September 11, 2025 • 60 mins
In this episode, Ryan reflects on the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk, highlighting the growing risks faced by conservative leaders today. He is also joined by his mother, who worked on the 97th floor of Tower One during the September 11 attacks. Together, they share personal accounts of survival, loss, and resilience, underscoring the lasting lessons of 9/11 and the importance of preserving national memory in a time of fading unity. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I recorded this episode on Wednesday about nine to eleven.
It was an episode I've been looking forward to making
and releasing for quite some time, and then the assassination
happened of Charlie Kirk, and I just need to take
a moment and honor this man who died doing what
(00:20):
he believed. I met Charlie when he was about eighteen
years old. I think I was in my early twenties,
and he told me he was going to start an
organization called Turning Point in USA and it was going
to change the country, and he had all these big
dreams and I kind of laughed at him and I
was like, okay, you know, best of luck, and he
did them all. The last laugh was on him. He
was an amazing operative and someone who always got better
(00:44):
over time, and it's something that I noticed and he
won over my deep respect. We weren't close for most
of his professional life, but in the last few years
he'd reach out to me to try to open up
a dialogue. And you might have been a show many
times and I was on. I was always very haph
to be on and I really grew to respect and
get to know him a little bit, and he was
(01:05):
a good person, a really, really good person, and his
death is a tragedy and I send my deepest condolences
to his loved ones, to his wife and children and
parents and the Tpusa family. I've been praying for the
repose of his soul, that he entered the gates of
(01:26):
heaven and find eternal salvation. And as a public figure
and a public commentator and someone in the public eye,
I can tell you it's very scary nowadays. And I'm
probably going to do an episode on Monday about assassinations
and tempted assassinations and the stream we've had about them.
But I just have to honor him and just say that, Arlie,
you were better than all your critics combined. They had
(01:50):
nothing on you, and you showed them and you were great.
And to quote the famous poem, you know, rave Ratio
at the gate. Every man upon this earth, death comes
sooner the late, And how can men die better than
facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and
(02:10):
the temple of his gods. Charlie, you lived a life
in the truest form, fighting for what you believed in,
and you went out a winner. You went out too early,
but you went out a winner. You were a good
man and I'm so sorry for everything that's happened to you.
May you rest in peace and now the rest of
the episode. Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gardusky.
(02:40):
Thank you guys for being here again. This is I've
wanted to do this episode since I got a platform
to speak to people about today. Obviously it's September eleventh,
twenty twenty five, and twenty four years ago the world changed.
Every one of a an age now has their own
(03:03):
nine to eleven story, even if they weren't in New
York or Washington and they just felt fear and concern
and remember it, or if they joined the military afterwards
or whatnot. But as time passes, the wild thing is
meeting so many people who don't have a memory of
it and don't have a story of it, and some
(03:26):
who weren't even born. I mean, I've had employees of
mine who were not born when it happened, and you're
talking about something that is very distant and this moment
that changed the world that we live in and was
so deeply part of my life for such a long time,
(03:48):
coming from the son of someone who worked there and
spent so much time going to memorials and meeting with
families and also being the son of a cop. I've
realized now that so much time has gone by. I
was born in nineteen eighty seven, and nine to eleven
is as far from us today as like the Kennedy
(04:10):
assassination was to me when I was born. So like
I mean, I enjoy history, but I cannot relate to
that time. And I wanted to do an episode for
somebody who doesn't remember nine to eleven. And if you
like this episode specifically, I would ask that you would
(04:32):
share if you have a kid or a grandkid or
somebody who has no memory of it, because I'm trying
to say in a way that make them understand. And
by the way, this episode is going to be just
about this. We're not doing asking me anything. That will
all come next week. I will make it up to everybody.
(04:53):
But I decided to do it an episode to look
back on the day and my experience and my family's experience,
specifically my mom, to try to connect with people who
have no understanding of what life was like. You know,
many historical moments in so they blend together, right, there's
(05:15):
a build up there's a build up to a war,
there's a build up to technological advances, and then there
are those moments that are so sudden and so violent
that rather than being like something blending, it's like a
page turning or a book shutting. It's immediate and there's
no going back to it. So if you're under thirty
(05:36):
and you have limited memories of that time, or no
memories if you're in your early twenties or you're a teenager,
the world back then wasn't as connected as it is now.
Growing up, we would learn about history of the world,
learn about communism or the world wars or large conflicts,
(05:57):
and teach anyway. I would say out loud, like we
don't have to worry about that because we have two
oceans that isolate us from most of the horrors of
the world. Nine to eleven seemed the day before simply impossible,
because we were told that we had this comest protective
(06:20):
force field in America, and even though we were a
less connected country, we had a country with a lot
more social trust. Obviously, there are people like you know,
you wouldn't you didn't like, and you didn't leave your
kids with. But we were more trusting of each other
in general. And there's many reasons, many, many, many reasons
(06:43):
why that's no longer the case today, but it was
at the time. So for me, September eleventh, two thousand
and one was my second day of high school at
Saint Francis Prep in Queens, New York. The way it
worked back then was at my high schools, you would
have a first class, and then you would have homeroom
for fifteen minutes, and then you would have your second class.
(07:07):
And remember there's no smartphones. I didn't home a cell phone, like,
none of that existed at all. So second period happened
and I had a free period. It was my first
free period, and you can go anywhere you want basically
as long as you didn't cause chaos during free periods,
and back then I let you leave the school too,
like it was crazy. So I went up to the
(07:29):
library with a girl from my homeroom named Catherine Gonzalez,
who left the high school right after freshman year, so
I never saw her again. I would love to, I
would love to connect with her if that's even possible,
but I have no idea where she is at this point. Well,
we ended up going to the library. Sitting in the
library had these these giant windows Florida ceiling, two story
(07:52):
windows that connected the east and west wing of the
high school, so you could see onto the highway and
into the larger nah in Eastern Queens facing the city.
Well you actually you couldn't face You couldn't see the
city itself. You could see the area completely anyway. I
sat on the third table towards the west wing of
the school and talking to Catherine. I think about, like,
(08:16):
I don't know what the hell we're talking about, something about
probably high school when we think of it so far,
and you know, if we like our teachers or whatnot.
And I barely knew the girl and I look up
and I saw my uncle and I said, oh, I
said to her, go though, there's my uncle. And I
didn't like she made a face like why is your
uncle a year? But I didn't sit there and even
(08:37):
think twice of it. It's not like he worked there.
It was very strange when he was talking to the
librarian and he walked over to me and he said,
we made contact with your mom and she's okay. And
I said, what are you talking about? And he looked
a librarian and he says something like, oh, you didn't
tell the students yet, and he said something about an
(08:57):
announcement would be made soon. The librarian said that, and
he my uncle just had a plane hit the World
Trade Center. My mom worked on the ninety seven floor
of Tower one at Marsha mcclennan. And for the moment
that he told me that, I thought it was like
probably some single man plane who was, you know, acting
reckless and accidentally crashed into the building. Like that's literally
(09:20):
all I could comprehend. And it had happened one time
with the Empire State Building like decades before. So I
just thought, oh, accidents happened, and my mom was fine,
and he was supposed to pick me up, but like
in all the panic, my uncle left me and just
like left the building. So I don't understand why he
didn't remember one job, but he forgot me. And then
(09:46):
within minutes of him leaving, there was an announcement on
the loud speaker that said, if you are the child
of a firefighter, cop EMT or your parents work in
the World Trade Center, please come to the Guidance Counsel's office.
So now even though he had said my mom was Okay,
I still went because I was I was lost, I said,
(10:07):
I didn't understand what was going on. And my dad
and his two brothers were New York City police officers,
so I didn't know what I happened my dad. I
didn't know where my dad was. I just knew that
he had said someone had contacted my mom. Now I
filed into the Guidance Counselor's office, and there were so
(10:31):
many kids there. There were so many people, and especially
so many cop and firefighter kids. I remember a lot
of them being cop and five kids. I only met
one other kid whose parent worked in Marshall mcclennan, and
he was a senior and I was a freshman. And
we did start talking, and the TVs were on, and
(10:53):
the TV's had the school of TVs everywhere because of
announcements and stuff like that. So there was a TV
on with what was fully on display, which was two
buildings on fire and obviously not a one man plane.
And I was like desperate to try to get my
mom on the phone because it was so much worse
(11:14):
than I thought about. I didn't know what There was
no context of how they had spoken to her or
when they had spoken to her or what I was like,
I have to hear my mom's voice at that moment,
and the classroom bell changed and I didn't go to class,
and I just kind of wandered the school. I don't remember,
I know I left. I left the guidance Counselor's office
(11:37):
before I had spoken to my mom, and I just
started wandering the school, did not go into class, just
watching it on every television that was playing it. And
I ended up at the admissions office and that's when
the building fell. And I just looked at someone working
at the administra's office and I said, how many people died?
(11:59):
And the lady there was like, I have no idea.
And there's like those moments where you look to an
adult from a child, thinking that they're going to know
as a child, you look to an adult day they're
going to know every all the answers, and it was
just like this emptiness, this emptiness of thought, and I
(12:20):
just said, I have to talk to my mom somehow.
I have to figure out how to talk to my mom.
And I remembers two thousand and one, and there's no
like cell phones. Cell phones that existed did not even
work because the towers were down. Well, I don't remember
when I got to the guidance counse. I went back
to the guidance counsel's office, and I don't know how
this happened, but my mom ended up on the phone.
(12:42):
I don't I have not no recollection how they end
up making contact because she'd have a cell phone. My
mom is I remember talking on the phone and saying
I'm coming home, like I'm going to come home. And
my mom has a very almost Protestant like work ethic
(13:02):
where she was like, why you know you're gonna put
the fire out of the building, You're gonna sit there
and dig through rubble. No, you're going to class right now.
There's nothing you could do by being home, So go
to class, go to math class. And like as as
it in such horror, like it wouldn't have it wasn't gonna.
It wouldn't have dawned on her to like say, oh,
he probably can't concentrate on algebra at the moment. But
(13:25):
my mother was like, no, you're going to school, like
you're in school, go to class. But I didn't. I
didn't make it to class. I didn't go to any
other classes. I went as soon as I hung up
with from my mom, and I went to the cafeteria
for a while and bummed around, and I think I
got a payphone and called somebody and said, please pick
me up. I'm not staying here. And I told this
one girl I knew my whole life, who knew my
(13:47):
mom named Christina, that she was that my mom would
work there, and the girl and the caffetier just burst
into tears, and it was it was just chaotic. It
was just so chaotic and so many ins and me
and that girl started talking about who we knew his
parents were firefighters, and who we knew parents worked there
(14:08):
or near there, And eventually someone came to pick me up.
I think it was my uncle Mark, and they brought
me to my grandma's house. Now, my grandma's house was
across the street from my house, and she had two televisions,
which was a big deal in two thousand and one
(14:29):
in my working class family, it was a big deal anyway.
