(L-R) Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Whitford, Maj. Thomas Sullivan and Sgt. Maj. Vincent Mannion stand in front of the Freedom Tower being constructed on the site of the World Trade Center
on August 20, 2011. All three men were all directly affected by the attack on the World Trade Center. Whitford lost his brother, firefighter Mark Whitford with Engine 23 in the South Tower. Sullivan, a financial planner, was in Tower 2 when the second plane struck. He helped survivors escape from the tower before it collapsed. Mannion assisted in search and rescue efforts in the days following the attacks. All three men are in the Army Reserve and have deployed numerous times since 9/11.
Photo by Timothy Hale |
|
NEW YORK (8/25/2011) – The dawn broke with a clear blue sky over
lower Manhattan on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001.
On the 95th floor
in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center, Thomas Sullivan, a financial
portfolio planner, was looking forward to sharing the news that he
and his wife Deborah were expecting twins.
A short time
later, New York plainclothes police detective Vincent Mannion and
his partner were coming off a midnight shift uptown when they heard
a call of a plane hitting a building downtown. They assumed it was a
small private plane ... it had happened before.
Christopher
Whitford had signed off from his night shift at the New York Police
Department's 1st Precinct on Washington Street. He then reported to
Fort Wadsworth for his military job as an intelligence analyst. He
had just sat down to have a cup of coffee with his first sergeant
when his phone rang. It was his father.
For the next 102
minutes, their lives would become intertwined. Not necessarily at
the same time at that hallowed place now simply called Ground Zero,
but as Army Reserve soldiers when their nation called upon them to
serve. |
“You Gotta Keep Walking”
Sullivan, then an Army Reserve captain, was happy to share the
news about the twins with his boss and co-workers from AXA Advisors
located in the South Tower. He couldn't wait to send out an e-mail
to friends and see the look on his boss' face.
Sullivan said
they were talking and laughing when something outside caught their
attention coming from the north of the city.
“At the speed
and size of the plane that was coming it looked like it was heading
right for us,” he said. “It impacted the north tower as best we
could figure right above us.”
Sullivan and his boss, who
served as the floor deputy fire warden and fire warden respectively,
started clearing the floor.
“My duties were to clear
cubicles, bathrooms, copy rooms. Things were developing very fast.
We were looking at an inferno (in the north tower).”
After
clearing the floor, Sullivan made his way down the stairwell to the
78th floor where there was a row of elevators.
“It was about
8:50 – 9:00 o'clock in morning, so everybody was coming to work and
quite a few people (were now) trying to get out.
“At that
moment I decided to just get back in the stairway and let the
firemen get access to the elevators should they need it because at
this time our building hadn't been hit.”
Then, it happened.
“Somewhere around the 68th floor our building shook
tremendously. The air went off. You could feel some warm air come
down.”
Sullivan said he originally thought a secondary
explosion had occurred in Tower 1 or a piece of Tower 1 had
collapsed and collided with Tower 2. But seconds later, he knew it
was something else, something much worse.
“The stairwell
doors were opening up from other floors and people screaming that a
second plane had hit our tower.”
Around the 48th floor, he
came across three fellow AXA employees, one of which was in
“physical distress sitting in the corner. The only words that I can
recall were ‘you can walk as slow as you want but you gotta keep
walking'. So I locked arms with her and just tried to keep her up.”
Upon arriving at ground level, they attempted to exit the tower
but were stopped short.
“As we opened the door we could see
the plaza was full of debris – burning pieces of the plane or the
building itself. A law enforcement official told us to go back into
the building and down to the basement to get out.” Which is what
they did, eventually heading out on the east side of the towers.
Sullivan said emergency workers tried to keep everyone moving
away from the building, telling them not to stop and look.
“But you had to look,” he said. “It was a very different picture
that I had gotten just an hour and a half before. This beautiful sky
was now filled with smoke. Both buildings (were) engulfed and the
whole plaza and surrounding area looked like a war zone.”
He
tried to get to a friend's office nearby to call his wife and family
but it was locked and had been evacuated. He then decided it was
time to get off the island and the Staten Island ferry seemed like a
safe choice at the time.
