On 15th anniversary of 9/11, local residents recall awful day
Sara Botkin, shown Thursday in her office at Botkin Family Wealth Management in Peters Township, worked on the 105th floor of World Trade Center Building Two and lost scores of co-workers on 9/11.
Nick Kapelonis worked as a stockbroker in Pittsburgh during the Sept. 11 attacks. Kapelonis lost four friends who worked in the World Trade Center towers that day. Every year, he watches and listens as the 2,996 names of the deceased are read at the Sept. 11 memorial service.
On the corner of the desk in Sara Botkin’s Peters Township office sits a small replica of the Twin Towers.
It is a reminder of the awful events of Sept. 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and Botkin, now president of Botkin Family Wealth Management, found herself caught in the middle of it.
“It really changed the whole trajectory of my life,” said Botkin, of North Strabane Township, recalling the sunny morning when terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, flying two of them into the World Trade Center towers and a third into the Pentagon.
A fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Somerset County, minutes by air from the U.S. Capitol and the White House, after 44 courageous passengers and crew members fought back against hijackers.
Botkin, then 24, was on the concourse of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., waiting for the elevator to take her to the offices of Aon Corp. on the 105th floor of the South Tower, when she heard a loud whoosh and felt the building shake.
She had moved to New York City two months earlier to pursue a music career and landed a full-time job as a financial analyst at Aon to make ends meet.
She wasn’t due to arrive at the office until 9 a.m., so that morning, instead of heading straight up to work, Botkin stopped at a record store to buy the newly released Mariah Carey CD.
Like thousands of bystanders, Botkin did not know what was happening.
“I started to see other people run and panic, and men who were in distinguished suits start running and saying, ‘Oh my God,’ and that’s when I said, ‘Uh oh’ and I got cold and my heart just started pounding,” Botkin said.
She ran up a flight of stairs to the first-floor lobby, where she saw debris and thousands of sheets of paper floating in the air. Sirens blared.
Security guards advised workers to stay inside and head to their offices, telling them that there was a fire in Tower 1, but Tower 2 was secure. Many people who were evacuating turned around and went back upstairs.
“I remember that all I wanted to do was to talk to my dad and ask him what he thought, what should I do,” said Botkin, who did not own a cellphone. “I was really thinking, ‘Gee, I’ve only been at this job for two months, should I get up there and make sure I’m not late for work?'”
Instead, she followed two 20-something men who pushed past security guards and ran outside. Botkin saw the gash that had ripped through the North Tower, and a stranger told her that a plane had struck the building.
Botkin, determined to find a pay phone and call her father, ran down the first subway staircase she saw and hopped on the next train. She did not see the second plane hit the South Tower.
She ended up on a train that stopped at Grand Central Station.
There, Botkin found a pay phone and called her father, Lester, then a financial adviser at Hefren-Tillotson in Pittsburgh.
“I remember (the secretary) said, ‘Hefren-Tillotson, can I help you?’ and I said, ‘Hi, is Les Botkin there?’ and all I heard was ‘It’s her! It’s her!’ and I heard cheering, and I thought what the heck is going on, but now I know they were all waiting for me to call, hoping that I would call.”
So many family members and friends who waited for telephone calls from loved ones that day never got them. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks, including 176 Aon employees who were killed after United Airlines Flight 175 crashed through the 78th through 84th floors of the South Tower 16 ½ minutes after the first plane struck.
Also among those who died were two people with ties to Washington County.
Angela Kyte, 49, a graduate of Washington High School and managing director for Marsh & McClennan, an insurance company, normally worked in Midtown, but was scheduled to lead a meeting on the company’s 90th-floor office in the North Tower when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into it.
Larry Senko, 34, a Donora native and vice president for Alliance Consulting, was in a business meeting on the 102nd floor of the North Tower. He left behind a nearly two-year-old son.
Some area businessmen found themselves stranded in the city as subways shut down and taxis proved difficult to find.
Brad Scott of Houston, CFO for TF Asset Management LLC, traveled Sept. 10 to the company’s Manhattan headquarters, near the World Trade Center.
When a plane flew into the North Tower, Scott took an elevator to the first floor and went outside to see what had happened. He had a clear view of the towers.
“I felt and heard the second plane hit. We felt the vibrations,” Scott said. “We went back upstairs, but they evacuated our building immediately. We walked down the steps and we saw both buildings burning. One fellow said, ‘If those towers fall, we’re in trouble.'”
Scott and about six co-workers started walking south toward Battery Park and made it about three blocks when the first tower fell, more than an hour after it was struck.
“It was chaos. I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. People were seriously panicking. You can’t imagine how many people are on that island during the work day,” Scott said.
He spent the night at the home of a colleague’s brother and made it back to Washington County two days later.
“I have no desire to go back to New York City. I don’t want to re-live those memories,” said Scott, who had visited the shopping mall in the World Trade Center the night before the attacks. “It’s one of those days you will never forget. When you think about all those people …”
Nicholas Kapelonis of Houston was working as a stockbroker at Wheat First Union in Pittsburgh on the morning of 9/11. A native of Queens, N.Y., Kapelonis started his career at Meyers Pollock Robbins, which was headquartered at 1 World Trade Center.
He lost four friends that day, three of whom worked for the Cantor Fitzgerald financial firm and another who worked at Carr Futures.
“I remember that day crystal clear,” Kapelonis said.
A co-worker told Kapelonis he heard on Howard Stern that a small plane clipped the World Trade Center.
After the second plane hit, panic ensued.
“We were running around Market Square, trying to scramble to get to our cars. … It was just pure terror,” Kapelonis said. “I’m watching it, and it’s surreal. I was watching on TV and I’m like, I know people in those buildings, I visited those towers. It stays with you forever. They were in the prime of their lives.”
Kapelonis has visited Ground Zero several times since 9/11, and he listens as the names of those who died in the attacks are read at the annual 9/11 memorial service.
Botkin said she decided hours after the towers fell to return home to Pittsburgh to work with her father in financial planning.
“My priorities changed. I was trying to start a career in music in New York City, and it felt like the most important thing to me at the time. After 9/11, I really felt like all I wanted to do was be near my family, and all of a sudden, all of my career aspirations didn’t seem nearly as important,” Botkin said.
By November, she had left New York City, and she started working with her father in financial planning.
Botkin has returned to New York City several times, but has not visited the 9/11 memorial.
She wonders sometimes if her seemingly inconsequential decision to take a detour and purchase a CD might have saved her life.
“I think about that. I’m such a rule follower. Many of my colleagues did survive because there were 15 minutes or so between the first and second plane, so if you exited immediately, you had the opportunity to get out. But I often think, those announcements that were happening, telling us to stay, I think had I been up there with my colleagues and my boss, would I have stayed and been one of those poor souls trapped?”
A friend of Botkin’s who worked for Mariah Carey’s record company told the music star that Botkin was running behind schedule on 9/11 because she had stopped to purchase Carey’s CD. Carey sent Botkin an autographed CD, a photo and a letter.
Said Botkin, “That whole day was so horrific as you watched the footage of what was happening, and I remember watching those poor souls jumping from the building. It was just beyond everybody’s worst nightmare.
“I try to live gratefully and try to be a good person and be kind. I feel like I always try to do that. I don’t always succeed, but I always try. I did thank God a million times after (9/11), even though I feel kind of weird and guilty doing that because I just hate to attribute it to anything other than luck, because there were so many unlucky people that day, and good people, and brave people, like the rescuers who lost their lives.”