So she had the basement TV going on Cartoon Network
because it was the only channel that was not replaying
the attacks at three o'clock, and there were a lot
of young cousins and my whole family was there, so
the kids were sent to the basement to watch cartoons,
and I don't know what the adults honestly were doing upstairs,
(14:50):
but we all just sat there and waited for my
mom to show up. And you know, you couldn't call
her and say, what's your eta. We just had to
wait and wait and wait. And from my grandma's house
you could see. My grandma's house was in Western Queens
on a hill, so you could see downtown and you
(15:10):
could see the smoke clouds. It was the darkest rain
cloud you could possibly imagine. You could smell smoke in
the air, that is how palpable it was. In the
immediate aftermath, and my brother's elementary school, my old elementary
school too. My brother was in sixth grade at the
(15:31):
time it was on. It was further up the hill,
very near near our house. And the way it worked
was the most senior members of the school seventh, eighth, sixth, seventh,
and eighth grade, they were in the third story, so
they were very high, a perfect clear view of all
of the Manhattan skyline. And I don't know why someone
(15:54):
did this for but someone ran into my brother's classroom
and said, everyone look outside history's made and my brother,
who was only in the sixth grade at the time,
ran to the window, saw or looked at the window,
saw it my mom's building on fire, and left the
room and saw got to the stairs of the building,
(16:17):
of the floor and saw it was a Catholic sosocis so,
the priest and the nun who was the principal, and
he just thought that they were about to tell him
that his mom had passed away, and he burst into
hysterics just by the thought of it. I didn't have
the same moment, because my uncle intercepted me right at
(16:38):
the very beginning, so I never had that complete fear.
I had a worry of not knowing, of a long
periods of not being able to get a hold of somebody.
Think of how immediate everything is now, and how hours
would go by without being able to get a hold
of anybody, and how horrific everything looked looked. But my
(17:01):
mom made it home that day, very very luckily, and
we were all there, the whole family, every cousin, every
you know, and an uncle, and she just like collapsed
on the couch, and I remember that look of just
pure exhaustion on her face and there was a silence.
(17:23):
Nobody spoke, and I fell a very long time. It
was probably like thirty seconds, but no one spoke, and
I remember thinking in my head, like break the silence.
You know, there's always me with a trying to make
an opportune time out of things. So I looked at
my mom and said, you'll never leave the day that
I had, which didn't make her laugh. She did say,
(17:44):
what happened to you today? But it was primary day
in New York City, so cops in New York have
to be stationed at different voting sites. And my dad
very luckily was stationed in the Bronx and my uncle,
but my other uncle, my uncle Jimmy, was stationed at
nine to eleven, was in front of the building when
(18:05):
it collapsed and he ran one way and his partner
around the other, and his partner never made it out alive,
and he did. And there were so many million close
calls with so many people that I knew, and so
many sudden decisions that changed every person's life. And I
(18:27):
my mom happened to be running late from work that
day and my dad happed me station at the Bronx.
But I know, had she not shown up to late
to work that day, and had my dad been station
anywhere close to the building, my dad would have spent
what my dad would have been there, So the moment
it came down his head looking for my mom, like
(18:48):
I know that in my absolute heart of hearts.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So I.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Lot of people who were in New York think of
the day after, and they think of how united the
country was and how united we were as a people.
And what I remember most distinctly is there were express
bus stops throughout all of Queen's including near my house
(19:22):
that I grew up in, and on the express bus
was pictures taped onto the glass saying have you seen
this person? Have you seen that person? People just hoping
that their loved one had suffered amnesia or was in
a hospital and was going to make at home. That's
like the thing that I kind of stick with the most.
(19:44):
I don't remember national mood of the country. I don't
remember George W. Bush's speech. I don't remember Giuliana going
down there. I remember that glass though, of all those
pictures saying please call so and so if you've seen
Tom Dick Harry. I think the moment was too big
(20:04):
for my fourteen year old brain to comprehend nine to
eleven has been harder since the attack, I believe it
or not than in the immediate moment because I felt lucky.
I felt very, very lucky. But as time passed and
(20:25):
I knew so many people who's mostly dads. I knew
a lot of dads who didn't come home that day,
friends of people that I knew whose fathers, a lot
more firefighters. And as life events have happened, people got married,
people have children, and seeing their dad not there has
(20:46):
made me the impact. I feel the impact so much
harder as life goes on because I was so lucky
and I did have now these twenty four years of
both my parents because like I said, a couple of
minutes difference and my mom would have absolutely been killed
(21:07):
on impact and my dad would have been in that
building looking for my mom until the minute it fell.
So this day makes me incredibly grateful. It makes me
deeply sad for other people, and it makes me want
(21:28):
for someone else who may be the age that I
was when it happened, to try to understand how it's
more than like a meme you may see online of it.
There's a lot of jokes with George W. Bush's reaction
or some historical event you learn about in school, how
it was so real. And I say that as somebody
(21:49):
who didn't end up going to a parent's memorial service.
But it was so real and it remains real, and
it remains real, not just for what was lost in
the day, but what has been lost since. I think,
on a bigger idea also, what was lost as far
as we were as a country, the facade that the
oceans would protect us and that we weren't so entangled
(22:13):
in you know, the globe, the way that we are
in the ga we were in the proceeding and the
post in the post nine to eleven decades. We'll never
go back to that place again, and I really wish
sometimes we would. In nine ten in America was a
(22:34):
really really nice place to live. It genuinely was. So.
For this episode, my special guest is my mom, who
worked at Marsh mcclennan on ninety seventh floor of Tower one,
and she's going to tell her story of survival and
grief and what was lost and how she deals with it.
(22:54):
And I'm very excited about this conversation, So please stay
tuned and that's coming up next with me on today's
episode is my mom, Tony Angridowski. Mom, thanks for being here,
Thank you for having me. So, Mom, paint a picture
for my audience. Where did you work?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I worked at Marsha mcclennan in two thousand and one.
We were located on the ninety seventh floor of Taro one.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
So let's go back to that day. You know, when
I was a kid who was constantly late to grammar school,
people were expecting you to be late because I was
always late. And then I went to high school and
I had to actually show up on time. So but
you were it late that day. So why don't we
(23:46):
go over what happened on nine to eleven?
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Okay, well, on that more. The night before on September tenth,
set the alarm and planned on being to work in
the office by eight o'clock. We had budget meetings all day,
as we did on Monday, and I woke up and
something just told me not to rush, and I decided
(24:13):
that budget is going to be another hell day. So
I just took my time and I would have been
in the office at like ten to nine, so I
would have been on time. I just wasn't I didn't
follow the plan I had of getting in very early.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
What did you You took the train back then?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
No, I used to drive to Long Island City, leave
my car there and then take the train. The train,
no train, the seven to the okay, I'm sorry, the
seven to the two to the one.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Gotcha? Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
So that morning it was a beautiful sky. And back
then the when the when the l I E breaks
off and you get off, and damn street there used
to be one lane m but everyone used to make
it too. It was just normal every morning because otherwise
(25:07):
we do backed up on the BQI forur miles, so
we always made two and legally but we cut off
the other cars. We just merge.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
We carriated our own merge.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Well that morning because it was so gorgeous that I
was like, I'm just taking my time and I didn't again,
I didn't rush and cut everybody off like I normally
would have. So I so I sat in in the
in the in the line of traffic, and then I
did my normal commute.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
So you take the two train, you get off the
train at the World Trade Center at the.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Two train, I get off and I take the two
trains at Express train and you take it to Chamber
Street and then you transfer to the local which it
would have been the one train, and take it to
right inside the building, right, you take it to.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
The one trains up literally underneath the building.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yes, so that day I just missed the one. There
was nobody on the platform, so I know I just
missed it. I didn't see it leave, but it was
I knew I just missed it.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So what time did you pull in underneath the building?
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So the one trains?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So I'm sitting at the two platform and the one
train never came, right, we never came, So the two
trains kept coming. The expresses were still coming. And a
gentleman that I had met and worked in two World Trade.
He worked for a different company and we met each other.
We sat on the platform, We're joking around, laughing, and
we just got the twos go. We're waiting for one
and the ones never came. So I said, we have
(26:32):
to make a decision. We have to get on the
two and walk because then it leaves you off by
five World Trade and you walk, or we have to
go out and Chamber Street. You just walk the whole way.
He goes let's take the two. So we took the
two train. I got back on the train then, and
it takes you to five World Trade. And as you're
walking underground now we hear an explosion.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Because New York City subways for those who are not
from New York and never been here, it's almost a
block long underground, so you could walk, you could walk,
you could walk a literal block underground.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
So actually, as we got the train and we're walking,
a woman walked towards us and said, there's smoke. So
we were like, oh, let's check it out. We kept
walking towards the smoke, right, how stupid. So we were
walking and then within a minute, not even we heard
an explosion, like there was a bomb in the subway.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
That's how the subway shook.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
So then we there was the second plane.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So of course we turn around and we leave and
go out the exit and we go upstairs and then
we see what's going on. But yes, that was the
second plane getting hit, the second building getting hit. So
when we get outside, we can see the fire, the smoke,
We can count how many floors. I worked on the
ninety seventh floor, so I can see that the impact
(27:55):
on my building was on our floors. Both buildings at
this point were on fire and smelled.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So you could tell it your floor had been had.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I could tell my floor I got hit.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
So when what block did you get out of the train?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I got out on Park Place, which so you get
it's right there as soon as the subway station, right
right outside the trade center.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
So could you see debris on the floor on the
street or.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I wasn't that close where I could see that. I
could definitely see the buildings. I don't remember seeing debris
at that point. It was just the initial impacts. It
was still early, so the streets were not full yet
because the buildings were still standing. But I ran in
so I was with this gentleman. He kept on saying,
(28:41):
my colleagues, my colleagues, I'm like just an in dazed
sun because I guess can't figure it all out. And
I ran to a woman that I did work with,
and she lived on.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Like ten teen blocks away.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I can't think of the name of the street at
the top of my head, but she lived on the
upper west side, on the lower west side. So she goes,
let's go to my house, Let's see what's going on.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I have three phones.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, she had got three phone lines. She's I have
three phone lines because her husband worked at home. And
we'll go check out. We'll see what's going on.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Little three phone lines and two thousands. That's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And she said, then we'll come back, we'll see what's
going on, we'll get situated, and we'll come back. So
I said, I can't until I said how long of
a walk? She said fifteen minutes. I said, great, I
have to call my family first. So my next thing
is I stood online for a payphone. We really didn't
have cell phones. We did, but they didn't work really
at that day because the tower went out communications which
(29:46):
is the top of one World trade. So but I
did have a BlackBerry text message which did still work
at some points throughout the morning, and people and I
my people that worked for me, were texting me saying
I'm going to vote someone else text me, I ran late,
my son. I fell asleep with my son, never said,
you know, didn't get up. So I'm getting I was
(30:06):
getting some text messages and I wait on line for
the phone, and where is still right by where I
got off the train, still in the same.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Still in the same still look the building.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes, So I call my mom and I tell them
that I'm fine, I'm outside the building, right, And.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You don't know what time this is about. It had to.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Be no, no, it had to be like just nine o'clock,
a couple of minutes after nine, because the building I
hit at a forty six. So the next one was
I don't remember the exact times of the second building,
but it's let's say it's let's say it's about nine o'clock.
