SPECIAL FEATURE

REMEMBERING 9/11

John Lazzeri shares his experiences from that fateful day and how he has moved forward from it

John Lazzeri, a Downers Grove resident since 2013, at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was living on the Lower

East Side of New York City and working at the American Stock Exchange located just a few buildings away from the World Trade Center. A few years prior, Lazzeri, an aspiring actor, had moved to Manhattan, and - after burning through the money he had earned bartending while working as an extra in and on production of television and film projects – had a friend connect him with a trading clerkship that, he said, “was a job you couldn’t say no to.”

He was grateful to have landed that initial trading job, and by 2001, then 29-year-old Lazzeri had ascended to a more advanced position as a market maker on the American Stock Exchange trading floor. However, the morning of 9/11, he was running 10 minutes behind schedule (typical for him at the time) and was admiring the extended summer weather, wishing he did not have to go to work.

“It was a Tuesday – an absolutely beautiful day,” Lazzeri recalled. “I was viscerally moved at what a beautiful day it was.”

Despite wanting to take full advantage of the beautiful day, Lazzeri left home to catch the train to his office. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs of his apartment building, he noticed a few men at the corner of his block looking up and pointing. When he reached the end of the block himself, he saw what the men had been pointing at: one of the World Trade Center towers on fire and with a “gaping hole in it,” Lazzeri explained.

There were no smartphones at the time, so Lazzeri and the others nearby could only speculate about what was going on. Lazzeri figured something like a burst gas pipe had caused the fire and hoped it would be contained quickly. His primary concern was the two young clerks who he knew would have been in his office early, “running sheets before the traders arrived,” he said.

He tried to call and alert them about the fire, but to no avail. He could not get a cellular signal to get any calls through, so he boarded the J train and headed to the Financial District.

As he emerged from the subway, Lazzeri heard a massive explosion. He vividly recalled the dark sky and “singed papers flying everywhere, like confetti when the Yankees win the World Series.”

Still focused on getting the clerks off the premises but continually unable to get through to them by phone, he said he instinctively walked toward the American Stock Exchange building, passing Trinity Church, “this beautiful building where Alexander Hamilton – who I think literally invented the Exchange that I worked on – is buried.”

It was as he started walking that he heard someone say an airplane hit the World Trade Center, but “nobody on the ground seemed to know what was going on yet,” Lazzeri said. “It isn’t unprecedented for a small plane [to accidentally] hit a skyscraper.”

Still uncertain about the circumstances surrounding him and intent on ensuring the clerks were safe, Lazzeri continued toward the wreckage. He was not alone, though.

“It was like being on the highway and there’s those rubbernecking delays,” he explained. “You’d think the flow would be going away from [the burning and crumbling buildings], but it felt like every one of the million people [near the scene] were going toward it. It was a very weird, apocalyptic thing to see.”

Lazzeri made his way through the crowd, but when he reached the American Stock Exchange, it was locked. He contemplated how to get into the building. He worried about his girlfriend at the time who was attending law school a couple blocks away. He tried to get in touch with her and with his parents in North Carolina, thinking they might have information from news sources about what was transpiring around him, but he was still unable to get any cellular service.

“I’m not panicking, but I’m just kind of standing there listlessly – in shock,” Lazzeri recounted about finding himself amidst a shower of burning papers, falling pieces of twisted steel, and “the occasional really chunky piece of building.”

However, when a phone call rang

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through on his cell phone from his friend, Josh, in Raleigh, NC checking to see if he was safe and briefly explaining about the terrorist attacks, Lazzeri said he quickly snapped out of shock and into action. He asked Josh to contact his parents to let them know he was ok, then hung up and attempted to make a beeline toward his girlfriend’s school.

Lazzeri just needed to travel two blocks to reach his girlfriend, but there were mobs of people held back by a line of first responders. He ducked behind a cordon the fire department or police had put out, and while behind it, he became increasingly aware of the severity of the crisis. “I realized that the sound I was hearing – like a loud, wet balloon popping – was bodies hitting the ground. That will shock you dumbfounded,” he said somberly.

Still in shock, but with his survival instincts fully activated, he explained to a firefighter fortifying the area that he had to get uptown. Lazzeri said that firefighter let him through and “saved my life that day. It was because they let me behind that line that I could run uptown,” away from the burning buildings and consequent carnage.

He made his way through the throng of people, zigging and zagging his way to his girlfriend’s law school, on a mission to get her away from the danger but with no clue of her exact whereabouts. A security guard at the law school refused to let Lazzeri into the building, but just as he was preparing to push past the guard, his girlfriend ran by. Lazzeri grabbed her and said, “Let’s go!”

As they ran, Lazzeri heard a sound 20 times worse than the “horrible metal on metal sound made by the brakes on the subway,” he said. That torturous sound was the first World Trade Center tower collapsing.

Even more excruciating than the sound of the building falling, however, was the realization that “all those people I had just run past were now underneath that building, Lazzeri said. “People I was just five feet away from, I watched them get hit by the rubble.”

Yet in spite of the sobering reality of the situation around him, Lazzeri continued to run, escaping the “dust, gravel, and masonry that just tsunamied down the street I just ran down,” he said.

Driven by adrenaline, Lazzeri – along with his girlfriend – got back to his apartment just in time to turn on the television and witness the second twin tower fall.

“I left my apartment before the second [World Trade Center building] got hit and was home before the second one fell,” Lazzeri said of his unsolicited “front row seat” of the horrific events of 9/11.

