Stories of survival & loss at Ground Zero

0:00This week on Consider This, the researcher who just resigned from anthropic, why he believes AI is a threat to humanity. Very soon, these things are going to be so capable that if they decide to go rogue, it's not going to be good. Plus, his view of what guardrails could look like this week on Consider This from NPR. This is Fresh Air, I'm David Beane Cooley. Today, we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, attacks that took place on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and on United Airlines Flight 93, which was heroically diverted by passengers and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. For anyone who is old enough to remember the events of that day, they also remember what they were doing when they heard about it, or saw the coverage live on TV. Today's show will focus on what happened at the World Trade Center and the interviews we recorded in the aftermath.

1:00First, we hear from former Deputy Chief Jay Jonas of the New York City Fire Department. He was a captain on 9-11 and led his men up the stairs of the North Tower. After the South Tower collapsed, they headed back down the stairs, presuming the North Tower could fall as well. On the way down, they found Josephine Harris, who could barely walk. If you knew you were risking your men's lives and your own life to rescue Josephine Harris and that the odds were you wouldn't save her either because she was so slow and the building was on the verge of collapse and you were on the 27th floor? Yeah, we were on the 27th floor when the South Tower collapsed. So our big indicator for us to make our escape. So how did you decide to stop for her knowing it meant you would all be leaving very slowly, probably too slow to get out? Well, it was a lot easier decision for the firefighters under my command because they

2:02didn't really know that the South Tower collapsed. And there was another captain on the 27th floor, Billy Burke, the captain of engine 21. And I told Billy, you go check the South windows. I'll check the North windows when we'll come back here. And I kind of felt that a piece of our building had just collapsed. That's why our building moves so violently. And he just looked at me and he said the South Tower collapsed. And I didn't realize it, but my firefighters under my command didn't hear the conversation with Captain Burke and myself. And I just looked at them and said, okay, if that one can go, this one can go. It's time for us to get out of here. And they looked at me a little quizzically because they just climbed 27 floors with a hundred pounds of gear on their backs. And once we made it to the 20th floor, we saw Josephine Howard standing in the doorway and she was crying. And my guy stopped in one of my firefighters.

3:04Tommy Falko turned around to me and said, hey, Cap, what do you want to do with her? And it was, how can I put this? Every fiber in my being was screaming at me to get out of this building. Every second that we waste was one second closer to us not getting out of the building. But that's not what firemen do. We were there to save people's lives. And that culture, that firefighter culture overtook whatever personal need I felt to get out of the building and it's okay, let's stop and we'll save this woman. And it was the right thing to do. There was a lot of other firemen who were in that building who were doing similar things to what we were doing. It wasn't until we got to the fourth floor was when she couldn't even support her own weight anymore. She fell to the floor and she started yelling at us to leave her.

4:07That's when I decided to break into the fourth floor to look for a sturdy chair that we could have put her on and we can pick her up with her in the chair and we could run with her. Fourth floor was not an office floor so it didn't have any chairs. So I was way on the other side of the building when I just thought to myself, well we're just going to have to drag her down the stairs and I started running back to the stairway. At what point did the building start collapsing? Just before I made it back to the stairway on the fourth floor that's when the collapse of the North Tower started. Can you explain how in the world you managed to survive when the North Tower collapsed on top of you, you were on the fourth floor? The only thing that I can offer as an explanation is that the two buildings collapse in two different ways. The South Tower collapsed differently than the North Tower. The South Tower collapsed, it kind of leaned over first and then it collapsed because the

5:09way the plane hated it. The North Tower collapsed the way it was designed to. People think that they could fall over like a tree. Well that's not true. They're not designed to be loaded like that. It actually collapsed and was called a pancake fashion and the building actually just kind of peels away similar to the way you would peel a banana and we were the banana. We were in the geographic center of that building and everything just kind of fell outward and down. If you were a little higher than I was, the stairway was intact up to the fifth floor. So you would survive if you were up on the fifth floor but if you were on the ground floor you wouldn't survive because the weight of everything coming down would have crushed you. You kind of had to be where we were. So much between the first floor and the fifth floor.