It would take so people are online on the phone,
they're like talking, tell them, like, you know, sitting on
the phone for like it seemed like minutes. I'm like,
(30:56):
everyone's swinging me. Just tell them you're okay and hang
up the phone because the line, of course, is getting longer.
So I call my parents, Like I said, I tell
them that I'm safe from outside the building.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
You go with your colleagues and.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
I go with my friend and we walked to her apartment.
As we're walking, I hear another explosion. Don't know what
it is. We keep walking. I get to her apartment
and her husband's there and he's got the TV on
and I look at the TV and I'm like, from
this angle, I could only see one building, and she
knew it, but she didn't say anything to me, so
(31:28):
we get When I said that, she said, remember that
noise we heard, She goes, that's the building. The building fell.
I had no idea. I didn't even contemplate the building
would fall. So that's when the building fell. So from
my parents' perspective, I just called and said I was fine,
I was outside.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
But I didn't even think of that.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Right now, we are trying to figure out who's good,
who's not.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Who would we call?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So how long is the walk from the building to
her apartment?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Fifteen minutes?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
It's not that long.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
It's not that long.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So the first building fell while we were walking, and
like I said, when we got to her house, the
other building was still standing.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
The second plane had hit so much lower in the
building that there was a lot more weight that was
holding and the beams were holding up whatever was surviving.
So it was going through your head on that fifteen
minute walk, you remember.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I don't remember, honestly. I was more, I think, in
shock than anything else, and we were trying to see
who else survived. I guess that's what I was thinking of,
because that's what we went there for. We went there
to make some phone calls to find out who's okay
and who's not and why we were at her house.
The bell rang, the drwbell rang, and we were like,
(32:45):
who's that going to be? And it ended up being
someone that she had worked with at a different company
that was a friend of hers. Showed up and he
was with us that morning. But we were able to
call the office. Prime location was Midtown, fifth Street and
sixth Avenue. Their phone still worked, so we were able
to call there and see a little bit about what
(33:07):
was going on, what they were doing there. We were
even able to actually the gentleman that came to the house.
His family lived in Florida. We could not call from
her apartment. Even though we had phone lines. We couldn't
call Florida, but we were able to call the the
Midtown office had them transfer us to Florida and he
(33:28):
was able to get through.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
So the phone lines, yeah, the phone lines were all
messed up.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Well.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
One thing I think about before you go any further
is so my grandparents, my mom's parents who she referenced,
they were very close to us. They lived across the
street from us, and my grandfather specifically, was a very
stoic man. He was very funny, but he wasn't somebody
who had a lot of expressions. He didn't sit there
and talk a lot. Is the least Italian thing about
(33:52):
him was how whiet he was, and he didn't show
a broad range of emotions. Later on they told me
that I guess it was Grandma's sister, my aunt Mary,
who had called Grandma to tell her that the planes
were hit and she turned on the television and Grandpa
saw it and Grandpa like According to Ann, Mary who
(34:13):
said she I mean she told me this even recently
said she still can hear my Grandma's boys scream at
like the top of his lungs because he was so
afraid that you had died, and he that is always
one of the things I think that send me the
most chills. Here I met it in the immediate aftermath,
was because I can't imagine Grandpa being scared, you know
(34:33):
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
And the second, well, what happened too was what I
heard again, I wasn't there is that they were okay
when I got to tell them it was fine, But
then I said I was outside the building, and then
so I don't know if that conversation with am Mary
was before half, but the building then fell after I
just said I was outside, so I heard that he
(34:56):
went up in his room and he was crying as
eyes out. But because at that point, I mean, he
knew the area. He worked down there every day, so
he knew where I was in the situation, and he
thought I was buried under the building.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Do you remember what they said what you said to
them when you talked? You mention?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, I did mention you. I knew you were in
high school, and I knew you were where you were.
I was told that your uncle was had gone to
meet you, and I was told that your other uncle,
my brother in law, was went to go get Daniel.
So I knew they were that they were reaching out
to you both. But at that point in time, that's
all I knew. After I got it was at the
(35:38):
how the apartment, we did try making phone calls out
and I did, and I don't.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Remember how, but I.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I did get through too or your high school.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, I don't remember how we got you on the
phone before I.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Know, Yeah, somehow we got in touch and you were
with another young man whose father worked in the same company.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
He was a senior and I was a freshman, and
they were.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
That school did an amazing job at protecting the kids
and giving them information but making sure they're okay. And
then he's with Ryan was with a guidance counselor, and
thisaw the boy was looking for his dad, and they
kept saying do you know him? And do you know
if he's okay? And his name was familiar to someone
I worked with us, so we challenged that for a second.
(36:23):
He goes, no, this is his name. I said, no,
I don't know who that is. I don't even know him.
But I said, the situation down here, there's no way
I know that anybody's okay. I can't tell you that,
so fast forward. Thankfully, this man was fine. I actually
visited him once we went back to the office and
we're back midtown. I found him and I told him
that our sons were together during this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
So I did chat with him, but I did find dad.
He was okay.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Do you do you when you came home that day?
I remember you saying that you didn't know certain people
were still alive. How long did it take for everyone
to like email itach other and just say I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Well, it really wasn't emails we did is they were
like phone call chains. So I still have it. I
have like this yellow pad of paper. I could picture
it and we would like all our friends were calling
each other and says, oh, I heard from Mary, and
I heard from John, and I heard from Susan. And
we was writing names down who we heard from, and
every time we got through to somebody, we were telling
(37:24):
them who we heard. Through the grape buying. That was okay,
but even still there were people that were not okay.
There was a gentleman who so I used to work
with his sister in law years prior, like in may se'son.
I had no idea that they were related until after
the event. But he had called in so his name
on the safe list, but he was in a conference
(37:45):
room in the building and he passed, so he was
on the list and it was not correct. So there
were a couple of those. The one gentleman who was
an admin from my boss, a friend of mine. I
had not heard about him. So, like when you go
through the I mean talk about two days of so
it was Tuesday when I got home. All day Wednesday,
I went back to the office on Thursday, but almost
(38:07):
two days. That's all we did is figuring out who
was around.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So it was like an email chain saying send me,
send me a reply if you're alive.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Or no, no, no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
But there was when you went into the building, there
was a desk set up to call in if anybody
had questions, and they did do amazing for family members.
And then they had like posted sheets on the wall.
The entire wall was filled with names, so as you
found out someone was a survivor, that name went up
on the wall or maybe in reverse, but the names
(38:38):
were on the wall, so I remember. And they had
a volunteer list at the desk of who wanted to be,
you know, make themselves available to answer the phone for
families and such.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
And this one guy who.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I worked with, who I was very close with, I
had not known if he was alive. He was not
on the list, He was not on any list anywhere,
and then his name. I go to sign up to
help and his name is on the list, and I.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Like freaked down. I was like, how does anyone on
this list?
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Like like he had signed up, So he was okay,
but it was just a very emotional moment for me.
The other emotional moment is some managers like, we still
have a business, we still have to run it, but
they were I walked into a conference room and there
are a bunch of people in there again you've seen
for the first time, and he's running a meeting and
I go in and I'm just bawling my eyes out,
(39:25):
hugging this other woman that's there.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
We're both crying. He's still conducting the meeting. He goes hi, Tony,
think he keeps on going.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And that was like another moment that we just saw
each other. And from that mid day on, from the
Thursday on, every day they didn't force you to go
to work. You could have stayed out for two months
if you wanted to. We chose to go in no thought.
We got a lot accomplished in the beginning. But the
office in Midtown and we just kissed and.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Hogged to loow everybody.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Is so not the typical work experience, but for like
a month, it was this bond that we had with
each other that.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Was like no other.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
So Marsh mcclennan lost three hundred and fifty eight people,
which is about twenty percent of the workforce. My mom
was making a basic On.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
The IT side. I worked in technology.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
We lost fifty about fifty percent, forty five percent consultants
and some.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Well they had eight floors and.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
We were ninety four to ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Oh yeah, so it was a lot.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, And that day, if we had our budget meetings
as we did the day before, we would have been
on ninety nine in the conference rooms the entire day.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
You always would say that you would when you were
in ORG, you'd see birds flying below you. Well, no,
I never get to go to your office.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Well they would actually they would actually walk around and
put the blinds down because the birds would fly in,
and they would put nets around the building. That's what
I was told to catch the birds. So in my
head even on that day, as counting the floors and
I see people by the windows, and then I unfortunately
I did see people jump, and I think I know
who they were again based upon the floors, and I
(41:07):
know who was left in the building and who was trapped.
There was a dozen people together. I'm friends of mine,
and you know you saw the jumping. I was like,
the nets are there, Like in my head because you
aren't making any sense at the moment, but but you
wanted it all to be. You wanted everyone to be okay, like, oh,
they're jumping because you know, the firemen have those big
(41:29):
you know, not thinking that your ninety seven floors, that's
not going to do a damn thing.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Right, Hey, we'll be right back after this. I was
thinking about this to you. I am your age when
I eleven happened, like I was the agent you were
now when I'm eleven happened, which is like, really crazy.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
I never thought of that.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I am. Yeah, and one thing that I think about
now as an adult, and you presented a very brave
face in the moment to me and my brother? Were
you afraid of staying? A lot of left New York
because they were terrified and they were afraid of another
terrorist attack? And we didn't do any of that. I
(42:13):
was in school two days later and we just kept
on keeping up. But were you, like I got to
get my family out of New York? Were you afraid
for living in the city.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I never never thought of that at all, honestly, and
I don't know why I didn't, although there was maybe
it had to be two thousand and three, there was
an event where there was a power outage and like
(42:43):
all the lights and everything went out downtown.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
That's one of the whole eastern Chesebar went out.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I don't know if it.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Was the same event, but I just remember all of
downtown was out. Hoboken was out because they moved us
to Okah Hoboke and that's where our new offices were located.
And I leave early on Thursdays to come home to
be with you guys, and I was on the ferry
and when the lights went out, so then I thought
that was another attack. But I ever thought of leaving.
(43:16):
I never thought of leaving the city.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Did you ever get survivors guilt or did you have?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
I did a lot. I think I still do to
some extent.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
My good friend that I used to work McDonald's, but
when we were seventeen, he passed. We worked together at Marsh.
He passed nine to eleven, and I went to go
visit his father the next day on the twelfth, and
his father said to me, after losing his son, he
said to me, there's a reason why you're still here.
You have something you have to do, and that is
(43:46):
stuck with me these twenty four years. And I'm always
worried that did I do what I'm saying? Am I
doing what I'm supposed to do? And if I do
do that, does that mean that's been my last day?
I really I think of that all the time. But
it was very you know, especially in the beginning, it
was very, very hard to be a survivor. And you know,
(44:08):
as you know, we were forgotten.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You always would say that, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Mean, because I think it's hard. It's hard living through it.
But the one good thing is we had each other,
so we got each other through.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
When I mean afterwards, we went to memorials every year,
all the time, we actually spoke to We spent a lot.
