Jim Dwyer, The New York Times
Posted 3/29/2002 12:00:00 AM

Fighting for Life 50 Floors Up, With One Tool and Ingenuity — Oct. 9, 2001

From the Rubble, a Picture and a Friendship — Oct. 23, 2001

A Soothing Cup of Water, a Vessel of Plain Kindness — Nov. 22, 2001

Fightingfor Life 50 Floors Up, With One Tool and Ingenuity

Oct. 9, 2001

By Jim Dwyer

Now memories orbit aroundsmall things. None of the other window washers liked his old green bucket, butJan Demczur, who worked inside 1 World Trade Center, found its rectangular mouthperfect for dipping and wetting his squeegee in one motion. So on the morningof the 11th, as he waited at the 44th-floor Sky Lobby to connect with elevatorsfor higher floors, bucket and squeegee dangled from the end of his arm.

The time was 8:47 a.m. Withfive other men — Shivam Iyer, John Paczkowski, George Phoenix, Colin Richardsonand another man whose identity could not be learned — Mr. Demczur (pronouncedDEM- sir) boarded Car 69-A, an express elevator that stopped on floors 67 through74.

The car rose, but beforeit reached its first landing, "We felt a muted thud," Mr. Iyer said. "The buildingshook. The elevator swung from side to side, like a pendulum."

Then it plunged. In thecar, someone punched an emergency stop button. At that moment — 8:48 a.m. —1 World Trade Center had entered the final 100 minutes of its existence. Noone knew the clock was running, least of all the men trapped inside Car 69-A;they were as cut off 500 feet in the sky as if they had been trapped 500 feetunderwater.

They did not know theirlives would depend on a simple tool.

After 10 minutes, a livevoice delivered a blunt message over the intercom. There had been an explosion.Then the intercom went silent. Smoke seeped into the elevator cabin. One mancursed skyscrapers. Mr. Phoenix, the tallest, a Port Authority engineer, pokedfor a ceiling hatch. Others pried apart the car doors, propping them open withthe long wooden handle of Mr. Demczur's squeegee.

There was no exit.

They faced a wall, stenciledwith the number "50." That particular elevator bank did not serve the 50th floor,so there was no need for an opening. To escape, they would have to make onethemselves.

Mr. Demczur felt the wall.Sheetrock. Having worked in construction in his early days as a Polish immigrant,he knew that it could be cut with a sharp knife.

No one had a knife.

From his bucket, Mr. Demczurdrew his squeegee. He slid its metal edge against the wall, back and forth,over and over. He was spelled by the other men. Against the smoke, they breathedthrough handkerchiefs dampened in a container of milk Mr. Phoenix had just bought.

Sheetrock comes in panelsabout one inch thick, Mr. Demczur recalled. They cut an inch, then two inches.Mr. Demczur's hand ached. As he carved into the third panel, his hand shook,he fumbled the squeegee and it dropped down the shaft.

He had one tool left: ashort metal squeegee handle. They carried on, with fists, feet and handle, cuttingan irregular rectangle about 12 by 18 inches. Finally, they hit a layer of whitetiles. A bathroom. They broke the tiles.

One by one, the men squirmedthrough the opening, headfirst, sideways, popping onto the floor near a sink.Mr. Demczur turned back. "I said, `Pass my bucket out,' " he recalled.

By then, about 9:30, the50th floor was already deserted, except for firefighters, astonished to seethe six men emerge. "I think it was Engine Company 5," Mr. Iyer said. "Theyhustled us to the staircase."

On the excruciating single-filedescent through the smoke, someone teased Mr. Demczur about bringing his bucket."The company might not order me another one," he replied. At the 15th floor,Mr. Iyer said: "We heard a thunderous, metallic roar. I thought our lives hadsurely ended then." The south tower was collapsing. It was 9:59. Mr Demczurdropped his bucket. The firefighters shouted to hurry.

At 23 minutes past 10, theyburst onto the street, ran for phones, sipped oxygen and, five minutes later,fled as the north tower collapsed. Their escape had taken 95 of the 100 minutes."It took up to one and a half minutes to clear each floor, longer at the lowerlevels," said Mr. Iyer, an engineer with the Port Authority. "If the elevatorhad stopped at the 60th floor, instead of the 50th, we would have been fiveminutes too late.

"And that man with the squeegee.He was like our guardian angel."

Since that day, Mr. Demczurhas stayed home with his wife and children. He has pieced together the facesof the missing with the men and women he knew in the stations of his old life:the security guard at the Japanese bank on the 93rd floor, who used to let himin at 6:30; the people at Carr Futures on 92; the head of the Port Authority.Their faces keep him awake at night, he says.

