MANATEE -- Everyone has a 9/11 story.
Bonnie Greenball Silvestri is no different.
She recalls the purple shirt, pants and heels she wore that day as she got out of New York City’s Chamber Street subway station on her way to her law firm on Lafayette Street when she saw the Twin Towers burning.
“I was just shocked,” Silvestri said. “I wasn’t quite sure what I should do next. Should I go to my office or not?”
That’s when a man who had just left the World Trade Center told her to evacuate the area. She headed home.
In the days following the attacks, Silvestri worked for the Family Assistance Unit at Pier 94 in New York City and helped families of victims obtain death certificates.
She shared her story Wednesday at the Triumph over Tragedy event at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus.
Four other speakers also told their unique stories of where they were that day.
Don Hoffe was on the 61st floor of the South Tower when the North Tower was hit and managed to escape the building before the second plane hit. Jackie Barron was reporting the arrival of President George W. Bush at Booker Elementary for News Channel 8. Luke Bencie was hired to serve for the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Emergency Support Team following the attack and Air Force Master Sgt. Christopher Wenzel was deployed to the Middle East after the attack.
For Silvestri, her work following the attack became her way of giving back. She got to meet with families and hear about their loved ones.
“A lot of the family members really wanted to tell me about their relatives,” she said.
Those conversations were extremely emotional, especially when family members had to recall their last words they spoke to their loved one.
“The last conversations were really the most difficult thing to read,” she said. “I kept thinking this person sounds interesting, and then you knew they hadn’t survived. The one that was most upsetting to me was a young girl who’d said ‘Help me mommy,’ ” as her last words to her mother.
Although the five speakers had different stories to tell, there were common threads. Since the attacks happened in a time before smartphones became the norm, nearly all spoke about being clueless as to what was going on.
“They told everyone to get your personal stuff and head to the stairwell,” Hoffe recalls from his last moments inside the South Tower. “The stairwells were not very wide, they only fit three people across and as everyone started to head down, people kept coming in and it got jammed up.”
When he’d made it to the 10th floor, another announcement came over the PA system: the first tower had been hit and the second was OK.
“Literally, it seemed like five or ten seconds after that -- that’s when the second plane hit,” Hoffe said.
Jet fuel was going out the air shafts, the lights went out, they came back on, smoke filled the stairwell as they swayed, he said. He finally made it to the mall floor and recalls seeing a World Trade Center maintenance worker, covered in dust, holding the door open for people to escape.
He made it out.
“For me the real reason to speak is to never forget who the true heros are,” Hoffe said referring to the first responders. “Too many good people died that day.”
For Lynn Chancer, sitting in the audience Wednesday, hearing the stories was her way of remembering that day and keeping her promise to never forget.
“I’m so sad with what happened,” she said. “It’s a loss of innocence.”
Paradise Afshar, Herald staff writer, can be reached at 745-7024