Lazzeri lived in “Zone 1 of impact,” and one by one, various friends who were also fleeing the destruction made their way to Lazzeri’s apartment. By noon that day, there were around 10 or 12 of them coming and going, and they spent days together navigating the aftermath of the events of Sept. 11.

For Lazzeri, there were many questions. What if he had gotten to the office earlier that morning? What if he had taken one train later and been trapped underground for hours? What would have happened if he had “wasted any more time in the law school building?” Why did he survive, when so many of the people he had run past - who “had all the survival skills I have” – died that day?

More than the questions, ensuing

trauma, and persistent survivor’s guilt Lazzeri experienced in the wake of 9/11, however, he walked away with endless gratitude.

He is eternally grateful for the wisdom he garnered from his dad (about protecting loved ones), from his football coach (about not acting too quickly), and from his karate teacher (to keep going, even when he had the wind knocked out of him). The voices of all of these influential men in Lazzeri’s life flooded his mind as he fought his way through New York City on 9/11.

He is forever grateful to the friend whose phone call on 9/11 broke through his shock and allowed him to evacuate to safety.

“I have this tendency to say ‘I’m just lucky to be here,’” Lazzeri said. “I know people who had much worse days than I did. I can’t qualify that enough.”

Lazzeri had friends who died on Sept. 11, but he acknowledged, “I didn’t lose family members. I didn’t lose my father.”

While losses from 9/11 abounded, Lazzeri worked hard to focus on what he gained rather than what was sacrificed. “Having survived 9/11 has given me the strength and resiliency to get through other stuff – including the last year – too,” he said.

He also appreciates that he - the selfdescribed “kid who woke up on Sept. 11, 2001 very arrogant – not a bad guy, just living a vain and self-centered existence” - is now a “man humbled by the world.”

He cherishes knowing “100 percent about myself how I’d react if the sky was falling – what I’d do for the people I love.”

Today, at the center of this circle of loved ones are Lazzeri’s children - Alexa (almost 12) and Jake (almost 10) – and wife, Maryann, who he met a couple years post-9/11 and to whom he attributes his healing and finding “true happiness.”

Years before building his family, however, Lazzeri was counting down the days until he could finally return to work at the American Stock Exchange, committed to showing that the terrorists had not won. Rather, New York City was stronger than ever, as was the nation.

His building had been closed for about three months post-Sept. 11, and on the first day back to work after the office reopened, Lazzeri and some coworkers took the elevator upstairs to get a view of the recovery progress at the site of the World Trade Center. It was then that he met two ironworkers from Chicago who had dropped everything and driven halfway across the country on Sept. 12 to help with the repair efforts in Manhattan. Not only did they leave their own beloved hometown “to help fix ours,” Lazzeri said, but they thanked Lazzeri and his colleagues for having them in their beautiful city.

It was the character of Chicagoans like those ironworkers that ultimately led Lazzeri to relocate to the Midwest. While Lazzeri stayed in New York for over a decade following the 9/11 attacks, when a job opportunity through the bank at which he was employed became available in Chicago, Maryann and he seized the chance to make the move. He reached out to numerous friends and colleagues in New York who were originally from Chicagoland (most of whom have since moved back) for guidance on what suburbs to consider. On all of their recommendation lists – regardless of where they hailed from – was Downers Grove. That, coupled with the fact that Maryann – who is from a close-knit Italian family from Queens, NY– had a second cousin who had lived in Downers Grove for 30 years, led the Lazzeris to relocate to the community.

While their move was originally intended to be short-term (two years), after six months in Downers Grove, the Lazzeris knew they wanted to stay. Maryann’s involvement with the Downers Grove Newcomers played a key role in the decision to plant roots in Downers Grove, as did her success growing her local early childhood education business: Super Learners LLC.

For Lazzeri, it was also the generosity of neighbors during others’ times of need coupled with the easy commute from Downers Grove to Chicago (much quicker than what he knew he would face back in New York) that sealed the deal. Does Lazzeri, who grew up in New Jersey and spent much of his adult life in New York, miss living out east? Sure. Particularly the New York bagels and pizza, he said. “Why would you cut a round pizza into squares? The party cut bewilders me,” Lazzeri quipped about Chicago pizza. Thankfully, they get back to New York

“It was a Tuesday – an absolutely to visit family once or twice a year, so Lazzeri beautiful day. “I was viscerally moved can semi-regularly get his New York bagel and at what a beautiful day it was.” pizza fixes. And while New York — JOHN LAZZERI and the impact of 9/11 will always be with him – “the aftermath will be with all of us, whether we were there that day or not,” Lazzeri said – two decades later, he chooses to harness the good that came of it. “Carrying the pain and grief and fear around for 20 years does not help me.” Instead, Lazzeri vows not to take anything for granted, especially his family. “I’m a dad, and I want to be the best dad I can be,” he said. He hopes that his children – and everyone else – will reflect on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and “stop defining ourselves by our differences from each other” and instead prioritize “our shared humanity,” Lazzeri said. To honor this year’s 9/11 milestone, Lazzeri planned to do what he has done on 9/11 every year since he met his wife: take a moment of silence in the morning but dedicate the rest of the day to celebrating his wife whose birthday just happens to be Sept. 11. NOTE: Lazzeri was reluctant to share his story, not wanting “to be the public face of 9/11 in this community,” he said, because “the events of that day, and its aftermath, had a profound effect on so many people.” However, he hoped that sharing his personal experiences might help someone with something with which they might be struggling. ■