A Promise to A Friend and A Credit Card Rejection Save A Life

Written by Silvio Martinez (Class of 1966)

Around the beginning of August, I received an e-mail from Ray Quinones (Class of 1964), telling me about the Grand Reunion. We spoke a few weeks later and agreed to meet at that event. Ray made arrangements to fly up from Tampa, but the week went by and I never made the reservations for the event.
____On the morning of September 11th, I woke up with the intention of going to work early, since I had a submission of drawing due that day and most of the printing had been done the previous evening. My wife reminded me about the reservations, so that morning I decided to process the request. Since we had just moved, we struggled trying to get the program to accept our credit cards, which still reflected our prior address. As much as I entered and re-entered the information, I was unable to get the reservations confirmed through the Internet and finally gave up.
___As a result, I was late to work. I arrived at the PATH-World Trade Center station at about 8:53am. When I went up the stairs to the turnstile level, a building maintenance worker told me to get away from the building and that "This is serious! Just get away from the building as fast as you can -- don't look back!" We ran a short distance, and he stopped to inform the patrons to leave the PATH station immediately. This man knew how serious the situation was, and still, he stayed behind evacuating the station. As it turned out, I was on the last PATH train that discharged passengers; the next train picked up passengers from the platform and went back to New Jersey.
____I walked underground away from Tower One, and exited the concourse level to the plaza at the corner of Church and Liberty Streets. There were hundreds of people looking up at Tower One. I walked away, and when I reached Broadway and Liberty Streets I heard screams. As I turned, the second plane was hitting Tower Two. The sight was unreal -- the magnitude of the explosion and flying debris! Looking back at Tower One, I realized that since I worked on the 74th floor, the first plane hit very close to my office.
____The details were well documented over the news, and it is not necessary for me to go through the specifics. The nightmare was just beginning. The waiting for news about survivors was followed by hope that people were able to escape and finally hope faded. We waited during the months of recovery efforts to find out whether or not remains had been found, so that at least families could put their loved ones to rest.
____I worked for the last sixteen years for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as a Senior Structural Designer. Through the years, I got to know so many who worked at the Towers -- not only Port Authority employees -- and so many died. ____For this reason, I still attended the Grand Reunion, since I firmly believe that my commitment to meet Ray Quinones at the event is the reason that I am still alive.
____As fate would have it, I am currently working on the reconstruction of the PATH-World Trade Center station

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