His hands, the one thatheld the squeegee and the other that carried the bucket, shake with absence.
 
 

Fromthe Rubble, a Picture and a Friendship

Oct. 23, 2001

By Jim Dwyer

Tim Sherman spotted thephotograph near the end of his first day of digging, on the Friday after thatTuesday. The time of day, he recalls, was "after dark." He had been on the movesince dawn. A gang from his job at the Middlesex Water Company had come to NewYork to help, with strong backs and water main know-how and willing spirits.In a way, there was nothing to do.

Around them, smoke heavedfrom shapes no human hand could form. How ever many tons of stuff were on theground, the landscape fell heavier and longer on the eye. "There is no God,"he remembers thinking.

The Middlesex crew grabbedhand tools and faced the wreckage at Liberty Plaza. "Digging. Bucketing. Whateverneeded to be done," Mr. Sherman said.

Late that day, he rakeda pile of ash, then saw the picture. Frozen in time and in 8 by 10 inches ofvibrant colors, three cute kids stared at him from the ground: one boy justold enough for braces, another boy a few years younger, and a toddler sister.

The picture was sopping.He stuck it on a wall to dry, but it slid off. "If you put it back up there,it'll just fall again and get lost," a co-worker told Mr. Sherman, so he stashedit away. "This could be the last thing a mother or father saw before they died,"Mr. Sherman would say.

Over the next two weeksor so, the fraternity of hard work, warm meals and caring people, changed Mr.Sherman's opinion about God. Back in New Jersey, his hometown paper, the HomeNews Tribune, ran an article about the water company crews helping out. Thepaper also published the picture Tim Sherman had saved.

All day after Brian Conroysaw the salvaged picture in the newspaper, he had a hard time concentratingon his job, managing a sales territory for Arnold Bread and Thomas' EnglishMuffins. He knew those faces — knew the kids. Those were George Tabeek's children,and George worked at the trade center for the Port Authority.

Years ago, a decade or more,Mr. Tabeek owned a piece of a restaurant in Edison. Mr. Conroy tended bar thereonce a week. The Tabeek boys would visit their dad while he was watching theregister. At closing time, the two men would share a pizza and news about hischildren. They were good friends, but work friends, so when the restaurant closed,they went about their lives.

Mr. Conroy recalled thatthe Tabeeks lived in Brooklyn, and he found two listings for them. On one call,an answering machine picked up. Mr. Conroy put the phone down. At the secondnumber, a woman said hello.

Yes, this was the Tabeekhousehold.

Mr. Conroy explained whohe was, but fumbled trying to state his business. He cannot say if his heartwas pounding or had simply stopped.

The woman finally figuredout whom Mr. Conroy was talking about.

"Oh," she said. "Oh. George.He's right here. Do you want to speak to him?"

Mr. Conroy fell silent.The little hairs rose along his arms.

About 10 years ago, GeorgeTabeek took his children to the Sears where his sister worked in the photographydepartment and had the children sit for a portrait. Dana would have been about3; Steven, 11; and young Georgie, 14.

The picture of the childrenfollowed him as he moved through jobs at the Port Authority, as Georgie becamea New York City police officer, as Steven went to Saint John's University, andas Dana started high school at Bishop Kearney.

Mounted in a gold frame,the portrait sat on the edge of his credenza, in his office on the 35th floorof 2 World Trade Center. Mr. Tabeek, an engineer, was one of the people withthe keys to everything. When he looked out the window across the plaza to thegreat spread of New York, in the corner of his view was an 8-by-10 picture ofhis children.

That awful morning, he hadthe good luck to be stopping for a doughnut in the plaza when the first planehit. He then tested that fortune, running up 22 floors with firefighters torescue people. He was inches from a fireman, Lt. Andrew Desperito, when thesecond building fell and took Lieutenant Desperito.

He told all this to BrianConroy, the old friend he had shared pizza with in the life before. Mr. Conroythen told him about Tim Sherman the water worker, and the wet picture he hadfound buried in the ash.

For the first time in weeks,Mr. Tabeek said yesterday, he thought about the picture that sat in the cornerof his window view, the small piece of his remembered sky.

He wanted it.

"I'll get it," Mr. Conroysaid, and he did.
 
 

A SoothingCup of Water, a Vessel of Plain Kindness

Nov. 22, 2001

By Jim Dwyer

Before strangers decidedto bring cups of water to other strangers, the very air had become an accompliceto the hijackers. "It was like ground-up glass going down your throat as youwere trying to catch your breath," Norma Hessic said.

