We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer (2 page)

As he walked to his car to drive home, he tried not to dwell on what had just happened, but he could not get that term, that ridiculous catch phrase out of his head.
The “9/11 surfer”? It sounds like some kind of freaking comic book hero or something. I wonder if the guy was wearing tights and a cape.

By the time he pulled into the driveway of his two-story, white, colonial-style home, his curiosity was piqued. He walked inside and headed straight for the computer. He typed in “9/11 surfer,” and within moments, there it was.

With each word he read and every fuzzy photograph he saw, his disbelief grew. He knew countless amazing stories had come out of the rubble of that fateful day, but he’d not yet heard of the urban legend of the man surfing down the rubble. When he finished reading the story, he shook his head and then read it one more time, just to make sure it said what he thought it said. When he was certain he had not misread the details, he knew he had to tell his wife. “Louise!” he called over his shoulder, laughing in disbelief and shaking his head. “Louise, you’ve gotta take a look at this!”

“One minute!” a voice called from the other room. “I’m feeding the baby.” After a moment, a petite blonde woman entered the room, holding a satisfied and cooing baby girl in her arms. “What is it, Pasquale?”

“Have you seen this?” Pasquale said, pointing at the monitor.

“What?” she asked, squinting to see what he was talking about.

“I was at the Manhattan Property Clerk’s office, trying to get the item they found. Turns out it’s my briefcase, but they wouldn’t give it to me.”

“They wouldn’t give it to you?”

“No. They guy said he can only give it to you, since the letter is officially addressed to you. But anyway, when I tried to explain to him what happened and why I was there instead of you, he made some weird remark about a ‘9/11 surfer’.”

“What? What the heck is a ‘9/11 surfer’?”

“I didn’t know either, but he said he’d heard all these stories about a guy who was thought to have surfed the building down during the collapse,” he said, pointing to the screen.

Louise leaned forward and started reading. “
A widely rumored story is that of the ‘9/11 surfer’. Witnesses purport that they saw a man ‘surfing’ down to safety from atop the rubble of the collapsing building. Onlookers report that the man was very high up when the building came down, but he managed to ride the debris in the swirling air currents resulting from the collapse of the massive structure, something like a surfer atop an ocean wave, landing on the ground with nothing but some bruises and a broken bone.”
After she read the report, Louise looked from the screen to Pasquale, her green eyes as wide as saucers. She skimmed the article one more time before exclaiming, “Pasquale! Oh my God! That ‘surfer’….he’s…Pasquale, that article is about YOU!”

A LETTER FROM
“
THE 9/11 SURFER
”

That day, 9/11, forever changed my life and the life of my family. It was difficult to process the events of that day. It seemed like a nightmare for so long, one that I just could not wake up from. I thought I could make it go away and just move on with my life. After all, this was something I had prided myself in doing my whole life—dealing with an issue, doing my best to resolve the situation, accepting the outcome, and finally moving on. But life is not that simple. I immediately felt no control over my life and the lives of my family. How could I move on when I’d lost close “work” family, people I’d respected and looked up to? I couldn't get past feeling guilty feeling sad every day. Whenever I managed to break through the thick cloud of guilt and felt happy as a father, I immediately thought of my daughter's life without me, and then all of those children who would have to go through that because their fathers didn’t walk out of those Towers. Unfortunately, we cannot change what happened for them.

Everyone was happy around me, happy to have me alive, but that same celebration pushed me deeper into rage and depression from the guilt I felt. Eventually, over time and by talking through what I was experiencing, I came to a realization and a reason for sharing my journey. I realized that by not continuing on my path as a father, a husband, and a son, I would be disrespecting the memory of all those friends I’d lost. I learned that I couldn’t feel guilty about enjoying those precious moments we all seek as a father; I had to embrace it.

Our loved ones who have passed on, for whatever reasons, do not want us to stop our lives because they have moved on. They want the exact opposite. When we fall down, they would want us to get back up and live again. Of course, I can only speak from how I would want my children and other loved ones to be if something happens to me, but I would want them to make the most of everyday, to experience every joy that life has to offer, to remember me, but not mourn me if it means missing out on sharing their love of life with others.

Life, of course, is a balance of work and play, and my good friend Pat once told me that it’s important to do both as hard as you can. It is definitely our experiences, good or bad, that make us who we are in life, and it is how we choose to use those experiences and digest them and move on that is within our control. So, to those who have been forever scarred by 9/11, I wish you a peace—a deep peace that comes from acceptance and the belief that our loved ones would want the best for us, no matter where they are and how early they were taken away from us. I wish love—the love that comes from opening up your heart and letting others in. And I wish joy—the true joy that can only come from sharing those moments with the people we love.

~ Pasquale Buzzelli

CHAPTER ONE

Some Days Shouldn’t Be Sunny…

“September 11, 2001, a day that changed all our lives…It still feels as if it were yesterday. Not one day has gone by that I have not thought about that day.”