6:13Could you just describe what you experienced as the tower collapsed on top of you? Well it started out the floor started to move and since the collapse started about 1,300 feet away, the sound was off in the distance and it got louder as it got closer and you could hear the floors hitting the other floors and every time that happened it created tremendous vibration in the stairway and you could also hear the sound of twisting steel all around you and it got louder as the collapse got closer and the vibration got more violent as got closer as well. Were you shocked that you were alive after the collapse was over? Yeah, my first thought initially was that I didn't get my men out. That was my first thought that I had failed them and I just covered up as best I could and

7:19hope for the best and then the collapse stopped and we were coughing and gating, trying to get pieces of debris out of our mouths, our noses, our eyes. My first thought was alright and I wonder who else is still alive and I gave out a rockel and all my people were accounted for and I didn't know Josephine's name at the time. I said what about the woman? I said the woman is still here, she's alive. So our initial thought was okay, we're alive. We could just dust ourselves off and continue down the stairway and the ward came quickly from down below that we couldn't get out, from down below. So that's when we started our survival mode I guess. How did you get out? Eventually like about four hours later the smoke and dust cleared enough outside where

8:20all of a sudden some sunshine started to hit the stairway where we were and all of a sudden I could see a pencil with beam of sunlight hit the stairway and I looked up and I see a little sliver of blue sky and we were in the dark most of the time. So all of a sudden I realized that there used to be 106 floors over our heads and now I see blue sky I said well we're on top of the World Trade Center. Oh wow you mean you're saying like but at this point the fourth floor was like the top floor because everything had to collapse beneath you. Yeah and it was at that point that we were able to with the additional light that we were able to figure out that we could reach a hole in the rubble and work our way out. So you climbed out through what had become the top of the World Trade Center? Yeah you know the fourth floor at this point because the rubble pile at that point was about

9:24four stories tall about 40 feet high. So when you escaped the collapsed tower of the World Trade Center did you allow yourself to experience the elation of surviving or was your heart too heavy knowing about how many people had not gotten out of those towers? Well the you're my first thought once I exited the rubble and I actually saw what it looked like outside we really didn't know what it looked like outside you know just we're trying to get a visual from talking to different people over the radio but once I saw the complete devastation my first thought was oh my god I can't believe that I survived this. You want to be happy but you know you can. You know later in the day when I was being treated at an ambulance one of my guys was talking to me Tommy Falco was talking to me he says hey Cap how many guys do you think we lost

10:25here today? And I stopped and I thought about and I looked around I saw Tommy I don't know maybe a couple hundred and then I caught myself when I said that I said what the heck did I just say? So prior to that day our biggest life loss was in 1966 we lost 12 firemen in the 23rd Street collapse and I just said the words a couple hundred it turns out I was I was off by almost double you know so it was it was hard to feel any sense of joy or accomplishment or anything like that but looking out and knowing how much pain and grief that's going to be going on out there. Soon after I spoke to Tommy Falco one of the there was there was a guy who was one of my contemporaries Jimmy Richie's came up to me and he said James I heard you radio transmissions

11:29congratulations says that was unbelievable it was one of the most dramatic things I've ever heard I said thanks it's good to be out and then he said by the way did you see engine for today? I thought to myself Jesus what an odd question and I thought about it and I said no I can honestly say it in C engine for today and he said oh I said my son was working in engine for today and it hit me like a ton of bricks that this this is going to be monumental the amount of grief and suffering you know you had so many father and son and brothers within the fire department that this is going to be monumental in in scope as far as grief and bereavement. You say in the book that you don't like it when people say to you you survived because God was with you why don't you like it when people say that? Well first of all it's a little pompous to say that you were a miracle you know what

12:32second of all but by by them saying that God was with me that day you're also kind of saying that God was not with them that day and that's certainly not the case you know I think of the one radio transmission between Chief Pete Hayden and Captain Patty Brown. Chief Hayden is talking to him as we're coming down the stairs and I'm hearing this over the radio. Pete Hayden is calling Captain Patty Brown on the radio which is command post to ladder three get out of the building get out of the building and Patty Brown gets on the radio and he says I refuse the order which is unbelievable you know that somebody would say that says I refuse the order I'm up here on the 44th floor and I got too many burned people with me I'm not leaving them you know it still sends shivers up my spine hearing that and I take it he did not survive.