But another noise stopped him from
proceeding.
“I heard a roar. It sounded it like another plane
coming. As I looked up I saw the (south) tower coming down. I
started running towards the Staten Island ferry. I figured that I
could get on the ferry and get out of Manhattan and take it from
there.
“It was a slow move down to the ferry. We were just
trying to piece together what was actually happening. There were
hundreds if not thousands in the same position I was. The Brooklyn
Bridge seemed like the logical thing so the group started heading
that way and just as we were coming up the off ramp, the north tower
came down. It was at that moment when I saw that second cloud just
pushing, coming at you like a wall the group just paused. It was
like ‘can we make it'?”
He and the others eventually did make
it across. Sullivan found a phone and his brother came and picked
him up across the river in Brooklyn. But the days immediately
following the attack didn't get much better.
“I remember
drawing the shades to the house (the day of the attack). I remember
my phone messages filled up with people calling ‘we got this e-mail,
we know you're at work - let us know you're okay.' Then the phone
ringing with coworkers, ‘Have you seen my son? Have you seen my
husband?' That went on for days. One of the toughest times is
telling someone, ‘I thought I saw them in the hallway.' Then there
were the memorial services for months.
“We lost 104 from our
company. Many of these same people were at our wedding, kids'
christenings and vice-versa.”
A bronze relief sculpture is displayed on the wall outside of Ladder 10 located at the southwest corner of the World Trade Center. The sculpture honors the 343 New York firefighters who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. Photo by Timothy Hale on August 20, 2011 |
“It was mind boggling”
Mannion, then an Army Reserve
Master Sgt., and his partner really didn't think much of the first
radio call of a plane hitting a building. It was the second, more
urgent call that got their attention.
“We heard on our police
radio to ‘10-2 command' meaning we had to get back. We saw a lot of
emergency vehicles leaving the Heights heading south.”
Mannion said that everyone at the station was putting on their
uniforms as events unfolded on the television.
“We saw both
towers with billowing smoke coming out of them ... we saw the first
tower come down and we knew that our world as we knew it had pretty
much changed.”
Initially, Mannion and many of his fellow
officers were assigned duty to protect the tunnels, subways and
train stations from further attacks around the clock. It would be
three days before he made it to Ground Zero.
“(We) came down
the West Side Highway further up (from Ground Zero) and walked down
as far as we could. It was something out of a surreal horror movie.
It was mind boggling to see the carnage and destruction. We just
kept walking down as far as we could and got to the rubble and
debris,” he said.
Wanting to help, he and his fellow officers
took their place in the ‘bucket brigade' that had formed to start
removing debris and looking for survivors.
“I remember seeing
a female hand, a right hand of a female, just lying in the rubble.
We got a body bag and put the hand in the body bag. That was my
first (experience). From then on for several months later, there
wasn't really, unfortunately, a lot of recovery.”
“I knew he
went in with his men”
After coming off his night shift,
Whitford, then an Army Reserve Staff Sgt. with the 331st Military
Intelligence Company, proceeded to his unit on Staten Island to make
up a missed battle assembly.
“For a month prior to that I was
at Fort Huachuca as an instructor at the imagery analyst course,”
Whitford said. “I had just gotten back on the Sunday prior to 9/11
so I missed my battle assembly for September.”
“I was having
a cup of coffee with my first sergeant when my father called and
said, ‘did you see what happened? A plane hit the World Trade
Center'. So we put the TV on just momentarily before the second
plane hit the south tower. I turned to my first sergeant and said,
‘I need to go'. He understood.”
Whitford made his way down to
the Staten Island ferry where he joined many firefighters and police
officers.
“But I was the only one wearing BDU's. I went to
the front of the boat ... you could see a bird's eye view of the
fireball, the smoke, debris and bodies coming off the building.”
Remarkably, Whitford's cell phone continued to work, while
others on the boat didn't.
“My father had called me and told
me that my brother, Mark Whitford, had responded to the World Trade
Center as well. He was working that evening and was assigned to
Engine 23 in midtown Manhattan. He was the chauffeur (driver) of the
truck that day.”