"Like burning embers froma fireplace, it was big chunks," John Cerqueira said. "I couldn't even closemy mouth. It was literally stuffed in every orifice. In your ears, your eyesockets."

"You couldn't see in frontof you," Jeff Meisel said.

"It was black," Dee Howardsaid. "All I could do was pray and run."

For one infernal momentthat morning, only the cold laws of physics ruled. The trade center towers,traveling at 50 miles per hour in powder form, chased thousands of people throughthe streets of Lower Manhattan, whipping into the soft tissues of their throats,trying to crush them from the inside out.

In the next instant, menand women emerged from shops and doorways, with cups of water, gauze, flashlights.Life was shoving back, seeking its own equilibrium.

Ms. Howard stood on thecorner of Chambers and Centre Streets, a few blocks from the trade center, clutchingImez Graham, a friend from work. They had lost their building. They had losttheir way home. They had lost their shoes.

Linda Mauro, leaving workat the Municipal Building, saw the two women powdered in white from their headsto their bare feet. She found some water and made them drink. They would notgo into any building, so she walked with them, buying two pairs of slippersin Chinatown.

The Chinese shopkeepersopened spigots in their sinks, found some cups and passed drinks to Ms. Howard,Ms. Graham and thousands of others streaming past.

Norma Hessic stood on ChurchStreet, near the Millenium Hotel, screaming in the darkness. "Someone stuckhis hand out at me. He said, `Take my hand and don't let go,' " she remembered."He took me three or four blocks, to an abandoned food cart; there was waterand juice there. My throat was burning up."

Jeff Meisel fled along Broadwayto Nassau Street, where Chino Chaudhary, the owner of an Indian restaurant calledDiwan- E-Khaas, was pulling down his rolling gates. Mr. Chaudhary stopped andgrabbed people stumbling past. "He dragged us into the store," Mr. Meisel said."Made everyone go downstairs, to big slop sinks, to wash off. He gave you bottlesof water. He wouldn't let you leave until it had cleared outside. He wouldn'thear about money. I never was in there before."

As John Cerqueira and afriend, Mike Benfante, descended from the 81st floor of the north tower, theysaw Tina Hansen in a wheelchair, behind a glass door on 68. Mr. Cerqueira, 22,and Mr. Benfante, 36, carried her down 68 floors, out to an ambulance. No morethan five minutes later, the building collapsed, all but suffocating them.

They staggered onto WestStreet, where someone handed them water. "I think it was the Jewish ambulanceguys," Mr. Cerqueira said. "They gave me oxygen. We were sharing it."

The refugees streamed north.Aniko and John Delaney collected their daughter, Sophie, 2, at the Trinity Churchday care center, two blocks from the trade center. Covered with soot, the familyrolled Sophie up Sixth Avenue, then spotted an outdoor food station, staffedby people from Da Silvano restaurant at Houston Street. As fast as the workerscould make sandwiches, they were handing them away. The owner, Silvano Marchetto,brought his cordless phones outside so the escapees could call home.

"We were parched," Mrs.Delaney said. "Water was the No. 1 thing we were looking for. He had it allout on the tables outside. Right on the path of all the people heading north."

With little Sophie frettingand crying, Mr. Marchetto sent the Delaneys from his restaurant to his apartmentso they could wash up and Sophie could take a nap.

All this, and much morelike it, happened anonymously in the minutes and hours right after the attack,without a word of instruction or a second of preparation.

None of those who helpedfelt they were special. "Just a tiny microcosm of what was going on," said LindaMauro, who found water and slippers in Chinatown for Dee Howard and Imez Graham."They wanted to hug me, then stopped because of the ashes. I said, `Don't evenworry about it.' We hugged."

"Not just us was helping,"said Chino Chaudhary, who dragged Jeff Meisel and others into his Indian restauranton Nassau Street. "Everybody was. From the Duane Reade, anyone with a shop."

"Nobody complained aboutnothing," said Silvano Marchetto, the Florentine with the restaurant in GreenwichVillage, who fed perhaps a thousand people that day.

The moment a war beginsis chiseled into history. Acts of grace linger only in the memory of small things.

After Theresa Leone escapedfrom the north tower, she made her way home to Morris Park in the Bronx.

That night, in her bag,she found a plastic cup that had been full of water when someone — a stranger,she doesn't know who — handed it to her as she passed the restaurant supplydistrict along the Bowery.

"I'm going to hold ontoit," Mrs. Leone said. "I don't know why. The whole thing means so much. I wasprivileged."

Articles in this seriesare reporting on workaday objects that resonate in unusual ways in the aftermathof Sept. 11.