13:34No Patty Brown all the men from ladder three and all the people that they were treating all died in the collapse. Former deputy chief J Jonas of the NYFT recorded in 2011 he retired in 2022 after nearly 43 years of service. Ken Haskell is a retired New York City firefighter his father was a firefighter and so were his two brothers Tommy and Timmy his brothers died in the towers on September 11th that morning Haskell was off duty but when he heard the news of the attacks he headed to ground zero. When you got to ground zero right after the towers collapsed you first started trying to put out the fire in building seven and then you had an instinct that it was going to fall so you you walked away and it did it did fall and then eventually what you took on as your work was looking for the remains of people who had been trapped in the towers.

14:37When you started doing that job did you think that your brothers might be in those remains? Well obviously anybody who was there on the scene you know had the realization that there was going to be tremendous amount of casualties one thing that was striking for me I'm sure a lot of everybody else felt the same thing that there really wasn't many remains left around the site you know that the whole site had been reduced to basically anything that wasn't metal was reduced to ash you know a complete completely pulverized you know which really a true testament to the energy that was created when when those buildings fell you know so the likelihood of anybody surviving was minimal and that was a realization that set in very quickly for me and you're always an optimist when you're working situations like that you're always hopeful that you're going to be able to help somebody you know perhaps save a life so you're still you're going to continue to work regardless

15:41of of the circumstances that are in front of you and unfortunately on September 11th they just that just wasn't too many survivors and that was very apparent almost immediately for anybody that that was working the site. One of your brothers Tommy was never found but the other Timmy his body was found pretty intact. How do you think his body managed to remain intact? What kind of scenario did you create in your mind to explain that? Well you know when Timmy was found that was actually underneath the South Tower because I would actually alternate my time parts of the day once between the North Tower once between the South Tower because I knew one of my brothers were in each now the fact that we were able to recover him was because Timmy had gotten so high in a North Tower from my understanding was in the upper 30s close to 40th floor my brother Tommy having put the pieces of the puzzle together by asking questions about guys who were in the

16:44vicinity of him and his company I was able to find out that they were located near the lobby area of the South Tower at the time when it collapsed so really there was no expectation of any kind of recovery for him or anybody else that was not portion of the building because just just rating heat from all the fires and the compression and you know the energy that was created when the building's collapsed just pulverized everything at that point. Did it make a difference in how you and your brothers families and your mother grieved for them the difference between having an attack body and having no remains at all. Well you know you even throughout Timmy's wake and his funeral you know the conversation. Timmy's the brother who was whose body was in the front. Timmy was found in a North Tower we recovered him and we were able to have a funeral but both throughout his wake and the funeral itself that there was a hopeful hopeful talk amongst the

17:44families. Whether we were going to recover Tommy and I we still held on to that possibility that that perhaps we someday would you know as a week some months went by it became obvious that that wasn't going to happen so in November of 01 we decided to go ahead and have a memorial because we just felt that it was a appropriate thing to do and rather than have a funeral we had a memorial where a casket was actually there and everybody was asked to bring something in relation to Tommy or write a note or put a picture in or something that meant it was meaningful to them and which also meant something to my brother and subsequently we buried that casket next to Timmy. Was there ever a part of you that thought you can't still be a fired fighter because two of your brothers had died at the World Trade Center on 9-11. You were the only remaining son your mother had.

