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Celebrating a Window Man's Greatest Scrape
Smithsonian Gets Squeegee That Saved 6 Lives on 9-11
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 6, 2002; Page C01
It sits like a precious gemstone on a blue tablecloth, the object of lengthy stares and clicking cameras. The curator hovers over it with white gloves, guarding it jealously. It took him four months and a trip to the donor's house in Jersey City to procure this item.
"I popped the question as we sat there with my wife and daughter," curator David Shayt says of that first meeting with the donor. "He said, 'Wait a minute.' He goes into the bedroom and brings it out. He says, 'I thought I would sleep with this under my pillow because it saved my life.' "
Shayt glances nervously over his shoulder now, once, twice, thrice. A camera operator is filming dangerously close to the blue tablecloth.
"I just have to keep an eye on the object," Shayt says, excusing himself.
The Object. It is neither art nor weapon nor precious substance. It is not -- at ignorant glance -- the sort of thing you'd expect the National Museum of American History to covet. It is a hardy tool, a triumph of pragmatism, a thing meant to spend much of its time wet, made of brass so it will not rust, an object whose particular fame -- in this case -- is derived from a use utterly different from its intended purpose. It is a squeegee handle, and on Sept. 11, 2001, it -- and the coolheaded MacGyver thinking of a humble window washer -- saved the lives of six men.
"It's collected not as a squeegee handle itself," Shayt says, "but as evidence of life's affirmation."
With the help of his squeegee handle, the metal fixture that connects blade to broomstick, Polish immigrant Jan Demczur and five others escaped from a smoke-filled elevator by tearing through drywall and punching a hole in a bathroom wall on the 50th floor, then racing down flight after interminable flight of stairs and out of the World Trade Center's north tower within five minutes of the building's collapse.
The 48-year-old window washer, who came to the United States in 1980, is a short, chubby-cheeked man with a serene smile. For months, he kept that squeegee handle in his closet, plaster dust still stuck to it -- evidence of his harrowing escape. That handle is now the embodiment of a 14-year career that -- ever since that fateful day -- he has been unable to return to. After Shayt contacted him, Demczur agreed to donate the tool to the Smithsonian's growing collection of Sept. 11 artifacts, some of which will go on display on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
At first, Demczur (pronounced DEM-shur) had difficulty telling of that day. But by now, at this media conference announcing his donation, he speaks of Sept. 11 at length, stopping to describe the details -- smell, sight, sound -- of his 95-minute ordeal in 40 minutes. He is calm, patient and meticulous, and perhaps that is part of why he is alive. Panic would not have aided his escape.
It was just before 9 a.m. and Demczur -- who'd already been cleaning windows that day -- had stopped to take a coffee break. Now he boarded an express elevator with his squeegee and bucket and was riding up with five other men when the car suddenly rocked from side to side. Then it began to fall. One man pressed an emergency stop button, then a voice came over the intercom speaker inside the elevator car.
"We have a problem, 91st floor," Demczur recalls the voice saying. Then the intercom failed.
Smoke began to fill the cab. They had to get out. The men pried open the elevator doors to find:
A wall.
This was, after all, the express elevator, designed to stop only on certain floors. And since Floor 50 was not on the route, there was simply this barrier with the number 50 on it, a claustrophobic's nightmare.
Demczur propped the doors open with the long stick of his squeegee. And then the window washer, who'd once been a plumber and once done construction work, poked at the wall and realized it was drywall. Not so bad. Breakable. The men began to kick at the wall, but Demczur knew they needed something sharp to carve through the three sheets, each an inch thick.
"I turned to my bucket. I said, 'Eh, let me use the squeegee.' " Demczur says. "It's like, not so smart person but the instinct: What you have left to try."
He took the blade out of his squeegee and began to saw at the wall. He sawed and sawed. He passed the squeegee blade around, and the men took turns cutting a hole. At one point, when Demczur had the blade, he lost his grip and it dropped down the elevator shaft.
Gone. Forever gone.
He looked around: What did he have left? The squeegee handle. He began to scratch at the drywall with that.
"It's like, you know, you put dog or cat in some box and put smoke there, how he gonna fight for life? Same we did."
By scratching and kicking and kicking and scratching, the men got through the first, the second, the third layer of drywall. They pushed at the wall and heard tiles falling on the other side. They stepped through the hole and into a bathroom. From there, firefighters directed them down the stairs. They kept wet rags over their noses and mouths and choked through the smoke. On the 12th floor, they heard "a loud explosion. I said, 'Oh, that's probably electrical transformer or something.' "
It was the south tower collapsing.
Demczur is humble to the last. He says of those six lives saved: "I don't say I did myself. We all was working, but this tool save our life."
When he finishes his speech, the crowd moves in. Shayt, the curator, puts the squeegee handle in a plastic bag and takes charge of Demczur's other donations: the uniform, and work shoes Demczur was wearing that day. Assorted dignitaries of the window-washing world have their pictures taken with the man of the hour. They are people like Diane Smahlik, chairwoman of Ettore Products of Oakland, Calif., which made the tools Demczur was using that day. After she heard Demczur's story, Smahlik flew him to the International Window Cleaning Association convention in Reno, Nev., in February, and gave him a small 14-karat gold squeegee pin with three sapphires in it.
"Window cleaners get looked down on, they really do," Smahlik says. "They're hard-working people. They put their lives in jeopardy, hanging from buildings."
Then the window washer is ushered toward the cameras. He smiles warmly, like he is greeting guests at a party. The Smithsonian staffers are surprised by how many reporters have shown up -- 20? 30? -- and they buzz anxiously about Demczur, eyes to wristwatches, ready to whisk him away to the next interview when the time is up. His wife, Nadia, and two children, Pavlo, 10, and Olesia, 14, leave, then come back, then leave again. The window washer tells his story over and over. Once he starts talking, it's hard for him to stop.
He says he's still in counseling for his trauma. He says his wife has been giving him small tasks around the house. "Wife say, 'Okay, water the pots and flowers,' " he says.
He has a slow, patient manner, just the sort of quality you imagine a window washer would need. You imagine him with a long-handled squeegee stroking the length of a tall window, drawing what Shayt calls "beautiful arabesques in water and suds."
Maybe someday.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
