Gregory Henderson, co-owner of The Roxbury, Contemporary Catskill Lodging, a Delaware County motel, lived in New York City for 17 years from 1986-2003. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was scheduled to attend a Risk Magazine conference inside the World Trade Center as head of marketing for Kiodex Inc., a financial service firm.
The conference included breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th floor of the North Tower where Henderson had eaten many times. When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower, everybody above the point of impact from the 92nd floor to the 107th floor was trapped and perished. Various reports confirm that more than 70 victims of the terrorist attack that day were Windows on the World restaurant employees.
“My heart aches for the people who worked for Windows on the World and lost their lives,” Henderson said.
Henderson’s life was spared by a last-minute company decision to attend a different conference in New Orleans instead. Henderson had worked closely with several journalists to get his CEO on
the cover of Risk Magazine. In addition to the journalists who among the nearly 3,000 victims who died on 9/11, Henderson knew more than 200 individuals who were there that day.
He said, “The World Trade Center was my subway stop for two years when I worked for Moody’s Investors Service before Kiodex Inc. I ate lunch there daily, did my holiday shopping there and bought my half-priced Broadway tickets there.”
When the news of the attack on the Twin Towers reached Henderson, all he wanted to do was get home as soon as possible, he said. Henderson was able to call his family and tell them that he was safe on 9/11, but it took two days for him to reach his partner, now husband, and 36 hours for him to hear that his two employees were alive.
He recounts, “All domestic flights were cancelled until Sept. 13, if I remember correctly. It was impossible to get a flight into New York. I was lucky to be on one of the first flights back to the east coast. The flight was from Houston to Washington, D.C., so I had to rent a car to get to Texas and another car to get from D.C. to New York City. I remember driving up Route 95 and I was the only car on the road. It was eerie. When I reached New Jer-
sey, the Lincoln Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel were closed and it looked like all of downtown Manhattan was still on fire. Smoke was everywhere. I was the only car on the George Washington Bridge.”
When Henderson finally reached his apartment in lower Manhattan, his partner, Joseph Massa, was waiting for him on the sidewalk. He vividly remembers this reunion was like a scene from the movie “Reds” with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. “Oh my God. You are alive!” was Henderson’s reaction. He recalls, “We held each other on the sidewalk for quite a long time.”
The couple spent several days post 9/11 recovering from the harrowing experience of escaping death by escaping the city to a “little cabin we owned in Andes, New York.” Henderson’s office was very close to Ground Zero. When he returned to work, he remembers the site of the disaster was “still smoldering” and recalls seeing dead
bodies being carried out of the rubble of the Twin Towers. He said, “You could feel the very toxic smelling smoke in your lungs. It smelled like burning steel and metal mixed with a faint smell of organic waste.” Clean-up took several months. Some of his colleagues have developed a form of cancer linked to the toxic smoke they and have asked Henderson to sign affidavits confirming that he worked at that location with them post-9/11. Henderson said, “Fingers crossed I never develop anything….”
He said, “If 9/11 had not happened, I don’t know that we would have ever left New York City and moved upstate and started my third career in the hospitality industry. 9/11 was the final straw. I left NYC in 2003.
“I am still in search of my higher power,” he said. I am not sure if I believe in destiny, but I do feel like my life has been spared at least three times.”
“You could feel the very toxic smelling smoke in your lungs. It smelled like burning steel and metal mixed with a faint smell of organic waste.”
– Gregory Henderson
Twenty-two years ago, on Sept.11, 2001, John Vagliardo, an Oneonta native, was a manager for Broadview Network Inc., Verizon’s largest competitor. Five to 10 times per month, he would work out of the company’s World Trade Center office on the 52nd floor of the South Tower.
Vagliardo rotated between working out of three offices, one in Albany, another in lower Manhattan’s South Tower and another in Long Island City. When news broke about the plane slamming into the North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001, his wife called him to say all his friends were calling and asking if he was safe.
Vagliardo went into the conference room and turned on the television. He and his co-workers were in disbelief as they witnessed the second plane crashing into the South Tower.
“The training manager was visibly upset,” he noticed, and he asked her if she wanted him to turn the TV off as they watched people jumping out the windows. She said “No, it just hit me that I was supposed to be training in that building today instead of being here in Albany.”
When Vagliardo looks back on 9/11, he recalls “how great it made me feel that so many friends called my wife to check on me that day. I realized just how many true friends I really have.”
Broadview Network did not lose a single employee on 9/11. They successfully evacuated the South Tower before the second plane struck. Vagliardo recounts that they were “all cleared to go back into the building when the North Tower started to collapse. Had they gone back into the building, they would have all perished.”
Vagliardo remembers the South Tower well. He still has his photo ID badge that says “World Trade Center” on it. He explained, “You had to take two elevators to get to the 52nd floor. One elevator brought you up to the first 25 floors and the next elevator brought you up to the 52nd
– John Vagliardo
floor.” According to Vagliardo, “one floor of the building was full of diesel fuel and generators as back-up in case of loss of power. When the plane crashed into the building, jet fuel went down the elevator shafts and exploded.”
One week after 9/11, Vagliardo was working in the Long Island City office and had special clearance to visit Ground Zero. The area was closed off to regular pedestrians. He recalls, “The minute I stepped out of the car, I looked at all the stuff floating in the air and thought this is the most dangerous place in the world. It was full of asbestos and chemicals.” Realizing the danger, Vagliardo got back in the car quickly after getting some substance on his pants that never came out in the wash.
One block away from the World Trade Center, “the Verizon Central office, which supplied dial tone to much of Manhattan, was “decimated” in Vagliardo’s words. Broadview Networks was dependent on Verizon’s network. “It all had to be rebuilt. New cables had to be laid and new switching equipment had to be installed. It takes months to restore a central office. With both the North Tower and the South Tower destroyed, Verizon did not need to restore phone lines inside the World Trade Center.” Vagliardo noticed one positive outcome from the tragedy. He said, “9/11 made New York City friendlier. Before 9/11, no one would say hi to one another walking down the street. No one would offer you a seat at a crowded restaurant. After 9/11, everyone said hi to you and I even saw
one man who dropped money have it returned to him by a stranger. That would have never happened before 9/11.” In the office building in Long Island City where Vagliardo would work, he became acquainted with a spinning instructor who also worked at the same gym in the World Trade Center. He learned that on the day of the attack, she overslept because her alarm did not go off. As she was rushing to get ready to go to work at the World Trade Center, her husband called to tell her the news. “She later learned that everyone on her shift got killed that day, except her.” Vagliardo has taken a special interest in the events of 9/11. He collected many photographs of the incident and the aftermath that were posted online and stores them on a CD. He said, “I want to show my grandchildren these images someday.”
When Vagliardo looks back on 9/11, he recalls “how great it made me feel that so many friends called my wife to check on me that day.”
