By:Jeff Lipton
Married on June 1, Joan and Thomas Jurgens of Meadowmere Park were just beginning to chart a course for a happy life together. But that course took a tragic turn last week.
Thomas Jurgens, 26, was buried alive beneath the tons of rubble and debris from the collapsed World Trade Center after it was the target of terrorists. When terrorists hijacked planes and slammed two of them into the Twin Towers about 18 minutes apart on Tuesday, Sept. 11, Thomas Jurgens, captain of the volunteer Meadowmere Park Fire Department, was working as a New York State court officer in a nearby building. He and fellow officers raced to help victims of the terror attack. As one court officer led a victim to safety, Jurgens was searching for other victims when the building caved in and trapped him.
It's just a nightmare,said his wife outside her West Avenue home on Thursday, Sept. 13, two days after the worst terrorist attack on American soil. It's horrible. I feel I will wake up and it will all be over.
As each day passes, the hope that her husband survived the massive collapse becomes more bleak. But she, family members and his fellow Meadowmere Park firefighters are still holding out hope. I'm operating on faith, hope and a lot of prayers,she said.
She believes that her husband became trapped in the sub-basement of building 5 because he was talking with his fellow court officer on the two-way radio when they got separated. That's his thing,Joan Jurgens said. He would help whoever he can. When I learned he was [trapped] in the basement, the emotions came out of me. I cried and was very upset. I didn't expect him to be inside the building.
She said her husband's supervisor called her last Thursday to tell her he was not on any list of victims in the hospital or morgue, which feeds their hopes.
We're all hoping and praying. That's all we could do,said Fire Chief Michael Schmitt, who is also his brother-in-law. He's a great person, really a hard worker and dedicated. If somebody is in trouble, he's there to provide help.
Jurgens' uncle is Bruce Blakeman, former presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature.
The mood in the firehouse is somber, said First Assistant Chief Michael York. But we've got to keep doing what we're doing. We've still got to do our job.
During the rescue efforts at the Twin Towers, York and more than 20 members of the Meadowmere Park Fire Department were dispatched to the scene and were anxious to find Jurgens and any of the nearly 5,000 reported missing in the terror attacks. It's pretty much a disaster. We've seen no survivors,York said. Just body parts. Unfortunately, no one escaped.
There's only so much we could do,he said. There's threat of further collapse and we can't get as close as we want to.
There's a lot of frustration and anger that it actually happened,Schmitt said of the terrorist attacks.
Another firefighter missing
Meadowmere Park was not the only Five Towns fire department experiencing a loss. The Hewlett Fire Department has not heard from Kevin O'Rourke, a 15-year member, who has a wife and two children.
I can't believe he's gone. I thought he was indestructible,said Hewlett Fire Department Chief Harlan Wank, who is also a firefighter in Brooklyn.
O'Rourke, a member of Fire Rescue Company 2 in Brooklyn, was pressed into service when the terrorists struck. He is believed among the thousands who got trapped or were crushed under the weight of the collapse.
This is something out of a movie,a tired and emotionally-drained Wank said last Thursday, after spending two days helping in the rescue effort. I can't believe it. It still hasn't hit me yet. It's horrible. So many people were there [in the World Trade Center] that got killed.
Wank said of O'Rourke, If I was in trouble, Kevin is the guy that I would want to get me out. Kevin is one of my idols. He always had a smile on his face. He invented dedication to the fire department.
About 20 Hewlett firefighters arrived at the scene in hopes of digging out survivors, but to no avail.
PA chief among victims
One of the victims of the World Trade Center tragedy is Neil Levin, 47, a former Atlantic Beach resident who was appointed this year as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Levin reportedly was having breakfast on the 106th floor of the center, where the PA's offices were located, just before the planes hit the buildings.
Levin began his career in 1981 as a legislative assistant to then U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. He was appointed in 1995 by Gov. Pataki as superintendent of banking and two years later as the state's superintendent for insurance. Earlier this year, he was recommended by the governors of New York and New Jersey to become the 12th executive director in the agency's 80-year history, replacing Robert E. Boyle. He was approved for the post by the PA's Board of Commissioners in April. The governors of the two states confidently tapped him as the man to move forward with the PA's comprehensive $9.5 billion five-year capital plan.