~ Pasquale Buzzelli

Catastrophic days aren’t supposed to be sunny. There shouldn’t be blue skies and a warm, late summer wind barely ruffling the trees. The day when the world comes to an end requires roiling clouds, illuminated by huge shafts of jagged lightning and thunderous rolls of sound. These should be Rembrandt days, when the heavens explode and the golden glow of eternity spreads across the land. Every disaster must be foretold, preceded by dire warnings and solemn reports and men in coarse cloaks, shaking their fists upward as stunned followers surround them, kneeling, praying, waiting for the end to come…

…or so Pasquale Buzzelli had always thought.

It was a usual weekday morning routine in his River Vale, New Jersey home: showering, shaving, dressing, and getting ready for work. He was thinking of nothing more than plans to work on their colonial house over the next weekend: specifically, the painting yet to be done in their expected baby’s nursery.

If Pasquale had studied the Old Testament, he might have been prepared for what was to come. He was a good Catholic man of sound values, leading the life he’d earned by his hard work. He did harbor some fear of God, for his Italian immigrant parents, Antonia and Ugo Buzzelli, had taught him well, but it wasn’t an immediate fear—until years later. He was only thirty-two, he had a great job with the Port Authority, and his wife Louise was soon to deliver their longed-for first child.

Pasquale still couldn’t quite comprehend what being a father would mean, what changes would lay ahead. He thought maybe there were things he should be worried about, but he was sure there’d be plenty of time for that later, after the baby came.

What did Pasquale have to fear on a warm September day in the morning stillness of his house all around him?

He sat in the kitchen with a coffee cup in his hands, sunlight streaming through the windows, while Louise was upstairs in their large bedroom, still asleep. The pregnancy had been hard on her. Most nights she was awake, pacing and unable to rest. He wanted to be with her during those long nights, but he had to work and often fell asleep as she stood staring out what was soon to be the baby’s window, looking at the streetlights along the road in front of their home, reading, or writing in her pregnancy journal—when she could sit long enough to relax.

It wasn’t an easy time for either of the Buzzellis, but it was a time filled with excitement and expectation. The baby’s room was almost done. When they finished their work, an artist Louise had found would come in and paint angels on the walls and ceiling—angels, angels everywhere!

He thought about the jobs that awaited him: the yard work, closing the pool for winter, and other various tasks from the honey-do list. The evenings were growing cooler, though the days remained warm.

A big man, tall and muscular with dark brown hair and blue eyes, Pasquale sometimes felt clumsy around Louise. She was big herself with their child, but underneath the baby weight, she was a delicate, small-framed lady with a lovely, endearing face and green eyes that could break his heart. Her life hadn’t been easy. She’d made so many sacrifices already: her mother to cancer and her father to fire. Pasquale found that all he wanted was to make Louise safe, to make sure she was loved, and to take care of his family the way a man should.

He wished he didn’t have to go to work that day, and he felt a tiredness he wasn’t used to feeling.
If I could just stay home with Louise, we could paint the nursery today
, he thought. But there were jobs waiting to be done in the city, and people at work depended on him to show up.

He sighed and rinsed his coffee cup, set it carefully in the dish drainer, then wiped his hands on a dish towel Louise had hung beside the sink. He folded the towel. The material felt both soft and rough as he patted the towel gently into place, almost as if he’d touched Louise.

He was late.
All that procrastinating!
He would leave his car at the depot in Westwood and take two trains into the city, then take a walk through the buildings and ride two elevators—a long, tedious commute to his job in the Twin Towers.

Pasquale stood for just a moment more at the window. The blue pool in the yard reflected a passing white cloud. The grass, the stones he’d placed with his own hands—all of it seemed nothing more than preparation for what was about to happen in their lives.

They had tried for so long to get pregnant, always hoping against hope, only to result in tears running down the cheeks of Louise’s small face. She never had to say a word. He was helpless to lessen her pain. All he could do was put his arms around her, hold her close, and pray that he could protect her next time. Protection was what he most wanted to give, but it wasn’t always easy to provide.

Pasquale climbed the stairs, up to where Louise was asleep in the wide bed. He bent over her sleeping form and kissed her lightly, so as not to disturb her from her much-needed rest. Brittany, their soft-coated wheaten terrier, had climbed up to take Pasquale’s place beside Louise and opened one brown eye to see if Pasquale intended to climb back in and displace her.

Louise lay on her side, a sheet only partially covering her swollen body, with their comforter pushed off to the floor. Pasquale kissed Louise’s slightly damp cheek one last time. She smelled of baby powder and soap.
Maybe tonight we’ll go out alone,
he thought.
It’s too bad she can’t come into the city. We could have dinner at Windows on the World, up on the top, right next to my building, the way we did when I proposed.
But he knew she wasn’t up to such a long trip alone.

She stirred, mumbled, “I love you,” and went back to sleep, reaching one hand across the bed to touch him.

He watched her sleep and thought of the child they would have. The baby already had a name: Hope. Just the sound of it made him smile, for it was almost as if it were the watchword of their life together. He looked down at Louise and decided he’d call after he got to the office. They’d share a laugh about how hard it was for him to leave that morning.

Pasquale finally pulled himself away. He was already late. The train he should have caught would be leaving the station about the time he got there, and the next one would get him into New York at the last minute. Maybe I won’t be late, he thought, but I sure am cutting things awfully close. It was so difficult to make his legs move, to force his body to rush off from home. Still, it was real life, and he had to deal with it.