As the ferry continued across the East River
towards Manhattan, Whitford watched as the scene played out before
him and the other responders on the boat.
“I just looked at
that fireball and it was just clear that the buildings were not
going to be able to sustain that heat for very long,” he said. “So I
turned to one of the fireman standing next to me and I asked him,
‘how long before they collapse?' He never answered me. Just his eyes
and the expression that he made was enough for me to know that he
hadn't considered that. That's when I got real nervous and realized
that this was going to be bad.”
Whitford and the group were
still on the ferry when the south tower collapsed. As they were
pulling into the ferry dock in lower Manhattan, the north tower
collapsed.
“I knew it was going to be devastating,” he said.
Whitford linked up with police officers from emergency services
truck 5. “Being a police officer, I told them, ‘I work at 1st
Precinct and I can navigate around Battery Park and I can get you
guys in there'.”
As they proceeded north along West Side
Highway, Whitford was faced with a stark reality – his brother's
fire truck was sitting in the debris field.
“I took a look
inside and saw that he wasn't in his truck. I knew that he went in
with his men. As the chauffer of the truck he didn't have to go in
but Mark wouldn't have that.”
At that point Whitford broke
away from the group he went in with but said it was difficult to see
because of the dust. “You could only see an arm's length in front of
you the dust was so thick.
“At that point I did link up with
another off-duty officer and the two of us resumed our search just
trying to find somebody alive. The dust was unbelievable. Everything
was just pulverized. The only large chunks you saw were steel beams.
Whitford said that by this time, on scene command had started to
take shape and the leadership pulled everyone back to Stuyvesant
High School to regroup. After a brief respite, they were assigned
search grids and went back to search for survivors.
Again,
remarkably, Whitford received a cell phone call from his brother's
wife wanting to know if he had found him.
“She said, he told
her on the way down to the World Trade Center, ‘If anything happens,
Chris will find me.'
“She said, ‘find him, Chris.'
“I
said, ‘I will'. I promised her I would find him.”
After
breaking off the search in the evening, he went back to Staten
Island and filled in the family on the situation.
He resumed
the search in the morning with fellow 1st Precinct officer.
“On 9-12, throughout the whole day going into the afternoon, we
continually went around the whole site. Every firefighter we saw we
turned them around. ‘Hey have you seen the guys from 23?'
“It
was always the same response - they either said ‘no' or ‘I heard
those guys didn't make it'.”
Amid the dust and debris,
Whitford would finally receive a sign.
“We were actually on
the Church Street side. You still could only see a couple of feet in
front of you at the most.
“A monarch butterfly, a big
butterfly, flew directly into my face. I'll never forget it. I
thought about it for a second and I looked up and it was gone.
“That's when I had a real pit in my heart. That's when I was
convinced I had found my brother.”
He shared the story of the
butterfly later that evening with his family.
Mark Whitford's
remains were recovered from the World Trade Center, April 5, 2002.
It was his 31st birthday. He is one of five Army Reserve soldiers
killed on 9/11.
Christopher Whitford was serving overseas
when they found his brother.
Answering the call
Sullivan, Mannion and Whitford would all answer the Nation's call to
service in the coming months and years.
Whitford was the
first of the trio to land in Kuwait in November 2001. Assigned to C
Company, 297th Military Intelligence Battalion, he served as the
unmanned aerial vehicle team NCOIC. He would serve both in Kuwait
and Afghanistan during his tour.
“A lot of my leaders said,
‘are you sure you want to do this'?” Whitford said.
“For me,
that's one time I will admit I was definitely being selfish and I
needed a little payback. I needed to be involved in the War on
Terrorism and I wasn't taking ‘no' for an answer.
For Mannion,
the truck master for the 773rd Transportation Company, the call came
in November 2002.
“We landed in Kuwait on Thanksgiving night
2002. We were the first transportation company in theater.”
Because the unit was primarily made up of soldiers from the five
boroughs in New York City, the deployment hit close to home for
them.