18:49You'd seen one of your brothers wives become a widow. Did you ever think like I really can't go back and do that because I have to I have to make sure I don't die in the fire for the sake of my family. Yeah I thought I had thought about that I'm not so much concerned for myself but for my wife and for my mother obviously but it was quite the opposite for me I felt more of a responsibility to give to the department after my brothers were killed I mean and I felt the responsibility to stay on because we lost so many guys and I knew we'd be hiring a lot of young guys and there'd be there would be you know a need for seeing you guys to help these guys to show them the way you know I actually have to my brothers killed actually transferred to a busier firehouse and the one I'd been working out at the time so not to say that you know I enjoy taking chances or I'm hooked on the danger I mean I do love the job still like I'm most happy when we're busy and when we're doing

19:50things but it really came from a sense of respect for the job and almost a sense of obligation and I felt personally to give back in the spirit the way you know in the way that I mean Timmy Sir than the other 341 firefighters that we lost within the FDNY I mean those guys are the true symbolism of heroism and commitment and I have a tremendous amount of respect you know for the legacy that they left. Well Ken Haskell I want to thank you for the work that you do. Thank you nice talk to you Terry and take care. Firefighter Can Haskell recorded in 2011 he is now retired. He is president of the Seaford High School 9-11 Memorial Committee. The High School lost five alumni on September 11th including Haskell's brothers firefighters Tommy and Timmy. They are holding a memorial service today. After a break we continue our September 11th commemoration. I'm David Beancoulli and this is Fresh Air.

20:54This week on the Ampere Politics Podcast the Republican midterm convention was basically a two-night mega-informer show. He has told voters I want you to pretend please that I'm on the ballot just come out and vote and show up for it. We break down President Trump's midterm strategy including that $5,000 promise this week on the Ampere Politics Podcast. How do products end up on big box shelves? Well we have planet money, pitch the planet money for it again. I'm trying not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into it. It's really big. Is it helpful if I remind you how big it is? It's sort of the whole thing. We go inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shelves. Listen to planet money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey it's me Peter Seggle host of Weight Weight Don't Tell Me. It's leaf peeping season so why not peep our weekly news quiz while you're at it. We got comedians, celebrities and games to help laugh about the week's news and you can listen while you're

21:57spicing your pumpkins, whatever people do. Listen every week to Weight Weight Don't Tell Me in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Midi Health. Most women never get real answers about their hormonal health. Midi is changing that with virtual care covered by most major insurances. Understand your hormones. Visit joinmitty.com to book your first visit today. This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David B. Inkouli. Today we are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. Dennis Smith was a writer and retired New York City firefighter who on September 11th walked to his neighborhood firehouse in Manhattan and went with the firefighters to ground zero. He arrived just after the second tower collapsed and helped with search and rescue efforts. He wrote the book Report from Ground Zero. Let me ask you a kind of general question about

23:00skyscrapers and granted there's never been a catastrophe in a skyscraper like there was in September 11th. But when firemen get to a skyscraper fire, what are some of the things they have to keep in mind that makes skyscraper fires different than any other kind of fire? Well, the most fundamental consideration is how many floors of stairs do you have to walk up because you're carrying equipment and that always is a challenge just walking up the stairs. So that's the first consideration. The other is the water supply and you have a standpipe system at the bottom of the building which you feed into and you put the water in the standpipe system. And your fundamental consideration at any fire, whether it's in high rise or not, is the life issue, life safety, who is trapped, who is above the fire, how do you get them out? Have they been trained, have they had fire drills? These are all the kinds of considerations that are made.

24:03The, I guess, Terry, it'd be intelligent to explain to you the architecture of the building to help you understand that this building was built if you think of a straw and then square the straw some way and then that each floor was attached to the sides of the inside of this straw and through the middle of the building itself was a shaft and in this shaft were the elevators and the stairwells, the three emergency stairwells and that gave the architect a huge amount of space to use, you know, usable or rentable or sellable space and that is of course the mission of an architect is to try to build a building with as much, you know, economic usable space as possible and in a building the size normally you would get 50% of the floor space usable and here with the design that Yamasaki made when he designed this building he got he got 75% usable space and the 25% was

