Posted on 09/07/2006 5:53:39 AM PDT by areafiftyone
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| Tribute Center guide Tania Head describes escape from south tower. |
The momentum of her memories sometimes causes Tania Head to tell a tour group about the horribly burned man who handed her his wedding ring as she escaped the south tower.
On occasion, she also tells the visitors that her own husband perished in the north tower. She always begins by introducing herself to those who come for a first-person account of 9/11 from one of the 122 volunteer guides at the new Tribute WTC Visitor Center.
"My name is Tania and I'm going to be your tour guide today," she said the other afternoon. "I was there at the towers. I'm a survivor. I'm going to tell you about that."
She led the group of a dozen around the perimeter of what is no longer there. An observant visitor would have noticed that Head's right hand was scarred from the injuries suffered that morning five years ago.
"Those of us who were here always talk about how blue the sky was," she began.
She had been at an 8:30a.m. meeting on the 96th floor of the south tower.
"We heard very loud sounds coming from outside the meeting room," she recalled.
A plane had struck the north tower, which was, by her precise account, 113 feet away. The fire was so intense that the windows of her tower were too hot to touch. She saw people begin to jump from the north tower.
"And it wasn't just one. It wasn't just two," she said.
She went to the 78th floor, where several hundred people waited in the Sky Lobby for the express elevators.
"This woman started saying, 'There's another plane coming! There's another plane coming!'" Head recalled. "We didn't believe her at first."
The tip of the wing tore through the crowded Sky Lobby.
"The first thing you feel is a tremendous increase in pressure, all the air being sucked out of your lungs," she said. "The next thing you feel is flying through the air."
She was knocked unconscious and awoke in searing pain. A young man was patting out her burning clothes. His name was Welles Crowther and he wore a red bandana his father had given him to filter smoke should he ever get caught in a fire. He saved dozens that day.
"He will forever be known as the man with the red bandana," she recalled. "His calm made me calm."
Burned, bleeding, nearly blinded by dust, she struggled toward the stairway.
"Blood. Body parts. I crawled through all that," she recalled. "I realized everybody around me was dying."
She then encountered the first figure in FDNY bunker gear.
"I always like to say for me it was like seeing God," she recalled. "It was like, 'Okay, we're gong to make it.'"
The firefighter continued up toward her stricken co-workers and was among the 343 members of the department killed that day. The man in the red bandana also died, having gone back in after leading a group to safety. Head had managed to reach the street when the south tower came down and a firefighter pulled her under a rig.
"That was it for me. I woke up in a hospital five days later," she now told the tour group.
Head had not told this group that her husband died in the other tower. She also did not say that as she crawled through the carnage on the 78th floor a man charred from head to toe placed a wedding band in her palm. She stuck it in her pocket and forgot about it until months later, when her mother went through the personal possessions the hospital had bagged.
An inscription inside the ring led to the dead man's wife, who at first did not want to speak with Head. The woman then wanted to hear everything.
One way that Head has learned to cope with her own loss and horror is to tell her story to those who come to the Tribute Center, whose permanent exhibits opened with appropriate fanfare yesterday. She stood by the entrance with a beautiful smile that is her ultimate message to everyone these five years later.
To behold Head's smile is to know the terrorists did not come even close to winning. To see that smile is also to be challenged to be as decent and positive as this true survivor.
"If I get sad and cry, then everybody cries," she will tell you. "You have to keep that smile coming."
Get the hankies!
I have a huge lump in my throat.
Need some DUmmie Funnies to cheer me up now.
"To behold Head's smile is to know the terrorists did not come even close to winning."
And if we all stick together and DEMAND that our government protect us despite the 'rats best efforts, Islamofascists will NEVER defeat us.
GREAT story, strong woman. Thanks! :)
I popped up in mine also.
At a men's rally in 2002 at our church, we had a live video feed involving the Crowely family where 2000 men donned red bandannas in tribute to his bravery and courage that day.
Can't bear the pain of reading her story. Bless her and the other survivors.
So sad she lost her husband too - very strong woman.
It's funny how my problems don't seem so big after reading her story.
I watched United 93. At first, I watched it saying, "Don't go. Don't get on the plane." I knew how it ended, but somehow my mind said that I could wish it away. There was not a word in the movie about "Saving America" or "Saving the Capitol". It was a bunch of people coming to the realization that if they didn't do anything, they were dead anyway. They WERE heroes. Not because they saved anyone, but because they actually did something.
Watching the special features and the interviews with the families meeting the actors, made it all real.
If we don't do something about the threats on us, we are going to die. That is what the people on that flight realized. We need to realize it too.
Too bad that all those people who yelled and hollered that we should "Never Forget" have gone on with their lives, leaving barely a coma in their minds.
Even reading her account it is hard to imagine what it was like to be there and experience the pain, suffering and loss she witnessed. There probably will never be a day in her life that she won't think of this.
Are you aware of any other gestures/ movement to start a "Red Bandanna Brigade"?
It's called out of sight out of mind. Every time their is a 9/11 movie or Bush mentions 9/11 the Democrats cringe! They want us to forget and focus on social issues ONLY so we will get disgusted with the War on Terror.
There are some small towns in our area who now have parks, new libraries and other community gifts that have been donated by victim families.
I know. I still think about it every time I walk the streets of Manhattan and the only thing I experienced was seeing the second plane hit the building thru my window and the buildings collapse and the fear and evacuation of my building and all of Manhattan right after. But Nothing can compare to what she experienced.
These are the people who drive me crazy.
Wow. Thanks for the link and information. I hope others learn about the Fellowship of the Red Bandanna.
You are correct!
They are the one's who drive me nuts too.
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