You've developed very close relationships with people's families, but even
my brother and I spent a lot of time with
people's families. How do you keep those people's memories going?
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Well, I guess it's so on nine to eleven every year,
I had the one group of people that a guy
that hired me and my original team that I worked with.
We still get together to this day on nine eleven
and we tell the same stories about things that happened
(45:04):
for the people that passed, and we have their you know,
we drink a maroon for and we toasted that for
one person that we lost and initially sorry going back,
is that we used to do for like who used
to on people that pass birthdays besides the anniversary up
(45:28):
there of nine to eleven, but on the individual's birthdays
we would have their fate like this is during the
middle of the day, we would have their favorite snacks.
So like one gentleman, I'll never forget this, he used
to have every morning a can of coke and a
Krispy Kreme donut every morning, so of course every morning
his birthday we would do We did that. The first
(45:49):
year we did it, we did it at a thirty
and we all crashed by two. So the next year
we did it at noon, and again it didn't really
work that great, and so then we started doing it
like a four o'cl and we don't know how you
used to eat that every day, but we did that,
you know. And then other people had their little things
and we would do special things on their birthdays. Marsh
(46:12):
has amazing memorial wall that I still visit. Any time
I was in the building. I always go out there
and it's very respectful because you're not allowed to go
on the platform.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
It's a long platform. They're not allowed to go on
the platform. You're not allowed to use eat lunch on
there because there's a bench.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
You're not allowed to use your cell phone on there,
and there's a guard standing watching it to this day.
And not only do they list the names, but they
put this, They have an overlay of smoked glass with
their signatures to show each person was unique. It's not
just a person's name that died on nine to eleven,
but it shows a little individuality for each person and
(46:49):
that they were unique.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
How do you past through something that was both deeply
personal but a historical A historical I mean, can you
look at it? We're twenty four years away from it.
For a lot of people, it is just like it
would be like you reading about Pearl Harbor, me reading
about the Kennedy assassination. It doesn't you know what I mean?
(47:15):
Are you able to look at it at all as
a historical event that we just lived through.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I think I take it more personal. I don't. I mean,
I do think about the landmark dates like next year's
twenty five years unbelievably, but I really don't look at
it as a as a national event. Except for the
fact that it bothered me when the country forgot and
even as far as the memorial service that's done and
(47:45):
recorded on the broadcast on the major networks on Thursday,
the rest of the country doesn't. And I think it
was maybe year three. I was watching the names of
the friend of mine in my house and we got
a phone call from his sister in Florida and said,
they're not reading the names here. And it was early
(48:05):
so I was waiting for it to get a little
bit later. I called my friend in California. I'm like,
moh is are the names being read? And she said no,
And that was like year three. I mean, it was
so early on, and it bothered me that the world
has forgotten because it was so tragic and it was.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
On our land.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
But again, like you said, Harbor, I don't connect with that,
but this is very close to him, so I do connect.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
With men bothers to me, did you ever seek therapy
for PTSD or anything?
Speaker 2 (48:34):
The company made us go to see somebody, So I
did do the one session that we were required to do,
but I never did any more than that.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Should I have possibly, but I did.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yeah, you know now that it is so far out.
The people that I knew who were my age's parents
didn't come home. You know, all the names. The life
of that that I see that their parents have missed
is what I more or less get guilty about sometime,
(49:09):
as the fact that they just they were like you
in the sense that they were going to do their
They were like you, like they were going to do
their job any other day. They were not. It was
supposed to be just a beautiful Tuesday. So I feel
enormously grateful and lucky. But I think that in that
(49:32):
gratefulness is a lot of sadness when you look at
other people and you're like, wow, they didn't have that.
Twenty four years is a long time to have some
money extra in your life. So I think about that
quite a bit now, especially it didn't impact me when
it first happened because it seemed too big, you know
(49:53):
what I mean. It seemed too big to especially when
I was fourteen years old. It was too big to understand.
Now it's not too big for me to understand my
brain and comprehend. But it's also seeing somebody saying, oh,
they have they got married their mom walking down the
aisle because their dad passed away they had a baby.
There's no grandfather or grandmother. It's mostly grandfathers, mostly men
(50:17):
that I knew who passed away, like most of tho dads. Yeah,
but in my case anyway, but like it's their grandfather's
not there for that that is That's really That's where, honestly,
it becomes more real every year in a certain way,
is when we have certain life events and knowing that
(50:38):
I have both my parents, and I have for two decades,
and I could have if things were just minusculely different,
had zero parents. I mean, just dad was assigned to
a different place that day and you were ten minutes
late or ten minutes early, radically a radically different life.
And that's what I think about more as time goes on.
(51:02):
So I'm sorry for being an utter pain in your
assert for my teenage part of that. Twenty four years now,
I think that so so I'm grateful for it. I'm
sorry such a pain from seventeen to twenty sixteen to
twenty depending on the moment.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
And you know, I've seen a lot of the kids,
and I've kept like you said, I've kept in touch
with many families and some of the parents, you know,
the surviving parent and families have been amazing, and I
think those are the kids that are able to cope
with it better because they have a good support system
and having and being there for your child to overcome this,
(51:45):
even through your own grief, because a lot of you know,
I'll say, women that I know, you know, had to
deal with their own suffering as well as be there.
I mean one one good friend of mine, his wife,
she'd come to all of our because she was friends
with everyone. She's amazing, like she would remember you your name,
every geting about you that that her husband told her,
(52:08):
like I had never met her before, and her husband
told her things like oh how is your day and
blah blah blah. He would tell stories and she remembered
it all, and she would come to all of the
services because we spent as.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
You know, months.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I mean there are times I went to four funerals
or services, memory of life, celebration of life, whatever the
family deemed it to be a week. I mean I
went to so many of them, but sometimes multiple in
a day, and she was in many of them, and
she'd be like, but how are you guys doing?
Speaker 3 (52:39):
You know, I'm suffering.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
One you're suffering hundreds and I always amazed me because
she was so beyond herself and she is such the
best example of what a mother should be in that
situation and fill in the gap of mother and father.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
She is, She is amazing.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
How was I never asked this question? How is? How
did Grahama Grandpa? How did they try to be there
for you?
Speaker 2 (53:04):
I mean they didn't know how to handle that, yeah,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
They were from a different time too, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
And the thing is is that they didn't know how
to comprehend. It's actually I was told at some point,
aren't you over it yet? And they so they didn't comprehend.
They didn't understand. And you know what if you didn't
live through it, that or any other I mean, there
are some people, luckily enough, have never had loss of
anyone that wasn't didn't live fully live their life right,
(53:37):
meaning that they died under the age of seventy or eighty.
There's a lot of people that ever experienced that. They
only have death involved in their life when it's you know,
natural not not natural clauses.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
But you know what I mean, years of sufferings a.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Year after being eighty years old and saying that person
had a good life there. No one in our family
really had or very few people had a loss of
someone that was eight or someone that was a young,
newly married spouse.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
So they didn't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
So I didn't.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I didn't hold them hold that.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Against them or get mad at them for that not
being there for me, because they didn't know how.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
I didn't know how, you know, because.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
It's dozens of people that just extinguished there there.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
They didn't know, they didn't know how to get to
deal with that. But one thing again, going back to
talking about families in Marsh, they MMC, I should say
they were amazing for the families. They had hotels set up.
People came in and we would we would work the room.
(54:43):
I'd sit at a desk and they would come. Families
would come up to me. They just wanted to know
where their their family sat, like where were they in
the building. Not that they were in their desk at
that moment, but they wanted to know where they sat.
And I drew floor parents on the spot, like you know,
for every single person saying okay, so your your son
sat here or your daughter sat here. I know the
(55:05):
people that I lost for my team because I had
I had a team at the time. I had a
team of eight people and I lost three, and two
of them were on one side of the elevator, the
opposite side of the elevate beta bank of impact. But
we did sit in the center of the floor. So
the way our plane got hit, from what I seen
and visualized, is that the plane went right through the building.
(55:30):
And they did hear or see a thing like like
there was no one of them would have seen it
like for a second because she faced the window that
got hit.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
But if she was at her desk, but I don't
even think she was.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
And so you know, but I have millions of stories
about millions of people. You asked before about leaving the country.
One of the gentlemen that survived, he's a gentleman. Well
he was leaving the country. You went to Canada. But
he he would be in the opficet eight o'clock every
morning because I had shifts. I manage a team back then,
and there were shifts, so he was supposed to be there.
(56:04):
And he said one that he fell sleep and he
didn't get up in time. He told me he was
going to be late. He could not handle it. Because
his work wife, this woman, she passed and they worked
side by side together for the whole time he was
employed with me, and he could not handle the loss
of her and he ended up taking his son. He
(56:27):
had a new young son, moved to Canada. But it's
hard when you think about the families. Like the other
woman who worked for me, her father planned vacation, and
she originally planned it that they were going to leave
on whatever day and be back on the twelfth. And
(56:48):
she came to me two weeks before the vacation said,
my dad changed the dates. Is it okay if I
take off a date earlier and come back on the eleventh?
Then I said absolutely fine, I pasually wish I said no,
because she had an eleven year old son and she passed,
and if the original vacation funds would have stayed in place,
she would have been alive.
Speaker 1 (57:07):
So yeah, uncle, who was a window washer at the
Worlchair Center, had a colleague who actually believe it or not.
He told me because that man, the man who passed away,
who was the window washer that our uncle knew, is
not on the nine to eleven memorial. And my uncle,
(57:29):
our uncle believes that he was illegally in the country,
and no one even knew. No one had a record
of him a young kid. He was an older person.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Somebody else, another window washer passed to another.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
Win was pass through the Polish name. But there was
another man who was not I who was not listed,
and our uncle believes that he was illegally in the
country and that's why his name is never a listed anywhere.
I talked about that anyway, Thank you for coming on
and talking about this, mom. I appreciate it, and I
(58:03):
normally say working we will go to read your stuff,
but nowhere, So thank you. Thank you for just coming
on and doing this for me, because I think it
is important to have a perspective from someone who was there.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Yeah, and for any tragedy that happens, hopefully no more
ever happened, but always remember the survivors, like the poor
children in the recent shooting Minnesota. Is everyone prais for
the families, which they deserve all of our prayers. But
(58:36):
I feel for those children who was sitting next to
someone that got shot in past yeah, because they'll never
be the same and they are more more upfront close
to it than.
Speaker 3 (58:46):
I even was.
Speaker 2 (58:47):
But those are the people that we need to help
to make sure that they, you know, get get get,
get past it enough where it doesn't affect the rest
of their lives.
Speaker 1 (58:59):
That's all for this episode of A Numbers Game with
Ryan Grodski. If you like this podcast, please like and
subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever gets your podcast.
We'll be back to politics on Monday. Why you guys
come and listen to this. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you did, you could shoot me an email Ryan
at Numbers Game podcast dot com. It's Ryan at Numbers
(59:21):
Plural gamepodcast dot com. Or send me a question about
anything else. I'll answer them on air for a little
backlog so I might do it. Ask me anything, episode
come up soon. But thank you again for listening. This
meant a lot to me to do so I really
appreciate everyone for being on this and listen to this
journey with me. Thank you assass
So I recorded this episode on Wednesday about nine to eleven.