25:10used in the middle of the building with the elevators and the stairwells. How did that affect how the fire spread? It affected it greatly because when the plane came in it went through this middle column of the elevators and stairwells and so that immediately cut off the stairwells for for any kind of escape either down or up I mean these people couldn't get to the roof either because the fire was coming right up the the stairway shafts now and and so that was a floor in the design that they didn't recognize was floored when they originally designed it in my opinion and and it also enabled because there was no structural steel supporting this anywhere except for around this this middle column it allowed those floors to pancake so that when the first floor fell to the floor beneath it the floor beneath it could not sustain the weight of one falling floor

26:13with the dynamic and you know a weight of the fall and then that of course led to a pyramid collapse one after another after another. What are you taught about when you're training to be a fireman about when you go into a burning building and risk your life and when it's just too risky and you don't you know you just don't go knowing that you're going to be killed. Well I think that you you know what you're taught initially is that you have to trust the experience of the person next to you and your lieutenant or your captain and if that person is bringing you into an environment that's you know by definition it's pretty hostile if he's bringing you in there you your chances of being safe are pretty good because his experience would you know would or his or her experience would have brought you there so you have to trust your your your leaders because they're the only

27:14people who've been inside enough burning buildings to get a sense of what will happen. There are the academic understandings but sometimes they don't serve you so well for instance the fact that steel stretches at 1200 degrees in her in temperature is an academic understanding of the physics of fire but it didn't help anybody knowing that in the world trade center because of the way this plane came in at playing that normally travels at 350 miles to 400 miles an hour comes in at 550 miles an hour it is loaded with fuel it has 24,000 gallons of fuel it it it creates a comprehensive fire load on the floor it it heats the steel up comprehensively at every edge of the building and when the steel buckles it the steel all stretches sort of simultaneously and it creates this pancake effect when it finally collapses no one ever thought that there's no precedent for it and now we know we didn't know that before. Writer and former New York City firefighter Dennis Smith

28:21recorded in 2002 he died in January at the age of 81 he wrote the book report from ground zero he made his writing debut in 1972 with the book report from engine company 82 which became a best seller our commemoration of September 11th continues after a break coming up poet Seiko Sundiata this is fresh air looking for love one New York event promises to find you your perfect match using volunteer though not affiliated with the actual software company they could sue me I could lose everything but it would all be worth it is at least two people here have a spark so no pressure the facts myths and dark jokes surrounding Palantir listen a plan of money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey it's Mike Danforth executive producer of Weight Weight Don't Tell Me here's a great way to get the perks of being an NPR producer without doing any of the work join NPR plus with NPR plus you get extended interviews inside looks at your favorite

29:23shows and more all while supporting NPR and never having to pull an all-nighter or if you work on one of the new shows and all morninger sign up at plus dot NPR dot org. This message comes from Data IQ agent management most enterprises can't count their AI agents let alone manage them data IQ agent management lets you do both from a single view visit data IQ dot com to learn more this is fresh air a year after the September 11th attacks we invited New York poet Seku Sundyata to talk about life in the aftermath and to share one of his poems he read an excerpt of a poem not yet titled about September 11th he began with his description of ground zero the creator recalled a lonely planet a parkmark moon of ridges and man-size valleys earth movies dump trucks and cranes a priest kneels in the powdered ash the rescue stops for the holy

30:24ghosts and the angel of death to cross paths someone calls for the jaws of life earth water fire air the sky ellington blue pours over the harbor black smoke curling into his soft water colors mixing those burning isms into a mute and inscrutable beauty I stood citizen to citizen three rows deep a man flipped through the daily news matching pictures to the scene a couple in a doorway argued hip hop versus R&B in times like these they look up from their ideologies to agree mercury must be retrograde a woman to my right worried a flag the size of a hankerchief the kind you get at the fairgrounds and yes little emit till came to me a face that long ago cured my faith in that school boy lyric so that I could no longer sing with the voice of praise as if it was my own oh beautiful

