IN MY SHOES: How World Trade Center Survivors Are Coping
The New York Times profiles several survivors of the terror attack on the World Trade Center, and they describe what their lives are like today:
† On Sept. 11, 2001 Lauren Manning, 47, then the mother of a 10-month-old boy, was burned over 80 percent of her body when a ball of fire engulfed just as she entered the lobby:
She cannot walk her terrier, Caleigh, who weighs just 29 pounds but “pulls a lot,” or cook a full meal because the smallest nick in her delicately healed skin risks infection. She could not apply the glitter or fasten the hooks during a snowflake-making session in her son’s first-grade class.
“Through the grace of the people in my life, I am able to conduct what appears at first glance in many ways more normal than it is beneath the surface,” Mrs. Manning said recently. “My husband, he’s been my hands.”
† Elaine Duch, 56, who was on the 88th floor of the north tower when the plane hit, no longer associates with her old friends, sold her house and moved into a condo and dyed her blond hair black:
“I’m never going to be the Elaine that I used to be. … [My new friends] did not know me before, they only know me as an injured person.”
Nowadays, she goes to the New Jersey Shore with her twin sister and a woman who saw her on the news and who sent her cards and letters every day of the five months she spent in rehabilitation. She no longer drives because her hands are too weak and she is easily rattled. She avoids zippers, tiny buttons and opening the wax paper in cereal boxes. She suffers through summers and winters because her burned skin does not tolerate heat and cold very well.
† Harry Waizer, 57, was headed up to Cantor Fitzgerald’s office on the 104th floor when he felt the shockwaves of an explosion and the elevator began to plunge:
Burned as he beat out the flames, Mr. Waizer got out on the 78th floor and took the stairs to the ground, seeing looks of horror and sympathy on the faces of those who let him pass.
He was given a 5 percent chance of survival. Despite back pain, scarring and nerve damage, he has regained a sense of physical normalcy, though with gentle wit, he draws a line between his recovery and Mrs. Manning’s, saying, “I was never as pretty as she was.”
Perhaps the most distinctive relic of his injuries is his whispery, soothing voice, possibly caused by inhaling jet fuel that left him with “a bit of vocal cord paralysis.”
Manning works with Cantor Fitzgerald’s September 11 relief fund; Duch is still undergoing physical therapy and psychotherapy and is unable to work; Waizer is back at work as a tax lawyer in Cantor’s new Midtown Manhattan headquarters.
Addendum: The Boston Globe’s David Filipov, whose father was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, writes:
As a son, I decided it was time to finally visit the place where my father died, and try to move on. And what I saw is that ground zero has moved on, too. …
The place where the World Trade Center once stood is a cavernous construction project surrounded by bustling streets where vendors hawk photos of the burning towers and other Sept. 11 memorabilia to passing tourists; bankers and brokers rush to and from their offices with barely a glance toward the site where the foundations for buildings are being laid; and the roar of buses and tractors drowns out ordinary conversation. …
Across the street, I walked into a small museum dedicated to the tragedy of the towers and, again, searched through hundreds of pictures in vain.
Before I walked back out into the busy crowds and the bustling streets … I turned to a corner where, under the words "In Memoriam," a list of the victims was etched in stone.
That's where I found Al Filipov's name. I guess that's what they call closure.
Cleveland Center air-traffic controller John Werth, 61, tells USA Today about “the desperate efforts he and his colleagues made to communicate with Flight 93 and keep other planes away from it until the jet crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field”:
For seven years, Werth, 61, hasn't told his story publicly, initially because he was not allowed to because of a government subpoena related to the prosecution of al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, and later because Werth didn't want the attention. Now, Werth's ready to discuss it and set the record straight.
It was Werth who heard the transmission from Flight 93 that suggested a bomb was aboard. The transmission, in a thick accent and broken English, likely was from hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah, the 9/11 Commission determined later. …
What if, Werth wondered, the hijackers had a bomb — maybe even a nuclear device? How far would Werth have to keep other jets from a nuclear bomb's shock wave? Twenty miles? Thirty?
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