He was also appointed this year as a member of the Hofstra University Board of Trustees.
An Atlantic Beach native, Levin recently moved to Manhattan, where he lived with his wife, Christy Ferrer, who for the last week has been searching desperately for some word on whether he survived the terrorist attack.
Levin, who attended Woodmere Academy, is the son of the late Morton Levin, former commissioner of the Nassau County Bridge Authority, and Gloria Levin.
Searching for brother
Jason Roberts of Woodmere said he has been desperately seeking clues to the whereabouts of his brother, Leo, 43, of Wayne, N.J., who worked as a managing partner and broker for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 106th floor of Tower One.
About two minutes after the first plane hit, Leo Roberts called his wife to reassure her that he was okay and that he was getting out of there. Nobody has heard from him since,his brother said. I find it hard to believe anyone could get out from there.
We're still holding out hope. We're keeping our fingers crossed,said Jason Roberts, 35, who was preparing to enter the nearby New York Stock Exchange, where he works, when the first plane plowed into the center.
When the first plane hit, no one was quite sure what was going on, whether it was terrorism or a freak accident,he said.
The second one then hit as he watched the developments on TV on the floor of the stock exchange. Everyone on the floor was kept inside and the doors were rolled down for their protection. At 11:30 a.m., almost three hours after the first attack, employees were allowed to go outside.
When I first walked out onto the street, it was completely dark and debris was still falling. Two to three inches of ashes were covering us. It was surreal,said Roberts, who also works part-time for Stan's Limousine. It was like walking into a Twilight Zone episode.
I began walking to the Brooklyn Bridge and a few more people started walking and when I finally got to the bridge thousands were walking over it together, amid the plumes of smoke.
The walk of her life
One of the lucky ones in the towers that day was Norma Hessic, a public information officer for New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, who walked down from her offices on the 82nd floor of One World Trade Center to safety.
I was about to have my breakfast before my 10 a.m. meeting, when I heard a big boom,Hessic said, as she recounted the story while sitting in the office of her chiropractor, Dr. Frank Capone on Central Avenue in Lawrence, last Thursday. I saw the fire and the debris in the building and I knew it was something horrible. A co-worker screamed and told us to get out of the building...We heard a plane had gone into the side of the building and we thought it was an accident.
It wasn't easy to run down the stairs. It was terribly crowded,she added. We walked down in single file. There was no panic. It was orderly. As we went down, the firemen were coming up with their big equipment. I'll never forget those young faces,she said somberly of many of the firemen who would not make it out alive.
Emergency personnel told me not to look left and of course I looked left, and saw a head over there and feet and a mangled torso over there.
Although she doesn't know exactly how long it took her, she said she finally made it out of the building in a walk that seemed like an eternity, with 10 minutes to spare before the tower crumbled to the ground. I stopped and tried to breathe and every breath I took it felt like I was swallowing crushed up glass, inhaling glass,said Hessic, who worked in the building since 1979 and was there the day a terrorist bomb exploded in 1993.
She was admitted to a local hospital for safety reasons.
Oh my God, I've got terrible pain in both my legs from the waist down,she said as she waited in Dr. Capone's office last Thursday.
But I feel very, very blessed. It shows you there's not too much more important things in life. Don't worry about the small things.
Mommy, don't die'
Sloane Cooper of Lawrence, a TV producer, was in her office on 32nd Street in Manhattan and was part of the mass exodus from lower Manhattan following the attacks. She walked over the 59th Street Bridge until she reached Queens Boulevard.
Smoke was pluming out of the devastation,she said. It was just scary.
But she was touched by the kindness of strangers who appeared to help one another make it across the bridge as others used water coolers to hand out water to the weary. People were walking together and helped the elderly people cross the bridge.
The next day when she dropped off her two children, Spencer and Mathew Friedman, at The Brandeis School on Frost Lane in Lawrence, before she headed to work, she said, They told me, Mommy don't die.' That was the most impactful thing for me. We have to get up and go to work and resume our lives. But for our children, their whole sense of security has been shattered by all this.