“We had a lot of civil servants – police officers,
firemen, postal workers, sanitation, bus operators, delivery truck
drivers, transit authority. We all wanted to just get involved and
do something,” he said.
“I used to tell the soldiers as a New
York unit ‘this is your chance – not necessarily payback – but do
your job and do it well.'
“We had our N.Y. patch on our left
shoulder with the Statue of Liberty. I told them, ‘everyone is going
to look at you. You've got to perform. You've got to push. You've
got to drive harder and faster' and I think we did.”
Assigned
to the 49th Quartermaster Group, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd
Infantry Division (Mechanized), the unit provided fuel for the push
from Kuwait into Baghdad.
“We crossed the berm that night
with 58 full tankers of fuel in excess of 270,000 gallons. The 13th
Corps Support Battalion assigned a laundry and bath unit to us so we
had a 92 vehicle, 209 Soldier convoy. I was the senior enlisted man
in charge of all of them,” he said.
But their time in theater
wasn't without a little controversy.
While waiting for route
clearance to go back into Iraq with more fuel, Mannion received a
call on the radio.
It seemed that a senior non-commissioned
officer was a little “irate about the ‘graffiti' on his Soldiers'
helmets.
“He was leaning into me pretty hard.” ‘I want
counseling statements done', he told me. “But I had it on mine too.
“I said, ‘with all due respect, this is a New York unit and
these kids that have this so-called graffiti on their helmet ... it
motivated these soldiers, an inner city unit from the five boroughs,
and they knew a lot of people who died on that day'.
“He
said, ‘well O.K., I'm going to go and leave you to it. I hear you
guys are hauling a lot of fuel'.”
Mannion replied, “I
guarantee we'll haul a lot of fuel for you but we'd like to keep our
Kevlar's the way they are.
“So he left and we waited for our
chance to go back into the box,” he said with a grin.
Sullivan was the last of these men to make it overseas. He was
initially mobilized in January 2003 but the unit never deployed.
But, as coincidence would have it, he teamed up with Mannion in
2005-2006 as the command team with the 773rd.
“I believe we
complimented each other,” Mannion said. “9/11, family backgrounds,
Irish connections.”
In February 2005, the unit was sent to a
large logistical hub known as Q-West where the unit pushed fuel and
other supplies throughout Iraq.
Sullivan said the unit was
again made up from Soldiers from the five boroughs as it had been in
2002-2003.
“It was pretty well put together,” Sullivan said.
“They were with the initial move in so they had the experience.”
For him, he felt it was his duty to go and serve.
“Being
(from) a New York unit and having that connection to Sept, 11, I had
only hoped that my involvement, my service would somehow bring honor
to all those that we had lost,” Sullivan said.
10 years later
All three men admitted the events of 9/11 have changed them,
although they came to that realization in different times.
For Sullivan, he said it has made him, “a little more serious. I
think it took some of the joy out of my life. You have a life to
live and family to take care of. You have to find happiness
somewhere else.”
For Mannion, 9/11 changed how he looks at
his military job, his civilian law enforcement job and with his
interactions with his family.
“The vigilance level is never
going to go where it was prior to 9/11,” he said. “It shouldn't, it
better not, it can't and it won't.
“As good as the bad guys
think they are, we're just a lot better. And we're going to maintain
that.”
For Whitford, time cannot erase the memory of his
brother who was lost that day. He carries a photo of Mark in his
firefighter gear in his wallet next to his police badge.
“I've made it my mission to make sure that something like this never
happens again – that we never ever get caught off guard again,”
Whitford said.
“I made it my mission that there was a reason
that Mark didn't survive that day and there was a reason I did
survive.”
As far as the 9/11 Memorial that is still under
construction, Sullivan summed it up best when he described it.
“Everyone wanted to make sure it was done respectfully,” he
said.
“We're America and we bounce back fast. We do things
fast and do things big, especially here in New York.
“I look
forward to the day when I can come back and pay my respects to a
place that honors and remembers all those we lost that day. We're
moving there.”
By Timothy Hale, U.S. Army Reserve Command
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2011
Comment on this article |
