Staff and Friends of Cummings/Riter,

The 10th anniversary ceremonies for the 9/11 tragedies brought back a flood of memories. The recollections of so many losses and incredible sacrifices by both “ordinary” citizens who did extraordinary things, and by trained first responders who ran to (rather than from) danger, came flowing back.

One of the powerful moments for me came on 9/11/2011 with the reading of names of those lost at the New York ceremonies. I knew two people who were in the towers that morning; one escaped because he completely ignored instructions on how to evacuate the building, and the other, Alan Bondarenko, did not survive. Alan was an extraordinarily nice guy and an excellent engineer. He had a job interview at the WTC in February of 1993, on the day that extremists first attacked the Towers. His interview that fateful day was successful, as he safely evacuated that day and landed the job he interviewed for. He did not survive 9/11, and seeing his name roll across the broadcast of the 10th anniversary ceremony in NYC hit me like a hammer.

God bless you and your family, Alan. You are still missed by those lucky enough to have known you and worked with you…

September 11, 2001 began as a very optimistic and important day at Cummings/Riter…

A team of our senior guys had developed a unique software tool to assist clients with their asset management programs. Ken Bird and Bryan Maurer flew into LaGuardia the morning of 9/11 to present the tool to managers at the headquarters of Viacom, located at 1515 Broadway in Times Square. They had planned to fly back to Pittsburgh late that afternoon. Obviously, their day got complicated.

They took a cab from LaGuardia into Manhattan, leaving the airport at ~ 8:20 a.m. As they drove toward Manhattan, they gazed at the skyline, noting as many others had, that it seemed like a gorgeous September morning. As best we can tell, they were in the Queens Mid-Town tunnel at 8:42 a.m. when the first plane struck…as they emerged on the other side, the sounds of emergency response sirens filled the streets. The cab driver turned on his radio and they heard the initial reporting of the events…

Dee Wiederstein was at work in our Pittsburgh office listening to the radio when there was a news flash that a plane had crashed into one of the Towers. Knowing that Ken and Bryan were to land at LaGuardia that morning, we immediately turned on the TV in our conference room, hoping to hear that the plane that crashed into the Tower was not from Pittsburgh, and to try to learn as much as we could about the incident. I called Ken’s cell phone for the first of what would be over 80 times that day…the call would not go through, as cell service was grossly overloaded in Manhattan. I also tried Bryan’s cell phone, only to find that he had loaned it to another employee, Julie Shrum, who was overseeing remedial construction at a site in Horseheads, New York.

…To no one’s surprise, Ken’s and Bryan’s cab driver did not speak English as a first language. Ken gave the address “fifteen fifteen Broadway, downtown” to the cabby. Ken did not know that the cabby assumed he was repeating the address “15 Broadway”; and headed for that address instead of Times Square…15 Broadway is in lower Manhattan. Their route to that (incorrect) location would take them directly toward the World Trade Center…

There was gridlock as the cab headed into lower Manhattan. Ken got frustrated and asked the cabby where the address was in relation to where the cab was. The cabby pointed south down Broadway (toward the Towers) and said that way a few blocks. Ken and Bryan got out of the cab and headed south on Broadway on foot….toward the Towers. As they walked, they got occasional glimpses of the smoke pouring from the Towers, as office papers, some slightly singed, floated to the ground around them.

…I continued to frantically call Ken’s cell while watching TV in an effort to learn the identity of the plane that had struck the Tower. Dee and I saw the second plane impact live. My heart was in my throat not knowing whether Ken and Bryan had safely landed in NY--or not.

A few minutes later I thankfully got through to Ken briefly, which gave me incredible joy and relief. The transmission was garbled, but he confirmed he and Bryan were fine. In fact, they were standing looking at the burning Towers. I tried not to sound shaken, and told them I would call their families to let them know they were ok. Still glued to the TV, I called their wives. Bryan’s wife, Marta, had been worriedly watching the events on TV and was very happy to hear that they were safe. Ken’s wife, Tara, had not been watching TV and was unaware of everything that was happening. She was obviously confused as I breathlessly told her Ken was ok. I told her to turn on a TV to catch up on happenings in NY, but to remember that Ken was fine.  She asked me which channel to watch. She got a little concerned when I told her that it didn’t matter which channel she watched, it’s the only thing on TV…

By now it was clear to me that Ken and Bryan were going to have difficulty getting home to Pittsburgh that day, so I started hitting internet web sites for Manhattan hotels. Internet service was very sporadic, but I did manage to get them a confirmed internet reservation at a hotel in Midtown, near the Times Square meeting location...