It was an episode I've been looking forward to making
and releasing for quite some time, and then the assassination
happened of Charlie Kirk, and I just need to take
a moment and honor this man who died doing what
(00:20):
he believed. I met Charlie when he was about eighteen
years old. I think I was in my early twenties,
and he told me he was going to start an
organization called Turning Point in USA and it was going
to change the country, and he had all these big
dreams and I kind of laughed at him and I
was like, okay, you know, best of luck, and he
did them all. The last laugh was on him. He
was an amazing operative and someone who always got better
(00:44):
over time, and it's something that I noticed and he
won over my deep respect. We weren't close for most
of his professional life, but in the last few years
he'd reach out to me to try to open up
a dialogue. And you might have been a show many
times and I was on. I was always very haph
to be on and I really grew to respect and
get to know him a little bit, and he was
(01:05):
a good person, a really, really good person, and his
death is a tragedy and I send my deepest condolences
to his loved ones, to his wife and children and
parents and the Tpusa family. I've been praying for the
repose of his soul, that he entered the gates of
(01:26):
heaven and find eternal salvation. And as a public figure
and a public commentator and someone in the public eye,
I can tell you it's very scary nowadays. And I'm
probably going to do an episode on Monday about assassinations
and tempted assassinations and the stream we've had about them.
But I just have to honor him and just say that, Arlie,
you were better than all your critics combined. They had
(01:50):
nothing on you, and you showed them and you were great.
And to quote the famous poem, you know, rave Ratio
at the gate. Every man upon this earth, death comes
sooner the late, And how can men die better than
facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and
(02:10):
the temple of his gods. Charlie, you lived a life
in the truest form, fighting for what you believed in,
and you went out a winner. You went out too early,
but you went out a winner. You were a good
man and I'm so sorry for everything that's happened to you.
May you rest in peace and now the rest of
the episode. Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gardusky.
(02:40):
Thank you guys for being here again. This is I've
wanted to do this episode since I got a platform
to speak to people about today. Obviously it's September eleventh,
twenty twenty five, and twenty four years ago the world changed.
Every one of a an age now has their own
(03:03):
nine to eleven story, even if they weren't in New
York or Washington and they just felt fear and concern
and remember it, or if they joined the military afterwards
or whatnot. But as time passes, the wild thing is
meeting so many people who don't have a memory of
it and don't have a story of it, and some
(03:26):
who weren't even born. I mean, I've had employees of
mine who were not born when it happened, and you're
talking about something that is very distant and this moment
that changed the world that we live in and was
so deeply part of my life for such a long time,
(03:48):
coming from the son of someone who worked there and
spent so much time going to memorials and meeting with
families and also being the son of a cop. I've
realized now that so much time has gone by. I
was born in nineteen eighty seven, and nine to eleven
is as far from us today as like the Kennedy
(04:10):
assassination was to me when I was born. So like
I mean, I enjoy history, but I cannot relate to
that time. And I wanted to do an episode for
somebody who doesn't remember nine to eleven. And if you
like this episode specifically, I would ask that you would
(04:32):
share if you have a kid or a grandkid or
somebody who has no memory of it, because I'm trying
to say in a way that make them understand. And
by the way, this episode is going to be just
about this. We're not doing asking me anything. That will
all come next week. I will make it up to everybody.
(04:53):
But I decided to do it an episode to look
back on the day and my experience and my family's experience,
specifically my mom, to try to connect with people who
have no understanding of what life was like. You know,
many historical moments in so they blend together, right, there's
(05:15):
a build up there's a build up to a war,
there's a build up to technological advances, and then there
are those moments that are so sudden and so violent
that rather than being like something blending, it's like a
page turning or a book shutting. It's immediate and there's
no going back to it. So if you're under thirty
(05:36):
and you have limited memories of that time, or no
memories if you're in your early twenties or you're a teenager,
the world back then wasn't as connected as it is now.
Growing up, we would learn about history of the world,
learn about communism or the world wars or large conflicts,
(05:57):
and teach anyway. I would say out loud, like we
don't have to worry about that because we have two
oceans that isolate us from most of the horrors of
the world. Nine to eleven seemed the day before simply impossible,
because we were told that we had this comest protective
(06:20):
force field in America, and even though we were a
less connected country, we had a country with a lot
more social trust. Obviously, there are people like you know,
you wouldn't you didn't like, and you didn't leave your
kids with. But we were more trusting of each other
in general. And there's many reasons, many, many, many reasons
(06:43):
why that's no longer the case today, but it was
at the time. So for me, September eleventh, two thousand
and one was my second day of high school at
Saint Francis Prep in Queens, New York. The way it
worked back then was at my high schools, you would
have a first class, and then you would have homeroom
for fifteen minutes, and then you would have your second class.
(07:07):
And remember there's no smartphones. I didn't home a cell phone, like,
none of that existed at all. So second period happened
and I had a free period. It was my first
free period, and you can go anywhere you want basically
as long as you didn't cause chaos during free periods,
and back then I let you leave the school too,
like it was crazy. So I went up to the
(07:29):
library with a girl from my homeroom named Catherine Gonzalez,
who left the high school right after freshman year, so
I never saw her again. I would love to, I
would love to connect with her if that's even possible,
but I have no idea where she is at this point. Well,
we ended up going to the library. Sitting in the
library had these these giant windows Florida ceiling, two story
(07:52):
windows that connected the east and west wing of the
high school, so you could see onto the highway and
into the larger nah in Eastern Queens facing the city.
Well you actually you couldn't face You couldn't see the
city itself. You could see the area completely anyway. I
sat on the third table towards the west wing of
the school and talking to Catherine. I think about, like,
(08:16):
I don't know what the hell we're talking about, something about
probably high school when we think of it so far,
and you know, if we like our teachers or whatnot.
And I barely knew the girl and I look up
and I saw my uncle and I said, oh, I
said to her, go though, there's my uncle. And I
didn't like she made a face like why is your
uncle a year? But I didn't sit there and even
(08:37):
think twice of it. It's not like he worked there.
It was very strange when he was talking to the
librarian and he walked over to me and he said,
we made contact with your mom and she's okay. And
I said, what are you talking about? And he looked
a librarian and he says something like, oh, you didn't
tell the students yet, and he said something about an
(08:57):
announcement would be made soon. The librarian said that, and
he my uncle just had a plane hit the World
Trade Center. My mom worked on the ninety seven floor
of Tower one at Marsha mcclennan. And for the moment
that he told me that, I thought it was like
probably some single man plane who was, you know, acting
reckless and accidentally crashed into the building. Like that's literally
(09:20):
all I could comprehend. And it had happened one time
with the Empire State Building like decades before. So I
just thought, oh, accidents happened, and my mom was fine,
and he was supposed to pick me up, but like
in all the panic, my uncle left me and just
like left the building. So I don't understand why he
didn't remember one job, but he forgot me. And then
(09:46):
within minutes of him leaving, there was an announcement on
the loud speaker that said, if you are the child
of a firefighter, cop EMT or your parents work in
the World Trade Center, please come to the Guidance Counsel's office.
So now even though he had said my mom was Okay,
I still went because I was I was lost, I said,
(10:07):
I didn't understand what was going on. And my dad
and his two brothers were New York City police officers,
so I didn't know what I happened my dad. I
didn't know where my dad was. I just knew that
he had said someone had contacted my mom. Now I
filed into the Guidance Counselor's office, and there were so
(10:31):
many kids there. There were so many people, and especially
so many cop and firefighter kids. I remember a lot
of them being cop and five kids. I only met
one other kid whose parent worked in Marshall mcclennan, and
he was a senior and I was a freshman. And
we did start talking, and the TVs were on, and
(10:53):
the TV's had the school of TVs everywhere because of
announcements and stuff like that. So there was a TV
on with what was fully on display, which was two
buildings on fire and obviously not a one man plane.
And I was like desperate to try to get my
mom on the phone because it was so much worse
(11:14):
than I thought about. I didn't know what There was
no context of how they had spoken to her or
when they had spoken to her or what I was like,
I have to hear my mom's voice at that moment,
and the classroom bell changed and I didn't go to class,
and I just kind of wandered the school. I don't remember,
I know I left. I left the guidance Counselor's office
(11:37):
before I had spoken to my mom, and I just
started wandering the school, did not go into class, just
watching it on every television that was playing it. And
I ended up at the admissions office and that's when
the building fell. And I just looked at someone working
at the administra's office and I said, how many people died?
(11:59):
And the lady there was like, I have no idea.
And there's like those moments where you look to an
adult from a child, thinking that they're going to know
as a child, you look to an adult day they're
going to know every all the answers, and it was
just like this emptiness, this emptiness of thought, and I
(12:20):
just said, I have to talk to my mom somehow.
I have to figure out how to talk to my mom.
And I remembers two thousand and one, and there's no
like cell phones. Cell phones that existed did not even
work because the towers were down. Well, I don't remember
when I got to the guidance counse. I went back
to the guidance counsel's office, and I don't know how
this happened, but my mom ended up on the phone.
(12:42):
I don't I have not no recollection how they end
up making contact because she'd have a cell phone. My
mom is I remember talking on the phone and saying
I'm coming home, like I'm going to come home. And
my mom has a very almost Protestant like work ethic
(13:02):
where she was like, why you know you're gonna put
the fire out of the building, You're gonna sit there
and dig through rubble. No, you're going to class right now.
There's nothing you could do by being home, So go
to class, go to math class. And like as as
it in such horror, like it wouldn't have it wasn't gonna.
It wouldn't have dawned on her to like say, oh,
he probably can't concentrate on algebra at the moment. But
(13:25):
my mother was like, no, you're going to school, like
you're in school, go to class. But I didn't. I
didn't make it to class. I didn't go to any
other classes. I went as soon as I hung up
with from my mom, and I went to the cafeteria
for a while and bummed around, and I think I
got a payphone and called somebody and said, please pick
me up. I'm not staying here. And I told this
one girl I knew my whole life, who knew my
(13:47):
mom named Christina, that she was that my mom would
work there, and the girl and the caffetier just burst
into tears, and it was it was just chaotic. It
was just so chaotic and so many ins and me
and that girl started talking about who we knew his
parents were firefighters, and who we knew parents worked there
(14:08):
or near there, And eventually someone came to pick me up.
I think it was my uncle Mark, and they brought
me to my grandma's house. Now, my grandma's house was
across the street from my house, and she had two televisions,
which was a big deal in two thousand and one
(14:29):
in my working class family, it was a big deal anyway.
