This Man's Life
How can you begin to comprehend the enormity of September 11? By understanding just what was lost in one man's tragic death
At 8:53 a.m. Tuesday, September 11, the phone rang in Kierstie Clark's Brooklyn Heights apartment. "What are you doing calling me before 9 a.m.?" Kierstie, a graduate student, asked sleepily. "Don't turn on your TV," said Kierstie's boyfriend, Scott Johnson, 26. "Don't turn on your radio." From her 17th-floor window, Kierstie could see a plume of smoke rising from the twin towers across the East River. Scott calmly explained there had been an explosion. His investment research firm, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, was going to evacuate the 89th floor, but it would take some time. He would call her when he got down.
Scott tried his mother, Ann, but she wasn't home. Scott's brother, Tom, called and told him to get out. Two friends, Steve Selwood and Josh Cain, also phoned. Josh says he could hear panic in Scott's voice. "Are you all right, man?" Josh asked. He had to say it again because Scott's voice was unsteady. "I got to go, man," Scott replied. "I got to go." At 8:59 a.m., Scott left another message for his mom. "They're talking about an evacuation," he said. Around 9 a.m., Scott reached his father at work. "Dad, I'm OK," he said. "It was the other tower that was hit." They quickly got off the phone. Four minutes later, Tom Johnson, 60, watched on television as the second plane flew into the south tower. "I felt in my heart that it had hit him," Johnson says. "I wasn't 100 percent certain that it had hit right at his level, but if it wasn't at his level, it was below his level." It was the last time Johnson would talk to his son.
As the immediate shock of September 11 fades and the nation's attention turns to anthrax and Afghanistan, thousands of families like the Johnsons and tens of thousands of their friends are struggling to cope with the immensity of their losses. There are more than 5,000 tragedies to tell of children left behind, moms who won't see their sons and daughters marry. Fathers, sisters, colleagues, and friends will forever have a hole in their lives, a hole where the surprise phone calls and birthday cards and jokes in a bar after work would have been. Some of the dead are police officers, firefighters, rescue workers--all of whom have been memorialized for bravely plunging into an evolving horror. But floor after floor of the dead are accidental bystanders, office workers who had no idea what was happening to them. They were the often well-paid foot soldiers of the financial community, arriving early to wrestle with the arcana of bond prices, insurance quotes, and company reports and leaving late to catch a train back to the rest of their lives. They were people like Scott Johnson.
Lucky. Scott Michael Johnson grew up in the quiet New Jersey suburb of Montclair, in a large Federal-style home with a white picket fence and a hilltop view of the twin towers 19 miles to the east. I lived a backyard away. As a child, Scott looked like a combination of Dennis the Menace and Richie Rich. "And that kid from Home Alone," one of his friends says. "He was a Macaulay Culkin stunt double."
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