Dee and I were still glued to the TV, and watched in shock when the first Tower collapsed. The implications regarding immediate loss of life were stunning, we basically saw a live incident on TV during which a multitude of souls passed in seconds.

Ken and Bryan had walked a little ways south on Broadway but police had blocked their Broadway path and they decided to go around the roadblock, still intent on reaching the client’s office. When they reached Wall Street they realized that they were way off from their intended location.  The addresses were not consistent with a 1515 number, they were way too low. Realizing they were a long way south of 1515 Broadway, they began walking north, away from the gridlock and emergency vehicles and toward Times Square, then the first Tower collapsed; they felt the rumble and the dust cloud rolled up over them…

Dee and I were still watching the TV, with our concern heightened as we knew that Ken and Bryan were near the WTC.  We then saw the second Tower fall live on TV, and hoped that Ken and Bryan were sufficiently far away. We also hoped that folks had gotten out of that Tower after seeing the first one fall…

I had been calling Ken’s cell unceasingly trying to give him the info for the hotel where I had made a reservation for them. I finally connected, and told him that we saw the Towers collapse on live TV.  He said they were in the dust cloud. They were going to walk north up Broadway away from the WTC (along with the throng of other folks in lower Manhattan) toward the Viacom offices in Times Square and the hotel…

Walking briskly, it still took an hour and a half for Ken and Bryan to get to midtown. When they reached Viacom’s offices (Broadway at 44th) at about 11:30 am, they learned that the office was closed and that the staff had been directed to evacuate.  They then headed back south a few blocks on Broadway to the midtown hotel where they had reservations. At the hotel, they were told no rooms were available. When Ken told them that the reservations were confirmed and provided the details, they were told that the hotel was not obliged to honor any reservations, because we were at war…

Ken succeeded in giving me a call and updating me on their status. No cars were being rented in Manhattan, and the railways were closed just as the airports were. The Lincoln and Holland Tunnels were also closed. Ken and Bryan had brought only what they needed for their meeting; they had one cell phone with a dying battery, and no charger, a laptop (pre-Wi-Fi) and a projector--and no way off Manhattan, let alone a way to return to Pittsburgh. We agreed they should get something to eat ASAP, as they might not get to eat for a long time. We then tried to come up with a plan to get them home.

As noted earlier, we had an active remediation project taking place in Horseheads, NY (an hour west of Binghamton). Horseheads is not close to NYC, but it was a hell of a lot closer than the 375 mile distance from Pittsburgh. I succeeded somehow in reaching our Horseheads site rep (Julie) and asked her to stop the project and head toward North Jersey. We agreed that she should target Willowbrook Mall, a place we all knew from project work nearby. After a lot of difficulty, I again was able to get a hold of Ken and told him Julie was driving toward the Mall. We had heard on the news (and Ken and Bryan had confirmed on the ground in Times Square) that Rudy Giuliani had arranged for the tour boats to provide ferry service to get people from midtown to the Jersey side. Ken and Bryan walked west across Manhattan, toward the Hudson, to wait in line with countless thousands of others, all standing in somber silence. We hoped they would find some way to get onto a ferry, and then further into NJ from the shore of the Hudson, and maybe even to the Willowbrook Mall fifteen more miles to the west…

In the meantime, we had seen the TV coverage of the chaos in NYC and the Pentagon, and had heard that a plane was down in a field near Somerset, PA about 60 miles east of our Pittsburgh office. Lots of stories were circulating about planes still unaccounted for, and most cities, including Pittsburgh, were bracing for the unknown.  Some of our staff members’ spouses who were medical professionals were ordered to immediately report for emergency duty.  I canceled a meeting with a client in downtown Pittsburgh. Cell service in Pittsburgh was also totally overloaded, and I drove to a local job site to get one of our guys to go home to his young kids so that his wife could get to work at the hospital on an emergency basis…

At this point, we had the framework of a plan that at least had a chance of getting Ken and Bryan away from NYC. Ken and I succeeded in talking one more time on his dying cell phone; confirming that Willowbrook Mall was indeed where they should try to go. Ken had heard that there may be busses on the Jersey side of the Hudson to get the people from the ferries further inland. Indeed, they were taken to the Hoboken Transit Station where busses were available to destinations throughout north Jersey.

