By Laura Lane
But when a co-worker arrived, visibly shaken, Gaines began to worry. His colleague had seen people jumping from the World Trade Center's windows. Gaines looked warily out his window at the smoke pouring from the doomed building.
When the second plane hit, he knew terrorists were attacking. Gaines worried his building might be hit too.
"There were people praying; people were uncomfortable and frightened," recalled Gaines. "My employer put us all in one room, which had all glass windows. When the tower collapsed, we felt it; you felt the vibration, the shake."
Gaines remained in that room for a few hours. "When the huge plume of smoke surrounded the city when the towers fell, I touched the glass windows. They were very hot," said Gaines. "I was one of the very fortunate people I wasn't in the building. But I was close enough."
Gaines walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to return home. "I walked through a lot of debris; there was paper everywhere that looked like confetti. Kind of like when they had the parades downtown to celebrate a sports victory," said Gaines, who added that breathing was difficult. "I had nothing to cover my mouth. And I ended up throwing out all of my clothes."
People have no problem remembering where they were or what they were doing when terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. In Merrick, people continue to mourn the day that they say will forever remain horrific in their memories.
North Merrick resident George Closs believes he was fortunate on Sept. 11. By chance, he had gone to his Queens office instead of the Manhattan office, which was located on the Upper East Side.
Like other Long Islanders, he watched the horror unfold on television, until he lost the signal when the second tower collapsed. "The antenna was on the World Trade Center," said Closs. "So we turned on the Spanish station. It didn't seem to matter that it was in a different language."
Closs, who always took the train to work, worried that he might be stranded. "I could see the elevated subways were stopped in the middle of the tracks, and I saw people walking over the Queens 59th Street Bridge. I joined the crowd and shuffled along, trying to get east of the city," remembered Closs. "Queens Plaza is usually so noisy, but it was dead quiet. Nobody was panicking, running or shoving. The calm was eerie."
By mid-afternoon, Closs arrived at an underground subway that was running. He waited an hour to get onto the platform. "The subways would come, but they were packed. But when the doors opened, people didn't push or shove. You just had to wait for a few trains to get onto one," said Closs. "When the subway pulled into Jamaica, the train emptied out, and everyone walked quietly upstairs to wait for the Long Island Rail Road. While I was waiting, I saw two fighter planes flying very low, headed to Manhattan. It's something I'll always remember. I mean we're not in the Middle East; this isn't the type of things you see every day."
Merrick School Board Trustee Dr. Nancy Kaplan grew up in Manhattan and was still living there on Sept. 11. "I lived on Grant Street and the FDR Drive. When you looked up Grant Street, you saw the World Trade Center," said Kaplan.
Kaplan was in Atlantic City facilitating a session sponsored by the New Jersey Governor's and Attorney General's offices on Sept. 11, and her husband was working in Newark. Her baby-sitter was watching her young son in Manhattan, and they spoke by phone several times.
But the baby-sitter was frantic. The woman's two sons, both New York City firefighters, were at the World Trade Center, and she was unsure whether they were alive. "What I think of now is that all those firefighters knew what they were doing, and they did it anyhow. People were running down the steps of the trade center, and the firemen were running up," said Kaplan. "One of my baby-sitter's sons hid under a concrete bench when the towers collapsed, and he survived. They other son, they found nothing."
Eventually the New Jersey State Police, uncertain what to do with Kaplan, offered to pick up her husband and drive the couple back to their apartment. The drive home was surreal for the Kaplans. "All the roads were closed when they drove us home," she said. "I'll never forget the feeling of coming up to the Lincoln Tunnel. It was the most unbelievable sight imaginable."
Kaplan moved from Manhattan to Merrick in July of 2002. "I love the city; it was my home. I left because of the schools, not Sept. 11," said Kaplan. "When I lived in Manhattan, I felt like I was in the middle of everything. But now when I go there, it feels like something's missing, not just the physical building."
Merrick resident Beverly Kotch was feeding her cats when she received a phone call from her daughter in California. Mother and daughter were discussing the possibilities about what could be happening in downtown Manhattan when the second plane hit.
"When that plane hit, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that it was terrorism," said Beverly. "My daughter was so shaken because she had friends she'd lost touch with and was speculating where they might be. At that point, they were saying 20,000 people might have died."
Beverly woke up her husband Dennis. Five years ago, Dennis had worked at Bankers Trust Plaza, now called Deutsche Bank. The building is located across the street from the south tower.
"A chunk of the World Trade Center hit my old building when it collapsed," said Dennis. "All I could think about was when I moved into that building how I had joked to my boss that when the trade center comes down, we're going to be in a world of trouble in our building. I never thought that would actually happen."
Beverly spoke to many family members on Sept. 11, but the call she'll never forget was the one she received from her grandson in Pennsylvania. "As soon as the trade center went down, Michael went and enlisted," said Beverly. "Now I had that worry to add to all of the others. Michael spent six months in Afghanistan and a year in Iraq."
Michael was recently discharged. He came home partially disabled. "He has a hearing loss from the sounds of the artillery fire and fractures on his feet from boot camp, and they think maybe from the vibrations from riding in the Hummers," said Beverly. "He also has fractures on his shoulders from firing a squad automatic weapon, a rapid-fire weapon."
Many people in Merrick had no choice but to continue with their workday on Sept. 11. David Feller, the North Merrick School District superintendent, was headed to Camp Avenue Elementary School for a welcome-back tea when he heard that the first plane had hit.
"I remembered that in the '30s or '40s, there was a plane that crashed into the Empire State Building. My first reaction was that the plane had a terrible accident," recalled Feller, who went forward with the tea only to learn afterward that the plane crash was a terrorist act.
Feller said school administrators brainstormed throughout the day, deciding how to proceed. "Our first decision was to be very guarded on how the news would be discussed," said Feller. "We told faculty not to let the children hear them talking and not to tell the children about the attack."
North Merrick Elementary School District Trustee Karen Repole spent much of Sept. 11 trying to find out if her children's father, who worked for the Transit Authority, was safe. "It was all pretty scary, and it took a couple of hours to find out that he was on the pier next to the trade center," said Repole. "My daughter found out that he might be in the buildings and was panicking. I went up to Calhoun and picked her up to be sure she knew her father was safe."
Repole said Sept. 11 has had a lasting effect on her children. "Even today my children feel at times that they want their father to call them," said Repole. "They want to make sure he's OK."
Sal Vassallo, the Merrick Chamber of Commerce president, is an ex-marine. He's also a stockbroker who went to seminars at the World Trade Center.
On Sept. 11, Vassallo remembers feeling angry. "I thought the loss to humanity, oh my God. The families of the victims are never going to be the same after this," said Vassallo. "Four years later, and all I think about are all those innocent people just going about their day, and these people can't think of any way to solve their problems but to blow people up? The feelings don't go away. Three thousand people lost their lives for nothing."
Comments about this story? LLane@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