So she had the basement TV going on Cartoon Network
because it was the only channel that was not replaying
the attacks at three o'clock, and there were a lot
of young cousins and my whole family was there, so
the kids were sent to the basement to watch cartoons,
and I don't know what the adults honestly were doing upstairs,
(14:50):
but we all just sat there and waited for my
mom to show up. And you know, you couldn't call
her and say, what's your eta. We just had to
wait and wait and wait. And from my grandma's house
you could see. My grandma's house was in Western Queens
on a hill, so you could see downtown and you
(15:10):
could see the smoke clouds. It was the darkest rain
cloud you could possibly imagine. You could smell smoke in
the air, that is how palpable it was. In the
immediate aftermath, and my brother's elementary school, my old elementary
school too. My brother was in sixth grade at the
(15:31):
time it was on. It was further up the hill,
very near near our house. And the way it worked
was the most senior members of the school seventh, eighth, sixth, seventh,
and eighth grade, they were in the third story, so
they were very high, a perfect clear view of all
of the Manhattan skyline. And I don't know why someone
(15:54):
did this for but someone ran into my brother's classroom
and said, everyone look outside history's made and my brother,
who was only in the sixth grade at the time,
ran to the window, saw or looked at the window,
saw it my mom's building on fire, and left the
room and saw got to the stairs of the building,
(16:17):
of the floor and saw it was a Catholic sosocis so,
the priest and the nun who was the principal, and
he just thought that they were about to tell him
that his mom had passed away, and he burst into
hysterics just by the thought of it. I didn't have
the same moment, because my uncle intercepted me right at
(16:38):
the very beginning, so I never had that complete fear.
I had a worry of not knowing, of a long
periods of not being able to get a hold of somebody.
Think of how immediate everything is now, and how hours
would go by without being able to get a hold
of anybody, and how horrific everything looked looked. But my
(17:01):
mom made it home that day, very very luckily, and
we were all there, the whole family, every cousin, every
you know, and an uncle, and she just like collapsed
on the couch, and I remember that look of just
pure exhaustion on her face and there was a silence.
(17:23):
Nobody spoke, and I fell a very long time. It
was probably like thirty seconds, but no one spoke, and
I remember thinking in my head, like break the silence.
You know, there's always me with a trying to make
an opportune time out of things. So I looked at
my mom and said, you'll never leave the day that
I had, which didn't make her laugh. She did say,
(17:44):
what happened to you today? But it was primary day
in New York City, so cops in New York have
to be stationed at different voting sites. And my dad
very luckily was stationed in the Bronx and my uncle,
but my other uncle, my uncle Jimmy, was stationed at
nine to eleven, was in front of the building when
(18:05):
it collapsed and he ran one way and his partner
around the other, and his partner never made it out alive,
and he did. And there were so many million close
calls with so many people that I knew, and so
many sudden decisions that changed every person's life. And I
(18:27):
my mom happened to be running late from work that
day and my dad happed me station at the Bronx.
But I know, had she not shown up to late
to work that day, and had my dad been station
anywhere close to the building, my dad would have spent
what my dad would have been there, So the moment
it came down his head looking for my mom, like
(18:48):
I know that in my absolute heart of hearts.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So I.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Lot of people who were in New York think of
the day after, and they think of how united the
country was and how united we were as a people.
And what I remember most distinctly is there were express
bus stops throughout all of Queen's including near my house
(19:22):
that I grew up in, and on the express bus
was pictures taped onto the glass saying have you seen
this person? Have you seen that person? People just hoping
that their loved one had suffered amnesia or was in
a hospital and was going to make at home. That's
like the thing that I kind of stick with the most.
(19:44):
I don't remember national mood of the country. I don't
remember George W. Bush's speech. I don't remember Giuliana going
down there. I remember that glass though, of all those
pictures saying please call so and so if you've seen
Tom Dick Harry. I think the moment was too big
(20:04):
for my fourteen year old brain to comprehend nine to
eleven has been harder since the attack, I believe it
or not than in the immediate moment because I felt lucky.
I felt very, very lucky. But as time passed and
(20:25):
I knew so many people who's mostly dads. I knew
a lot of dads who didn't come home that day,
friends of people that I knew whose fathers, a lot
more firefighters. And as life events have happened, people got married,
people have children, and seeing their dad not there has
(20:46):
made me the impact. I feel the impact so much
harder as life goes on because I was so lucky
and I did have now these twenty four years of
both my parents because like I said, a couple of
minutes difference and my mom would have absolutely been killed
(21:07):
on impact and my dad would have been in that
building looking for my mom until the minute it fell.
So this day makes me incredibly grateful. It makes me
deeply sad for other people, and it makes me want
(21:28):
for someone else who may be the age that I
was when it happened, to try to understand how it's
more than like a meme you may see online of it.
There's a lot of jokes with George W. Bush's reaction
or some historical event you learn about in school, how
it was so real. And I say that as somebody
(21:49):
who didn't end up going to a parent's memorial service.
But it was so real and it remains real, and
it remains real, not just for what was lost in
the day, but what has been lost since. I think,
on a bigger idea also, what was lost as far
as we were as a country, the facade that the
oceans would protect us and that we weren't so entangled
(22:13):
in you know, the globe, the way that we are
in the ga we were in the proceeding and the
post in the post nine to eleven decades. We'll never
go back to that place again, and I really wish
sometimes we would. In nine ten in America was a
(22:34):
really really nice place to live. It genuinely was. So.
For this episode, my special guest is my mom, who
worked at Marsh mcclennan on ninety seventh floor of Tower one,
and she's going to tell her story of survival and
grief and what was lost and how she deals with it.
(22:54):
And I'm very excited about this conversation, So please stay
tuned and that's coming up next with me on today's
episode is my mom, Tony Angridowski. Mom, thanks for being here,
Thank you for having me. So, Mom, paint a picture
for my audience. Where did you work?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I worked at Marsha mcclennan in two thousand and one.
We were located on the ninety seventh floor of Taro one.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
So let's go back to that day. You know, when
I was a kid who was constantly late to grammar school,
people were expecting you to be late because I was
always late. And then I went to high school and
I had to actually show up on time. So but
you were it late that day. So why don't we
(23:46):
go over what happened on nine to eleven?
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Okay, well, on that more. The night before on September tenth,
set the alarm and planned on being to work in
the office by eight o'clock. We had budget meetings all day,
as we did on Monday, and I woke up and
something just told me not to rush, and I decided
(24:13):
that budget is going to be another hell day. So
I just took my time and I would have been
in the office at like ten to nine, so I
would have been on time. I just wasn't I didn't
follow the plan I had of getting in very early.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
What did you You took the train back then?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
No, I used to drive to Long Island City, leave
my car there and then take the train. The train,
no train, the seven to the okay, I'm sorry, the
seven to the two to the one.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Gotcha? Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
So that morning it was a beautiful sky. And back
then the when the when the l I E breaks
off and you get off, and damn street there used
to be one lane m but everyone used to make
it too. It was just normal every morning because otherwise
(25:07):
we do backed up on the BQI forur miles, so
we always made two and legally but we cut off
the other cars. We just merge.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
We carriated our own merge.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Well that morning because it was so gorgeous that I
was like, I'm just taking my time and I didn't again,
I didn't rush and cut everybody off like I normally
would have. So I so I sat in in the
in the in the line of traffic, and then I
did my normal commute.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
So you take the two train, you get off the
train at the World Trade Center at the.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Two train, I get off and I take the two
trains at Express train and you take it to Chamber
Street and then you transfer to the local which it
would have been the one train, and take it to
right inside the building, right, you take it to.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
The one trains up literally underneath the building.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yes, so that day I just missed the one. There
was nobody on the platform, so I know I just
missed it. I didn't see it leave, but it was
I knew I just missed it.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So what time did you pull in underneath the building?
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So the one trains?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So I'm sitting at the two platform and the one
train never came, right, we never came, So the two
trains kept coming. The expresses were still coming. And a
gentleman that I had met and worked in two World Trade.
He worked for a different company and we met each other.
We sat on the platform, We're joking around, laughing, and
we just got the twos go. We're waiting for one
and the ones never came. So I said, we have
(26:32):
to make a decision. We have to get on the
two and walk because then it leaves you off by
five World Trade and you walk, or we have to
go out and Chamber Street. You just walk the whole way.
He goes let's take the two. So we took the
two train. I got back on the train then, and
it takes you to five World Trade. And as you're
walking underground now we hear an explosion.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Because New York City subways for those who are not
from New York and never been here, it's almost a
block long underground, so you could walk, you could walk,
you could walk a literal block underground.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
So actually, as we got the train and we're walking,
a woman walked towards us and said, there's smoke. So
we were like, oh, let's check it out. We kept
walking towards the smoke, right, how stupid. So we were
walking and then within a minute, not even we heard
an explosion, like there was a bomb in the subway.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
That's how the subway shook.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
So then we there was the second plane.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So of course we turn around and we leave and
go out the exit and we go upstairs and then
we see what's going on. But yes, that was the
second plane getting hit, the second building getting hit. So
when we get outside, we can see the fire, the smoke,
We can count how many floors. I worked on the
ninety seventh floor, so I can see that the impact
(27:55):
on my building was on our floors. Both buildings at
this point were on fire and smelled.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So you could tell it your floor had been had.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I could tell my floor I got hit.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
So when what block did you get out of the train?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I got out on Park Place, which so you get
it's right there as soon as the subway station, right
right outside the trade center.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
So could you see debris on the floor on the
street or.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I wasn't that close where I could see that. I
could definitely see the buildings. I don't remember seeing debris
at that point. It was just the initial impacts. It
was still early, so the streets were not full yet
because the buildings were still standing. But I ran in
so I was with this gentleman. He kept on saying,
(28:41):
my colleagues, my colleagues, I'm like just an in dazed
sun because I guess can't figure it all out. And
I ran to a woman that I did work with,
and she lived on.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Like ten teen blocks away.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I can't think of the name of the street at
the top of my head, but she lived on the
upper west side, on the lower west side. So she goes,
let's go to my house, Let's see what's going on.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I have three phones.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, she had got three phone lines. She's I have
three phone lines because her husband worked at home. And
we'll go check out. We'll see what's going on.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Little three phone lines and two thousands. That's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And she said, then we'll come back, we'll see what's
going on, we'll get situated, and we'll come back. So
I said, I can't until I said how long of
a walk? She said fifteen minutes. I said, great, I
have to call my family first. So my next thing
is I stood online for a payphone. We really didn't
have cell phones. We did, but they didn't work really
at that day because the tower went out communications which
(29:46):
is the top of one World trade. So but I
did have a BlackBerry text message which did still work
at some points throughout the morning, and people and I
my people that worked for me, were texting me saying
I'm going to vote someone else text me, I ran late,
my son. I fell asleep with my son, never said,
you know, didn't get up. So I'm getting I was
(30:06):
getting some text messages and I wait on line for
the phone, and where is still right by where I
got off the train, still in the same.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Still in the same still look the building.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes, So I call my mom and I tell them
that I'm fine, I'm outside the building, right, And.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You don't know what time this is about. It had to.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Be no, no, it had to be like just nine o'clock,
a couple of minutes after nine, because the building I
hit at a forty six. So the next one was
I don't remember the exact times of the second building,
but it's let's say it's let's say it's about nine o'clock.