I did a little logistics and concluded that if they somehow got to the Mall and met Julie, they should head west toward Pittsburgh. I picked Hazelton, PA along Interstate 80 as the target rendezvous point. Hazelton was about 100 miles from Manhattan and about 280 miles from Pittsburgh. I again was fortunate enough to reach Julie on her cell phone and told her to head west on I-80 if she connected with Bryan and Ken at a reasonable hour. By now, Ken’s cell was dead and we were operating mostly on a wing and a prayer. I made four room reservations at a hotel in Hazelton, and started driving in that direction from Pittsburgh…

The most direct way to get from Pittsburgh to Hazelton is to go east on US 22, head north on I-99 past State College, then take I-80 east. The other route is to take the Turnpike east from Pittsburgh toward Harrisburg, then go north on I-81. The Turnpike is far south of I-80, but it goes through Somerset and very near a place called Shanksville. I decided to take the Turnpike route…

The Shanksville crash site lies about four miles north of the Turnpike, about seven miles east of Somerset. As I neared that portion of the Turnpike, I strained to see if anything was visible to the north. It was late in the afternoon and there did seem to be a wisp of smoke rising over a low hill to the northeast. I had no idea if it was from the crash of Flight 93…

By this time, Julie had arrived at the Willowbrook Mall in her truck, but none of us had a way to contact Bryan and Ken. She settled into the truck for what could and likely would be a very long night. I had almost four more hours of driving until I would reach Hazelton…

After about three hours of driving, I received a great call from Julie. A bus had pulled into the Mall lot around 9:30 pm and Ken and Bryan were on it!  The three of them stuffed themselves into the cab of the Ford Ranger and headed west…

I reached the Hazelton Holiday Inn about 10 pm, got the keys to the rooms, and then found a place to get some 6-packs and sandwiches, and headed back to the hotel to watch the news coverage and wait for their arrival.

They arrived at around 11:45 pm, and only then did I begin to really understand how things had gone for them. We continued to watch the news coverage for a while, with the scope of the tragedies of the day just starting to become apparent. Ken and Bryan’s day had started at 4 am in Pittsburgh, and was winding up at 1 am in Hazelton, 100 miles west of NYC, with transportation modes that included their cars, a plane, taxi, sightseeing boat, double-decker tour bus, transit bus, pickup truck, and several miles of walking. Ken, Bryan, and Julie were totally exhausted, and we all crashed.

In the morning we had a huge breakfast in a diner, Julie headed back to her assignment in Horseheads, and Ken, Bryan and I headed home….

Prologue

In the days and weeks that followed, the scope and depth of the 9/11 tragedies became apparent. We learned of Alan’s death about a week later. From my own perspective, in the space of 18 hours, I had seen a plane crash into the Tower on live TV wondering if my friends were on the plane, then saw both Towers fall on live TV knowing that my friends were on the ground nearby, drove near the crash site of Flight 93, and saw the dust of the WTC tragedy in the hair and on the clothes of my friends when we finally met in Hazelton.

This write-up is based on my memory, as corrected by Bryan, Ken and Dee. At some point, Ken and Bryan are going to author a write-up from their viewpoint of the day’s occurrences…

Though the Cummings/Riter saga of 9/11 is very trivial in comparison to the incredible stories of that day, it brought all of us at Cummings/Riter closer together; and still stands as one of the important events in our firm’s 18-year history.

Finally…The older I get, the more I forget. But two things I will certainly always remember are the raw joy of learning that my friends were ok---and Ken Bird’s cell phone number. 

Pat O’Hara