Last Man Out: Part One
Ron DiFrancesco was high in the South Tower when the plane struck. An inferno and 84 floors lay between him and his family.
Andrew Duffy
The Ottawa Citizen
canada.com
TORONTO - Almost four years later, Ron DiFrancesco still carries the South Tower with him -- tiny fragments of glass and stucco that occasionally migrate to the surface of his skin.
Mr. DiFrancesco was the last man out of the South Tower before it collapsed at 9:59 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. He was, according to the official 9/11 Commission Report, one of only four people to make it out alive that day from above the central impact zone on the 81st floor.
The stories of some of those other survivors are well-known.
But the 41-year-old Mr. DiFrancesco, a soft-spoken father of four, has scrupulously avoided the media spotlight. He doesn't like talking about his escape; he believes it's disrespectful to the families of those who died to celebrate the decisions that allowed him to live.
Mr. DiFrancesco has rejected dozens of interview requests from journalists and filmmakers. He rarely discusses the day's events, even with his children. "They know it's still raw for me, even though I'd be more open to it now," he says.
(Mr. DiFrancesco agreed to talk to The Citizen only with great reluctance and under the condition that he not be characterized as a hero.)
The almost four years since the terror attacks have been difficult ones for Mr. DiFrancesco, who continues to undergo therapy for back and hip injuries. He has also sought the help of a psychiatrist to better understand what he describes as "agitation," and the guilt he feels about his survival on a day when 61 of his Euro Brokers' colleagues died.
Mr. DiFrancesco sometimes suffers bouts of panic: when the lights flicker, for instance. Or, as was the case in August 2003, when he was caught on the subway as a massive blackout cut power across Toronto and much of the northeast.
At those times, it all comes flooding back.
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As was his habit, Ron DiFrancesco woke just after 5 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 11. He washed and shaved and was out the door before his wife, Mary, and his four children had stirred from their beds.
He had to catch the 5.37 a.m. train near his Mahwah, New Jersey home in order to make the subway connection that would take him below the Hudson River to the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
Mr. DiFrancesco always marvelled at the energy of the trade towers. It swept him along the moment he stepped from the PATH subway, in the fifth sub-basement of the complex. It hummed in the express elevators that sped to the skylobby of the 78th floor where he took a second elevator to the offices of Euro Brokers. There, on the 84th floor, it wafted from the office like the smell of strong coffee as his colleagues discussed overnight financial numbers from London and Tokyo.
He was at his desk by 7 a.m.
It was a postcard kind of morning with the sunrise glowing through the windows that lined the east wall in front of him on the Euro Brokers' trading floor. Mr. DiFrancesco worked as a money market broker, orchestrating short-term financial deals between international banks. He specialized in the needs of Canadian institutions. |