It would take so people are online on the phone,
they're like talking, tell them, like, you know, sitting on
the phone for like it seemed like minutes. I'm like,
(30:56):
everyone's swinging me. Just tell them you're okay and hang
up the phone because the line, of course, is getting longer.
So I call my parents, Like I said, I tell
them that I'm safe from outside the building.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
You go with your colleagues and.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
I go with my friend and we walked to her apartment.
As we're walking, I hear another explosion. Don't know what
it is. We keep walking. I get to her apartment
and her husband's there and he's got the TV on
and I look at the TV and I'm like, from
this angle, I could only see one building, and she
knew it, but she didn't say anything to me, so
(31:28):
we get When I said that, she said, remember that
noise we heard, She goes, that's the building. The building fell.
I had no idea. I didn't even contemplate the building
would fall. So that's when the building fell. So from
my parents' perspective, I just called and said I was fine,
I was outside.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
But I didn't even think of that.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Right now, we are trying to figure out who's good,
who's not.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Who would we call?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So how long is the walk from the building to
her apartment?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Fifteen minutes?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
It's not that long.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
It's not that long.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So the first building fell while we were walking, and
like I said, when we got to her house, the
other building was still standing.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
The second plane had hit so much lower in the
building that there was a lot more weight that was
holding and the beams were holding up whatever was surviving.
So it was going through your head on that fifteen
minute walk, you remember.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I don't remember, honestly. I was more, I think, in
shock than anything else, and we were trying to see
who else survived. I guess that's what I was thinking of,
because that's what we went there for. We went there
to make some phone calls to find out who's okay
and who's not and why we were at her house.
The bell rang, the drwbell rang, and we were like,
(32:45):
who's that going to be? And it ended up being
someone that she had worked with at a different company
that was a friend of hers. Showed up and he
was with us that morning. But we were able to
call the office. Prime location was Midtown, fifth Street and
sixth Avenue. Their phone still worked, so we were able
to call there and see a little bit about what
(33:07):
was going on, what they were doing there. We were
even able to actually the gentleman that came to the house.
His family lived in Florida. We could not call from
her apartment. Even though we had phone lines. We couldn't
call Florida, but we were able to call the the
Midtown office had them transfer us to Florida and he
(33:28):
was able to get through.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
So the phone lines, yeah, the phone lines were all
messed up.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Well.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
One thing I think about before you go any further
is so my grandparents, my mom's parents who she referenced,
they were very close to us. They lived across the
street from us, and my grandfather specifically, was a very
stoic man. He was very funny, but he wasn't somebody
who had a lot of expressions. He didn't sit there
and talk a lot. Is the least Italian thing about
(33:52):
him was how whiet he was, and he didn't show
a broad range of emotions. Later on they told me
that I guess it was Grandma's sister, my aunt Mary,
who had called Grandma to tell her that the planes
were hit and she turned on the television and Grandpa
saw it and Grandpa like According to Ann, Mary who
(34:13):
said she I mean she told me this even recently
said she still can hear my Grandma's boys scream at
like the top of his lungs because he was so
afraid that you had died, and he that is always
one of the things I think that send me the
most chills. Here I met it in the immediate aftermath,
was because I can't imagine Grandpa being scared, you know
(34:33):
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
And the second, well, what happened too was what I
heard again, I wasn't there is that they were okay
when I got to tell them it was fine, But
then I said I was outside the building, and then
so I don't know if that conversation with am Mary
was before half, but the building then fell after I
just said I was outside, so I heard that he
(34:56):
went up in his room and he was crying as
eyes out. But because at that point, I mean, he
knew the area. He worked down there every day, so
he knew where I was in the situation, and he
thought I was buried under the building.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Do you remember what they said what you said to
them when you talked? You mention?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, I did mention you. I knew you were in
high school, and I knew you were where you were.
I was told that your uncle was had gone to
meet you, and I was told that your other uncle,
my brother in law, was went to go get Daniel.
So I knew they were that they were reaching out
to you both. But at that point in time, that's
all I knew. After I got it was at the
(35:38):
how the apartment, we did try making phone calls out
and I did, and I don't.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Remember how, but I.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I did get through too or your high school.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, I don't remember how we got you on the
phone before I.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Know, Yeah, somehow we got in touch and you were
with another young man whose father worked in the same company.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
He was a senior and I was a freshman, and
they were.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
That school did an amazing job at protecting the kids
and giving them information but making sure they're okay. And
then he's with Ryan was with a guidance counselor, and
thisaw the boy was looking for his dad, and they
kept saying do you know him? And do you know
if he's okay? And his name was familiar to someone
I worked with us, so we challenged that for a second.
(36:23):
He goes, no, this is his name. I said, no,
I don't know who that is. I don't even know him.
But I said, the situation down here, there's no way
I know that anybody's okay. I can't tell you that,
so fast forward. Thankfully, this man was fine. I actually
visited him once we went back to the office and
we're back midtown. I found him and I told him
that our sons were together during this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
So I did chat with him, but I did find dad.
He was okay.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Do you do you when you came home that day?
I remember you saying that you didn't know certain people
were still alive. How long did it take for everyone
to like email itach other and just say I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Well, it really wasn't emails we did is they were
like phone call chains. So I still have it. I
have like this yellow pad of paper. I could picture
it and we would like all our friends were calling
each other and says, oh, I heard from Mary, and
I heard from John, and I heard from Susan. And
we was writing names down who we heard from, and
every time we got through to somebody, we were telling
(37:24):
them who we heard. Through the grape buying. That was okay,
but even still there were people that were not okay.
There was a gentleman who so I used to work
with his sister in law years prior, like in may se'son.
I had no idea that they were related until after
the event. But he had called in so his name
on the safe list, but he was in a conference
(37:45):
room in the building and he passed, so he was
on the list and it was not correct. So there
were a couple of those. The one gentleman who was
an admin from my boss, a friend of mine. I
had not heard about him. So, like when you go
through the I mean talk about two days of so
it was Tuesday when I got home. All day Wednesday,
I went back to the office on Thursday, but almost
(38:07):
two days. That's all we did is figuring out who
was around.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So it was like an email chain saying send me,
send me a reply if you're alive.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Or no, no, no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
But there was when you went into the building, there
was a desk set up to call in if anybody
had questions, and they did do amazing for family members.
And then they had like posted sheets on the wall.
The entire wall was filled with names, so as you
found out someone was a survivor, that name went up
on the wall or maybe in reverse, but the names
(38:38):
were on the wall, so I remember. And they had
a volunteer list at the desk of who wanted to be,
you know, make themselves available to answer the phone for
families and such.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
And this one guy who.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I worked with, who I was very close with, I
had not known if he was alive. He was not
on the list, He was not on any list anywhere,
and then his name. I go to sign up to
help and his name is on the list, and I.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Like freaked down. I was like, how does anyone on
this list?
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Like like he had signed up, So he was okay,
but it was just a very emotional moment for me.
The other emotional moment is some managers like, we still
have a business, we still have to run it, but
they were I walked into a conference room and there
are a bunch of people in there again you've seen
for the first time, and he's running a meeting and
I go in and I'm just bawling my eyes out,
(39:25):
hugging this other woman that's there.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
We're both crying. He's still conducting the meeting. He goes hi, Tony,
think he keeps on going.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
And that was like another moment that we just saw
each other. And from that mid day on, from the
Thursday on, every day they didn't force you to go
to work. You could have stayed out for two months
if you wanted to. We chose to go in no thought.
We got a lot accomplished in the beginning. But the
office in Midtown and we just kissed and.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Hogged to loow everybody.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Is so not the typical work experience, but for like
a month, it was this bond that we had with
each other that.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Was like no other.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
So Marsh mcclennan lost three hundred and fifty eight people,
which is about twenty percent of the workforce. My mom
was making a basic On.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
The IT side. I worked in technology.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
We lost fifty about fifty percent, forty five percent consultants
and some.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Well they had eight floors and.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
We were ninety four to ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Oh yeah, so it was a lot.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, And that day, if we had our budget meetings
as we did the day before, we would have been
on ninety nine in the conference rooms the entire day.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
You always would say that you would when you were
in ORG, you'd see birds flying below you. Well, no,
I never get to go to your office.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Well they would actually they would actually walk around and
put the blinds down because the birds would fly in,
and they would put nets around the building. That's what
I was told to catch the birds. So in my
head even on that day, as counting the floors and
I see people by the windows, and then I unfortunately
I did see people jump, and I think I know
who they were again based upon the floors, and I
(41:07):
know who was left in the building and who was trapped.
There was a dozen people together. I'm friends of mine,
and you know you saw the jumping. I was like,
the nets are there, Like in my head because you
aren't making any sense at the moment, but but you
wanted it all to be. You wanted everyone to be okay, like, oh,
they're jumping because you know, the firemen have those big
(41:29):
you know, not thinking that your ninety seven floors, that's
not going to do a damn thing.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Right, Hey, we'll be right back after this. I was
thinking about this to you. I am your age when
I eleven happened, like I was the agent you were
now when I'm eleven happened, which is like, really crazy.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
I never thought of that.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I am. Yeah, and one thing that I think about
now as an adult, and you presented a very brave
face in the moment to me and my brother? Were
you afraid of staying? A lot of left New York
because they were terrified and they were afraid of another
terrorist attack? And we didn't do any of that. I
(42:13):
was in school two days later and we just kept
on keeping up. But were you, like I got to
get my family out of New York? Were you afraid
for living in the city.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I never never thought of that at all, honestly, and
I don't know why I didn't, although there was maybe
it had to be two thousand and three, there was
an event where there was a power outage and like
(42:43):
all the lights and everything went out downtown.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
That's one of the whole eastern Chesebar went out.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I don't know if it.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Was the same event, but I just remember all of
downtown was out. Hoboken was out because they moved us
to Okah Hoboke and that's where our new offices were located.
And I leave early on Thursdays to come home to
be with you guys, and I was on the ferry
and when the lights went out, so then I thought
that was another attack. But I ever thought of leaving.
(43:16):
I never thought of leaving the city.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Did you ever get survivors guilt or did you have?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
I did a lot. I think I still do to
some extent.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
My good friend that I used to work McDonald's, but
when we were seventeen, he passed. We worked together at Marsh.
He passed nine to eleven, and I went to go
visit his father the next day on the twelfth, and
his father said to me, after losing his son, he
said to me, there's a reason why you're still here.
You have something you have to do, and that is
(43:46):
stuck with me these twenty four years. And I'm always
worried that did I do what I'm saying? Am I
doing what I'm supposed to do? And if I do
do that, does that mean that's been my last day?
I really I think of that all the time. But
it was very you know, especially in the beginning, it
was very, very hard to be a survivor. And you know,
(44:08):
as you know, we were forgotten.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You always would say that, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Mean, because I think it's hard. It's hard living through it.
But the one good thing is we had each other,
so we got each other through.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
When I mean afterwards, we went to memorials every year,
all the time, we actually spoke to We spent a lot.
You've developed very close relationships with people's families, but even
my brother and I spent a lot of time with
people's families. How do you keep those people's memories going?