31:25four spacious sky I walked the avenue of the Americas passed the photocopy gallery of the missing and the dead mounted on buildings in store windows and lobbies posted on police barricades along the streets I searched for familiar faces and found a few but the names were wrong yet I knew them all by their fictions the light-hearted Capricorn from seven hills playing with her cat on a crate and barrel sofa the Hindu newlywed who immigrated from India to the golden city nester the brother of Milagros menacing the lens ringside at the gym a mistrinodad look alike caught in a colipso on eastern parkway an offensive man and one of his moves red black and blue at the root I could see my own anonymous face in that show cut unpasted above a word or two about my love of swimming in the ocean and my taste for sentimental balance where what's missing and gone is half

32:30the song I drowned in a flood of burning jet fuel down was looking like up when I jumped with my brains on fire I ran from the falling towel and wandered for days I heard a Montuno Iwa one go calling for miles away I followed horse trails through secret pathways E pluribus Unum I went home and wrote history to the bone I have been written Seikhu Sundiada recorded in 2002 his poem was published in the journal Heart Human Equity Through Art he died in 2007 in September of 2001 shortly after the September 11th attacks we asked former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky to read a couple poems he turned to for comfort Robert would you read another poem for us um this is a very dark poem uh and it's one of the

33:31mysteries of poetry I guess maybe of art that there's a kind of a comfort in having absolute loss and things that are completely dire articulated uh this is Edwin Arnagin Robinson's poem The House on the Hill the House on the Hill they're all gone away the house is shut and still there's nothing more to say through broken walls and gray the winds slow bleak and shrill they are all gone away nor is there one today to speak them good or ill there is nothing more to say why is it then we stray around that shrunken sill they are all gone away and our poor fancy play for them is wasted skill there's nothing more to say there is ruin and decay in the house

34:35on the Hill they're all gone away there is nothing more to say how did you first find that poem it's probably known for many years I'm my wife once wrote a paper about when she was in college and um my friend the section writer Leslie Epstein sent me and some other friends a group of things he had read that seemed relevant to him and that reminded me of this Robinson poem which is very beautiful though very bleak poem have you been feeling more like writing poetry or just reading it I have not felt like writing I have written prose sort of to myself like many of this I was reassured by work I wrote a book review while I was stranded in my hotel in Los Angeles I wrote a review of Alan Dougan's wonderful new book of new and new and complete poems

35:45I would love to be the kind of person who responds immediately with eloquence or penetration I'm not I tend to write about things after they've happened by quite a long time and I tend to sneak up on things rather than approach them directly so it would be deeply uncharacteristic for me to take the emotion some feeling and articulate them in some ways I suppose I'm an easy talker and glib in other ways I'm not comfortable with the first or second or third thought about a thing I'm not comfortable with the idea that poetry is therapeutic I think it's something it's comforts are more oblique and complicated like that you know poetry is often a lot more like the moon than like the sun it's kind of reflective and partial and deeply idiosyncratic you know each person is different and I think poetry being a vocal art in each person's voice

36:48emphasizes that it's not like a brass band nothing against brass bands I thought when the brass band at Buckingham Palace the cold stream guards when they play the star-spangled banner is quite moved by it but that and the immediacy of television are different and have a different role than the role of poetry former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky recorded in 2001 shortly after the 9-11 attacks the poem he read was The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson Pinsky has a new book which combines his first two poetry collections coming up saxophonist Sonny Rowlands recalls leaving his apartment in Lower Manhattan after the attacks this is fresh air on the next through line from NPR let's listen to Josh Reddick's new walk-up song whether you love it or you hate it walk-up music has become a huge part of major league baseball the need to secure

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38:48this is fresh air the great tenor saxophone of sunny rollins lived six blocks away from the world trade center in lower Manhattan and saw the second tower fall four days later he was scheduled to perform at a concert in Boston a commitment he honored and recorded the subsequent live album became known as the 9-11 concert sunny rollins died in May at the age of 95 he spoke with Terry in 2005 we couldn't leave the area no one could really leave the area and there are a lot of emergency vehicles of course there so I went back up to my apartment and called up my wife and at that point the phones were still working lights were still on and everything and I was even stupid enough to take out my horn and start playing you know practicing sort of you know

