OT: Another survival story...
To tell you the truth, I don't give a d*mn about the stock market at the moment. It's only been exactly two weeks since the worst terrorist attack on innocent civilians in the entire history of humankind on this planet. The death total will most likely exceed by 300% the 2400+ people killed at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941...almost 60 years ago.
The story below was published last Sunday in the Eastsidejournal.com, located in Bellevue, WA.
The couple in the story are friends of my daughter and her boyfriend:
eastsidejournal.com
LOCAL HONEYMOOERS WHO SURVIVED NY TERROR ATTACK WON'T DELAY PARENTHOOD
2001-09-23
by Nick Perry
Journal Reporter
A honeymoon ended in fire and tears while a nation changed forever that sunny September morning.
Ian and Torie Ritchie might one day have children who want to know why. And that day is likely to come sooner than first planned.
As people across America pause to reflect on their own lives and values following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two newlyweds who escaped from ground zero have decided they no longer want to wait several years to have children.
They want to have their first baby right away.
"It makes you rethink your priorities," said Ian. "No time is as good as now. It makes you realize how important family is."
When the Bainbridge Island couple tell their story, it will be tinged with sadness and fear.
But it will also radiate kindness, courage and hope.
Lingering images
The couple could never have imagined they would awake on their honeymoon to see flaming debris crashing outside their 12th-floor hotel window -- or that Ian would carry his wife piggyback across broken glass while one of his feet was streaming blood.
Neither will forget certain images from that morning, such as the dozens of abandoned shoes they spotted in a blazing courtyard, or the neckties that fluttered upward as businessmen leaped from top-story windows.
"I was in denial, in shock," Torie said. "I didn't realize the full extent of what was happening."
They will not forget the strangers they met, either. A meat-packer who gave them a $100 bill and bought them each new shoes, and a friend-of-a-friend from Issaquah who drove them 3,000 miles across 13 states back home.
Ian said he used to be bothered by being held up in traffic or waiting for slow players on the golf course.
"Dumb little stuff like that seems so irrelevant now," he said.
Almost four years after meeting on a blind date in Bellevue, what matters to Ian and Torie now is each other.
Since the attacks, the couple rarely stop holding one another. They find it hard to spend even an hour or two apart.
"Both have a very deep love for one another," said Torie's mom, Carolyn Olberg of Bellevue.
Both say it will be a long time before the emotional wounds heal. This week, Ian, who is Jewish, could not face attending a Rosh Hashana celebration with family members at their local temple.
And right now, neither Ian or Torie can contemplate getting on an airplane.
When their children are old enough, they might show them a memory box, Torie said.
The box is filled with newspapers collected from their cross-country trip, the pajamas they escaped in and the shoes they were given.
But Torie will continue to wear perhaps the most significant mementos. Those are the earrings Ian gave her on Valentine's Day, the bracelet he gave her on her birthday and the diamond wedding ring he had specially made.
Torie was wearing the jewelry when she escaped from the hotel.
She doesn't plan to ever take it off.
Honeymoon plans
Ian first slipped the ring on Torie's finger four weeks ago when they were married in the Rose Garden at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. It happened so recently that Torie still inadvertently answers the phone using her maiden name.
Torie, 25, grew up in Bellevue, attending Newport High School.
Last year she moved with Ian, 30, to Bainbridge Island, where Ian is a self-employed businessman specializing in financing. The couple decided to spend their honeymoon in New York to experience the nightlife and see the country's financial heart.
They wanted to spend time in the World Trade Center's Marriott Hotel so Ian could be close to Wall Street.
They had planned to continue their honeymoon in Miami, where they were going to watch the Husky football team play, then take a cruise in the Caribbean.
Those plans were canceled.
In the days before the attacks, the couple said they had been having a wonderful time, attending the opera "Aida" and managing to get front-row seats to "David Letterman's Late Show."
On Sept. 10, Ian visited the Morgan Stanley offices on the 77th floor of one of the World Trade Center towers.
He joked with people there about the tight security.
Each morning of the trip, Ian had awoke about 8 or 8:30 a.m. and bought his wife a latte.
If he had done the same on Sept. 11, he might have been separated from his wife or even caught in the trade center courtyard as debris rained down.
Luckily, the two had stayed up late Monday night after catching a 10 p.m. screening of the comedy film "American Pie II.'"
They were asleep at 8:48 the next morning when the first plane struck.
"The hotel shook and shook," Ian said. "There was the loudest noise."
That terrible morning
Half awake, Torie could see flaming debris showering past the window.
"One thought was that it was an asteroid or a meteor shower," she said. "This stuff was flying by. Then I thought it was a bomb."
The two rushed into the hallway and helped housekeepers who were pounding on hotel doors and yelling for everybody to get out.
The housekeepers did an unbelievable job of keeping order, Ian said. The couple followed the staff down a stairwell. Ian was wearing just flannel pants and a T-shirt, while Torie had on jeans and a nightshirt.
Each level down, the stairs became more crowded. "On the sixth floor, there was a maid who had started hyperventilating," Ian said. She was saying she could not go any further. "I told her, 'You can't stop,'" Ian said. "I put her arm around my neck and helped her walk down the steps."
