Joe's Story

As I walked toward the site I walked down Church Street and prayed for the courage to stay together because at 22 I helped build the World Trade Center. My thoughts were racing and I was kinda mixed up, but the 23rd psalm came into my head. The dust and the ashes and the debris, all I could hear was: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.

I finally reached one world Liberty Plaza. I just spotted a buddy when they sounded the emergency whistle. Suddenly 50 firefighters were running toward me, and I didn't know what was going on. I just ran with them. People falling, people picking people up. We ran to the battery park tunnel and I walked up West Street and I saw my crane and the guy who dispatched me out.

No orders, no money, no services, just volunteers trying to help. I ran into a fire chief who said he'd like to clear a debris field 3 feet deep with heavy iron on top.

I turned around and there were 4 or 5 iron workers. They asked if I had a crane and I said yes, so they said they'd like to work with me. Like a miracle 25 firefighters showed up right then with tanks and torches. Then we had a mission so we went to work. No supervision no foreman, we worked as smooth as you could imagine. Everything went perfectly but we were soaking wet working in 18" of water working straight through the night. And all night long they blew the whistle thinking Liberty plaza was coming down. That happened 4 or 5 times that night and I thought to myself, "Joe, you came here to die."

I prayed for darkness because I couldn't handle what I was seeing. The first body was a lady in a business suit. Middle aged, it was remarkable, she wasn't even dirty.

We laid her down on the stretcher and fixed her eyes and her lapels. I remember the ff on the back of the stretcher fell but he lifted his arms up over his head so the body wouldn't hit the ground.

After that I was sitting on the curb with my head in my hands, it was the middle of the night. That's when the Salvation Army kids appeared, their pink hair, their belly buttons showing, bandanas tied around their faces. One was a little girl pushing a shopping cart full of eyewash through the muck. They came with water, cold towels, and took my boots off and put dry socks on my feet.

And we kept going all night on the 12th and the morning of the 13th and were relieved in the afternoon. I've never seen so many people pull together. One unit, one thought: we were going to rescue a survivor.

But that wasn't meant to be.

When I was finally relieved and started to walk out I thought to myself "you did pretty good, you did your part, you can go home and get back to normal."

Then my mind flashed to the hostages coming home from Iran, and the ticker tape parade when the Yankees won the world series. I always thought "that's what NY 's about, those kind of heroes." But it was the little girl with the pink hair who became my hero that night, not Tino Martinez.

When I got to Houston street a bunch more of these kids all pierced and tattooed with multi colored hair -- they made a little makeshift stage and they started to cheer as we came out and that was it for me.

I never identified with those people before, but I started to cry and I cried for 4 blocks. I can't tell you, I was so taken off guard by their behavior.

I've been a construction worker all my life, and I've always felt I was viewed by the public as a pest, as rude. And now I was so vulnerable, I was taken totally off guard.

I got home and saw my wife who asked Joe are you OK?

Sure I said, you know the bravado came right back. But she said are you sure? Go look in the mirror.

There I was with my filthy dirty face and just two clean lines coming down from my eyes. You become like a child after you get banged around a bit.

She cried with me, gave me something to eat, drew a bath -- I don't take baths. She put me to bed for 6 or 7 hours.

I told her I wasn't going back.

Now it's December the 3rd and I haven't missed a day

At first it was like a tunnel the way everyone came together.

The first week I had my 250 ton triple-A to begin with, the next week my 1000 ton triple-A crane arrived.

It was amazing to see fireman and police hugging each other. Unions who had refused to work together buried hatchets. There were search and rescue from every state.

I've learned a lot about good and evil; I've learned a lot about the power of prayer. I never knew anything about Episcopalians or Presbyterians or gays or people with nuts and bolts through their cheeks. Or those Broadway people. But now, I know them all.

We're not the heroes, they are the heroes. They've cried and prayed out loud for me. I never thought I'd have a family like this one.

Around Sunday the 16th my master mechanic asked if I had seen the house of God. We jumped on his quad and went to West Street, Building 6. The entire exterior was charred but the perimeter remained intact.

It was nightfall and it was pitch black dark when we went down into the garage. But lighted, just in the center. There stood three crosses, just as the beams had fallen. And as you looked at the bases of the crosses there hundreds of reflections from the license plates. They looked like stars.

He looked at me and said, 'God is here.'