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Well, I guess it's so on nine to eleven every year,
I had the one group of people that a guy
that hired me and my original team that I worked with.
We still get together to this day on nine eleven
and we tell the same stories about things that happened
(45:04):
for the people that passed, and we have their you know,
we drink a maroon for and we toasted that for
one person that we lost and initially sorry going back,
is that we used to do for like who used
to on people that pass birthdays besides the anniversary up
(45:28):
there of nine to eleven, but on the individual's birthdays
we would have their fate like this is during the
middle of the day, we would have their favorite snacks.
So like one gentleman, I'll never forget this, he used
to have every morning a can of coke and a
Krispy Kreme donut every morning, so of course every morning
his birthday we would do We did that. The first
(45:49):
year we did it, we did it at a thirty
and we all crashed by two. So the next year
we did it at noon, and again it didn't really
work that great, and so then we started doing it
like a four o'cl and we don't know how you
used to eat that every day, but we did that,
you know. And then other people had their little things
and we would do special things on their birthdays. Marsh
(46:12):
has amazing memorial wall that I still visit. Any time
I was in the building. I always go out there
and it's very respectful because you're not allowed to go
on the platform.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
It's a long platform. They're not allowed to go on
the platform. You're not allowed to use eat lunch on
there because there's a bench.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
You're not allowed to use your cell phone on there,
and there's a guard standing watching it to this day.
And not only do they list the names, but they
put this, They have an overlay of smoked glass with
their signatures to show each person was unique. It's not
just a person's name that died on nine to eleven,
but it shows a little individuality for each person and
(46:49):
that they were unique.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
How do you past through something that was both deeply
personal but a historical A historical I mean, can you
look at it? We're twenty four years away from it.
For a lot of people, it is just like it
would be like you reading about Pearl Harbor, me reading
about the Kennedy assassination. It doesn't you know what I mean?
(47:15):
Are you able to look at it at all as
a historical event that we just lived through.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I think I take it more personal. I don't. I mean,
I do think about the landmark dates like next year's
twenty five years unbelievably, but I really don't look at
it as a as a national event. Except for the
fact that it bothered me when the country forgot and
even as far as the memorial service that's done and
(47:45):
recorded on the broadcast on the major networks on Thursday,
the rest of the country doesn't. And I think it
was maybe year three. I was watching the names of
the friend of mine in my house and we got
a phone call from his sister in Florida and said,
they're not reading the names here. And it was early
(48:05):
so I was waiting for it to get a little
bit later. I called my friend in California. I'm like,
moh is are the names being read? And she said no,
And that was like year three. I mean, it was
so early on, and it bothered me that the world
has forgotten because it was so tragic and it was.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
On our land.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
But again, like you said, Harbor, I don't connect with that,
but this is very close to him, so I do connect.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
With men bothers to me, did you ever seek therapy
for PTSD or anything?
Speaker 2 (48:34):
The company made us go to see somebody, So I
did do the one session that we were required to do,
but I never did any more than that.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Should I have possibly, but I did.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yeah, you know now that it is so far out.
The people that I knew who were my age's parents
didn't come home. You know, all the names. The life
of that that I see that their parents have missed
is what I more or less get guilty about sometime,
(49:09):
as the fact that they just they were like you
in the sense that they were going to do their
They were like you, like they were going to do
their job any other day. They were not. It was
supposed to be just a beautiful Tuesday. So I feel
enormously grateful and lucky. But I think that in that
(49:32):
gratefulness is a lot of sadness when you look at
other people and you're like, wow, they didn't have that.
Twenty four years is a long time to have some
money extra in your life. So I think about that
quite a bit now, especially it didn't impact me when
it first happened because it seemed too big, you know
(49:53):
what I mean. It seemed too big to especially when
I was fourteen years old. It was too big to understand.
Now it's not too big for me to understand my
brain and comprehend. But it's also seeing somebody saying, oh,
they have they got married their mom walking down the
aisle because their dad passed away they had a baby.
There's no grandfather or grandmother. It's mostly grandfathers, mostly men
(50:17):
that I knew who passed away, like most of tho dads. Yeah,
but in my case anyway, but like it's their grandfather's
not there for that that is That's really That's where, honestly,
it becomes more real every year in a certain way,
is when we have certain life events and knowing that
(50:38):
I have both my parents, and I have for two decades,
and I could have if things were just minusculely different,
had zero parents. I mean, just dad was assigned to
a different place that day and you were ten minutes
late or ten minutes early, radically a radically different life.
And that's what I think about more as time goes on.
(51:02):
So I'm sorry for being an utter pain in your
assert for my teenage part of that. Twenty four years now,
I think that so so I'm grateful for it. I'm
sorry such a pain from seventeen to twenty sixteen to
twenty depending on the moment.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
And you know, I've seen a lot of the kids,
and I've kept like you said, I've kept in touch
with many families and some of the parents, you know,
the surviving parent and families have been amazing, and I
think those are the kids that are able to cope
with it better because they have a good support system
and having and being there for your child to overcome this,
(51:45):
even through your own grief, because a lot of you know,
I'll say, women that I know, you know, had to
deal with their own suffering as well as be there.
I mean one one good friend of mine, his wife,
she'd come to all of our because she was friends
with everyone. She's amazing, like she would remember you your name,
every geting about you that that her husband told her,
(52:08):
like I had never met her before, and her husband
told her things like oh how is your day and
blah blah blah. He would tell stories and she remembered
it all, and she would come to all of the
services because we spent as.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
You know, months.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I mean there are times I went to four funerals
or services, memory of life, celebration of life, whatever the
family deemed it to be a week. I mean I
went to so many of them, but sometimes multiple in
a day, and she was in many of them, and
she'd be like, but how are you guys doing?
Speaker 3 (52:39):
You know, I'm suffering.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
One you're suffering hundreds and I always amazed me because
she was so beyond herself and she is such the
best example of what a mother should be in that
situation and fill in the gap of mother and father.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
She is, She is amazing.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
How was I never asked this question? How is? How
did Grahama Grandpa? How did they try to be there
for you?
Speaker 2 (53:04):
I mean they didn't know how to handle that, yeah,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
They were from a different time too, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
And the thing is is that they didn't know how
to comprehend. It's actually I was told at some point,
aren't you over it yet? And they so they didn't comprehend.
They didn't understand. And you know what if you didn't
live through it, that or any other I mean, there
are some people, luckily enough, have never had loss of
anyone that wasn't didn't live fully live their life right,
(53:37):
meaning that they died under the age of seventy or eighty.
There's a lot of people that ever experienced that. They
only have death involved in their life when it's you know,
natural not not natural clauses.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
But you know what I mean, years of sufferings a.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Year after being eighty years old and saying that person
had a good life there. No one in our family
really had or very few people had a loss of
someone that was eight or someone that was a young,
newly married spouse.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
So they didn't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
So I didn't.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
I didn't hold them hold that.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Against them or get mad at them for that not
being there for me, because they didn't know how.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
I didn't know how, you know, because.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
It's dozens of people that just extinguished there there.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
They didn't know, they didn't know how to get to
deal with that. But one thing again, going back to
talking about families in Marsh, they MMC, I should say
they were amazing for the families. They had hotels set up.
People came in and we would we would work the room.
(54:43):
I'd sit at a desk and they would come. Families
would come up to me. They just wanted to know
where their their family sat, like where were they in
the building. Not that they were in their desk at
that moment, but they wanted to know where they sat.
And I drew floor parents on the spot, like you know,
for every single person saying okay, so your your son
sat here or your daughter sat here. I know the
(55:05):
people that I lost for my team because I had
I had a team at the time. I had a
team of eight people and I lost three, and two
of them were on one side of the elevator, the
opposite side of the elevate beta bank of impact. But
we did sit in the center of the floor. So
the way our plane got hit, from what I seen
and visualized, is that the plane went right through the building.
(55:30):
And they did hear or see a thing like like
there was no one of them would have seen it
like for a second because she faced the window that
got hit.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
But if she was at her desk, but I don't
even think she was.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
And so you know, but I have millions of stories
about millions of people. You asked before about leaving the country.
One of the gentlemen that survived, he's a gentleman. Well
he was leaving the country. You went to Canada. But
he he would be in the opficet eight o'clock every
morning because I had shifts. I manage a team back then,
and there were shifts, so he was supposed to be there.
(56:04):
And he said one that he fell sleep and he
didn't get up in time. He told me he was
going to be late. He could not handle it. Because
his work wife, this woman, she passed and they worked
side by side together for the whole time he was
employed with me, and he could not handle the loss
of her and he ended up taking his son. He
(56:27):
had a new young son, moved to Canada. But it's
hard when you think about the families. Like the other
woman who worked for me, her father planned vacation, and
she originally planned it that they were going to leave
on whatever day and be back on the twelfth. And
(56:48):
she came to me two weeks before the vacation said,
my dad changed the dates. Is it okay if I
take off a date earlier and come back on the eleventh?
Then I said absolutely fine, I pasually wish I said no,
because she had an eleven year old son and she passed,
and if the original vacation funds would have stayed in place,
she would have been alive.
Speaker 1 (57:07):
So yeah, uncle, who was a window washer at the
Worlchair Center, had a colleague who actually believe it or not.
He told me because that man, the man who passed away,
who was the window washer that our uncle knew, is
not on the nine to eleven memorial. And my uncle,
(57:29):
our uncle believes that he was illegally in the country,
and no one even knew. No one had a record
of him a young kid. He was an older person.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Somebody else, another window washer passed to another.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
Win was pass through the Polish name. But there was
another man who was not I who was not listed,
and our uncle believes that he was illegally in the
country and that's why his name is never a listed anywhere.
I talked about that anyway, Thank you for coming on
and talking about this, mom. I appreciate it, and I
(58:03):
normally say working we will go to read your stuff,
but nowhere, So thank you. Thank you for just coming
on and doing this for me, because I think it
is important to have a perspective from someone who was there.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
Yeah, and for any tragedy that happens, hopefully no more
ever happened, but always remember the survivors, like the poor
children in the recent shooting Minnesota. Is everyone prais for
the families, which they deserve all of our prayers. But
(58:36):
I feel for those children who was sitting next to
someone that got shot in past yeah, because they'll never
be the same and they are more more upfront close
to it than.
Speaker 3 (58:46):
I even was.
Speaker 2 (58:47):
But those are the people that we need to help
to make sure that they, you know, get get get,
get past it enough where it doesn't affect the rest
of their lives.
Speaker 1 (58:59):
That's all for this episode of A Numbers Game with
Ryan Grodski. If you like this podcast, please like and
subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever gets your podcast.
We'll be back to politics on Monday. Why you guys
come and listen to this. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you did, you could shoot me an email Ryan
at Numbers Game podcast dot com. It's Ryan at Numbers
(59:21):
Plural gamepodcast dot com. Or send me a question about
anything else. I'll answer them on air for a little
backlog so I might do it. Ask me anything, episode
come up soon. But thank you again for listening. This
meant a lot to me to do so I really
appreciate everyone for being on this and listen to this
journey with me. Thank you assass
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