39:50what was stupid about that well we're stupid because there was so much toxic fumes and everything and I did feel a certain stomach ache so and that actually was a wise job but I still hadn't brought the two things together you know and I imagine when you're playing you take a really big breath sure sure no I know your building was evacuated by the National Guard at what point did the National Guard come by and tell you you had to get out well the next day now that later that day the lights went the phone went all of the things like that went and so the National Guard at that time came by to the people that were still left in my building and came by to our apartment and said okay everybody's got got to go so I picked up my horn and I got a my brief

40:58case and and we made our way down the still well in the dark to the street you know to your own the 39th floor right and I said that if that was sort of rough and I think there was two or three other people was another kid it was the son of a woman on the floor and another woman so we were the only people I think left in the building did you ever return to your apartment I did return to my apartment on a regular basis but I never slept in my apartment again why not but I would go down there to get things out you know and I had certain things that I felt I would like to try to salvage but most of the things in there I had to or eventually throw away get get taken away you know I had left my piano there which were very sentimental to

42:03me a lot of the guys played on that monkey you should play on it all people that came by to my house and I lost a lot of clothes that I had there I lost a lot of books what did you leave your piano behind well because I was so afraid of the fact that toxic material might have might might have gotten into the mechanism of the piano and I know that some people in that trybacker area had found these problems when they examined the air ducts and everything in the buildings so I was afraid that I would be handling something of that so I do you know what happened to your piano no I don't well after you were evacuated from your building on September 12th you drove to Boston

43:09where you're scheduled to play on September 15th so many events were cancelled in the days after September 11th did you speak to the producers at that event and have a long talk about whether you should go on with the show or not well I spoke to my wife Lucille and I was all for not doing the show because I was really very unsteady on my feet and did that have to do in part with having walk down 39 feet stairs right right it did and also you know I was just really shook up so I wanted to cancel it but you know my wife Lucille and Lucille was a person that never wanted to violate a contract in any way and she also may have had a feeling that it would be important to do it do a concert at

44:13that particular time you know so anyway she convinced me to to play the concert I thought I'd play another track from your new CD without a song the 9-11 concert and this is a nightingale sang in Barclay Square it's a it's a beautiful version of it and how how how did you first hear this song well you know a nightingale sang in Barclay Square I guess I heard it during the the 40s when I used to see all the movies that came in town every week and it's funny that nightingale sang in Barclay Square may have had some connection to World War Two and the scene when I was evacuated and I walked down those steps that day when I came down today as it was very

45:19reminiscent of those World War Two pictures when there was a blitz of London with all of the emergency vehicles and you know it was a fan and the smoke and the fumes I mean it was really a it was really something that of course I don't want to go through it again but it was something that I guess I'm fortunate that I got out and but I guess it's something I'm trying to say that it's stored someplace in my mind so I guess since I'm still alive I might have a way to turn it into some kind of a positive experience well here's Sonny Rollins from his new CD without a song the 9-11 concert

48:19so that's tenor saxophone as Sonny Rollins the legendary tenor saxophone has died in May at age 95 his live album commemorating the tragic event that occurred 25 years ago today is titled without a song the 9-11 concert and that concludes our own commemoration on fresh air on Monday show former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick he grew up the only black kid in a white family in a town that was almost entirely white and learned early to keep the racism he endured to himself then in 2016 he took a knee during the national anthem and started a movement his new memoir is the perilous fight I hope you can join us

49:27to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews follow us on Instagram at npr fresh air you can subscribe to our youtube channel at youtube.com slash this is fresh air we're rolling out new videos with in studio guests behind the scene shorts and iconic interviews from the archive fresh air's executive producer is sam brigar Roberta sureok and Danny Miller produced today's show our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support from Julian Hertzfeld and Adam Stanishevsky our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by philous mayors and Marie Baldenotto Lauren Crenzel Theresa Madden Monique Nazareth Thaia Challener Susan Yacundi Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper our social media video producer is Hillary Kissinger for Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley I'm David being coolie

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