, taped the doors, and waited.
They waited an hour. Then the other tower came down.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
And they went.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
She started down stairway B, holding hands with a co-worker
named Rosa Gonzalez, counting the floors out loud.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
47, 46, 40, 35.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
She was wearing two-inch heels. At the 13th floor landing.
13 floors from the street, she let go of Rosa's
hand to reach down and yank a shoe off her foot.
(27:56):
She said, when we reached the landing on the 13th floor,
I let go of Rosa's hand to yank off my heels.
That's the moment the North Tower came down. Rosa Gonzalez
did not survive. Janelle Guzman spent the next 27 hours
buried about 30 feet underground. down in that pile of rubble.
(28:20):
Her head was wedged between two slabs of concrete. Her
right leg was crushed. She was buried to her thigh.
She could move her left hand, but that was it.
She couldn't even get her voice to work to yell
for help. 27 hours. And she kept praying. God, please
(28:45):
save my life. Give me a second chance. I will
change my life. I will do your will.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
The part that deserves to be told to you straight
is sometime in there, she worked her left hand up
through a gap in the concrete, and a hand took
hold of it, warm, bare, no glove, and a man's
(29:12):
voice said, I've got you, Janelle. She asked who it was.
He said, my name is Paul. They dug her out
and around the middle of the day on September 12th,
rescue two out of Brooklyn. And when she asked those
men about Paul, not one of them knew who she
(29:36):
was talking about. In 2009, a retired fireman turned up
at her house and read off the names of the
crew that dug her out of the rubble. One of
them was a firefighter named Paul Soman. Her book's co-author
(29:57):
says that settles it. She has never quite said so.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Last year, 24 years later, she was still telling audiences
she is looking for Paul. I'll let you sort that out.
I know what I think, but you can sort that
out for yourself. Roger McMillan proposed to her in that
hospital bed. They married at City Hall that November. She
went back to work for the Port Authority, and she
(30:21):
is a supervisor at LaGuardia Airport today. She says, I
was given a new life. 25 years ago today, this morning,
she stopped to take off her shoe and it saved
her life.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
Tribute through stories, the individual stories. Next, this is a
story of Frank DiMartini and Pablo Ortiz. Frank DiMartini was
an architect. He studied at Pratt in Brooklyn. He restored
old brownstones. I love brownstones.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
He loved motorcycles and sailboats and Italian food. 49 years old.
Frank DeMartini. What do you expect?
Speaker 5 (31:04):
He came to work in the World Trade Center after
the 93 bombing when Muslims attacked then. Came in to
assess the damage and never left. By 2001, he was
the Port Authority's construction manager for the entire complex. He
did well. 88th floor of the North Tower. Pablo Ortiz
was his construction superintendent. Also 49 years old.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Navy veteran. Been married about 18 months.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
On the morning of September 11th, 25 years ago, Frank
Demartini's wife, Nicole, was up there with him.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
They dropped the kids at.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
School and driven in together, and they were drinking coffee
on the 88th floor when the airplane hit five floors
above their heads. He made sure that floor had a
clear way down. He walked his wife to the stairwell,
and she stopped three steps down and said, Frank, I'm
not leaving until you come.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
He told her he'd be right behind her.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
No.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Here's what Frank Demartini and Pablo Ortiz did instead. The
impact had twisted the door frames on every floor around them,
warped the steel.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
So all over that building.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
There were people standing behind doors that would not open.
Trapped in their offices, trapped in elevators, panic, pounding on
the inside of a building that was burning hot, burning.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
And these two men went.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
And got crowbars. Crowbars, flashlights, axes, hammers, walkie-talkies, whatever was
in the maintenance closet. And then they went up, not down, up.
89th floor, a law office, 23 people behind a jammed door.
Pablo Ortiz put a crowbar in the doorframe, tore it open.
The first thing those people saw was a man in
(32:47):
a hard hat they had never met in their lives.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yelling, we have to go now. 90th floor, three more.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
91st floor, 18 more, including three electricians.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
And here is, this is important. The 91st floor of
the North Tower is the highest floor in that building
that anybody came out of alive. Anybody.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
Because two Port Authority men with hand tools walked up
there and let them out. Otherwise, they stay inside and
burn to death. They go up when they already know
they're 90 floors up, the building's on fire, it's been
crashed into, and they're going to have to make it
down 90 floors, but first they go up to save lives.
86th floor, six more. 78th floor, a man stuck in
(33:30):
an elevator. Up and down, up and down, prying open doors,
sending strangers to the stairs to get out. They are
credited with saving at least 50 5-0 people. Some accounts
put it as high as 77,000. I'll tell you, honest answer,
which is that nobody will ever know, because the two
(33:52):
men who could have told you did not come home.
And nobody up there was keeping a list. Frank Demartini
was last seen at the 78th floor sky lobby, still working,
still headed.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
The wrong way. Neither of them was ever found, not
a trace of their bodies. 50 people, maybe 77.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
Went home that night to be with their families because
two guys who could have safely walked down and made
it out alive decided to go get a crowbar and
save those lives.
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