When they got to the bottom, they looked out in horror at an area between the towers where debris from the plane and building had landed.
"Everything was on fire in the courtyard," Ian said. "Everything was burning."
It was then that alongside the wreckage they spotted shoes, which might have been slip-ons people left behind when the plane struck, Ian said.
The barefoot couple could not reach the shoes. As they ran across the road, Ian gashed his left foot on a shard of glass. As they looked at the stunned faces of people escaping the building, they heard the second plane. The noise reminded Ian of the Blue Angels, which fly over Lake Washington during Seafair each year.
"The plane came right overhead. They put the hammer down and hit," he said.
The pair turned and ran toward the Hudson River.
Torie asked a woman where she could find a pay phone. But the phones were out.
The woman said her name was Lydia and that she lived in an apartment right across from the trade center. Ian, Torie and Lydia took turns comforting each other, hugging, crying and talking.
"We were all scared for our lives," Torie said. "We didn't know what to do or what was happening or what else was going to happen."
After leaving the trade center area, Ian and Torie later would run into Lydia again, but they never did find out her last name.
Getting out
Taking Lydia's advice, Ian and Torie began walking north and were back within a block of the trade center when suddenly one of the towers collapsed. They held hands and ran, looking back at the huge wall of dust gaining on them.
"It was like the blob," Torie said.
"This cloud was hovering right behind you, and you didn't know when it was going to engulf you, but you knew it would," Ian said.
Suddenly it enveloped them, and everything went dark.
"You couldn't breathe and you couldn't see," Torie said. "I was trying to lift my shirt to breathe through that. It dried out your mouth and lungs immediately."
The couple kept running and walking for several blocks. Ian's foot was still bleeding. He would spend that night removing shards of glass with tweezers.
When they came across another patch of gravel and glass, Ian told Torie to jump on his back so she wouldn't get cut as well. He carried her piggyback for several blocks.
Then another couple saw them and removed their own socks, giving them to Ian and Torie so they would have some protection on their feet.
Half a mile farther they stopped walking.
"It was the first time we had really looked at each other and realized we had nothing,'" Ian said. "It was really hot, and we had this soot stuff all over us. We were wondering what we were going to do." As they stood staring back at the trade center, Joe Lorenzo, a meatpacker from New Jersey, came over and talked.
"We laughed about it later, that he looked like a mob guy," Torie said. "He had on this white T-shirt. He was like somebody off 'The Sopranos.'"
Lorenzo seemed shocked when they told him they were on their honeymoon from Seattle.
He asked them their shoe sizes and told them to wait in his company's office. Then he ran a mile to Chinatown and bought each of them a new pair of Nike counterfeit sneakers.
Lorenzo also gave them a $100 bill from his wallet.
He calmed the Ritchies by talking about his own family. He told them his 13-year-old daughter had almost made it to Kirkland for a softball championship, but that her team had been eliminated.
Walking into the meatpacking office was a relief, Ian said. "It was so cold. It was wonderful," he said.
From there they were able to call Ian's mother and let their families know they were OK. Ian's mother gave them the phone number of a family friend, and after calling him, they walked another seven miles to his apartment.
The friend, a businessman, uses his Manhattan apartment only once a month, but he was there that day.
He took Ian and Torie to Mews Diner that evening. Torie ordered comfort food -- chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy. Ian ordered a chicken sandwich. But neither of them could eat more than a few bites.
The businessman introduced them to his bank manager the next morning. The bank was telling staff members to go home because banking was impossible, but the manager withdrew $400 from his personal account to give to the couple.
Help from friends
Back on the West Coast, the couple's families were calling friends. Eventually, Ian's sister's best friend called and told them a friend, Anthony Bontrager from Issaquah, was driving one of the last available rental cars home.
When the newlyweds called, Bontrager said he would be delighted to share a ride back.
The three of them drove three days across country, listening to the radio and talking. All three watched and listened to the news intently, hoping there would be survivors, Torie said.
But the news was not good.
Bontrager told them how much he missed his own little boy, just 10 months old. Determined to get home to his family in Issaquah, Bontrager drove 17 hours straight on Friday.
The couple spent last Friday at a friend's house in Bellevue. When they arrived at their Bainbridge Island house the next morning, they found neighbors -- who had heard about their ordeal -- trimming their hedges and cutting the lawns.
Since getting home, the couple have been spending almost all their time together, watching cable TV movies, having friends over and trying to put the experience behind them.
They plan to see a counselor together to discuss their ordeal. Torie, a nanny, said she has been thinking about a starting a day care at home when she has her own children.
But right now she wants to just rest and be with Ian.
"I have been enjoying how peaceful it is over here, how quiet and familiar everything is."
Nick Perry can be reached at nick.perry@eastsidejournal.com or 425-453-4629. TERRORISM MEANING LIFE PHILOSOPHY LOVE WEDDING PHOTO by Steve Shelton/Journal: Ian and Torie Ritchie have seen first hand just how short life can be, and today they give thanks to be alive. Honeymooning in New York on Sept. 11, they witnessed the second jetliner crash into the World Trade Center, moments after they escaped barefoot from their nearby hotel. They received comfort and help from strangers, including a meatpacker from New Jersey who ran a mile to buy them these tennis shoes |
