Posted on 03/15/2006 8:18:01 AM PST by West Coast Conservative
IT is one of the most chilling images to emerge from the horror that has become, simply, 9/11. Against the steel-and-glass background of the World Trade Center, a man falls headlong 1,300ft to the street below.
While pictures of the Twin Towers billowing smoke and flames will remain the most enduring image of the terrorist attacks, this one man's dying moments somehow humanise the toll of New York's darkest day.
And yet, as famous as the image is, the man's identity has remained a mystery. Until now.
Five years after the horror of September 11, 2001, the falling man has finally been identified as Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old who worked in a restaurant at the top of the north tower.
Over the years, his family has always assumed he perished in the building. Now, learning he had jumped is almost too much to bear.
His father, Alexander, a Baptist minister, has still not come to terms with the manner of his son's dying. "I can't talk about it," he says. "My life's work is telling people that they have to go on after tragedy, but I can't do it for myself."
Jonathan's elder sister, Gwendolyn, says: "When I first looked at the picture... and I saw it was a man - tall, slim - I said, 'If I didn't know any better, that could be Jonathan'.
"I never thought of the Falling Man as Jonathan. I thought of him as a man that just took his life in his hands for just one second.
"Did that person have so much faith that he knew that God would catch him - or was he so afraid to experience the end?"
On the day he died, Jonathan had kissed his wife Hillary goodbye before making the 20-mile journey from his home in Mount Vernon to Manhattan where he worked in the Windows On The World restaurant as a sound engineer.
That morning, the restaurant was holding a breakfast for 16 members of the Waters Financial Technology Congress, and 71 other guests.
At 8.45am, less than an hour after Jonathan arrived for work, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower.
The impact sliced through floors 93 to 99, killing hundreds, immediately creating a 1,000C inferno as the plane's fuel ignited.
The fireball was so intense that people in the building's lobby were burned as the flames shot down the lift shafts.
But it was the 1,000 people trapped on floors 100 to 107 who were unluckiest. With the lift shafts severed and staircases blocked by rubble, fire and choking smoke, there was no escape.
With the air becoming unbreath-able, desperate staff and diners began smashing windows. And it was in those final moments that Jonathan, an asthmatic, must have made his dreadful decision...
If we don't know what went through Jonathan's mind then, we do know the last desperate thoughts of others who decided they would take fate into their own hands.
Eighteen minutes after the first plane struck, the second plane hit the south tower, trapping another 600 people.
Mother-of-two Alayne Gentul, 44, a senior vice-president of the Fiduciary Trust, was among them, and in her last few moments she called her husband, Jack.
"She told me smoke was coming in the room, coming through the vents," Jack Gentul says.
"Her breath was laboured. I asked her why she didn't go down and she said it was really hot out there. She said to me 'I'm scared'. She wasn't a person who got scared, and I said, 'Honey, it'll be all right, it'll be all right, you'll get down.'
"She said she loved me and said to tell the boys she loved them. I was so shocked I said, 'Of course I will, but it's going to be all right.' When I hung up the phone I was horrified." It was the last time the couple ever spoke.
"She was found on the street in front of the building across from hers," says Jack. "Whether she jumped or fell, I don't know. I hoped that she had succumbed to the smoke, but it doesn't seem likely.
"In some ways it might just be the last element of control... something you can do. To be out of the smoke and the heat, to be out in the air, it must have felt like flying."
Official estimates of how many people leapt from the buildings vary from 50 to 200.
US writer Tom Junod says: "Between seven and eight per cent of those who died in New York City on September 11, 2001, died by jumping out of the buildings.
"If we consider only the north tower, where the vast majority of jumpers came from, the ratio is one in six." Photographer Richard Drew, 54, had trained his I lens on the north tower and begun filming the jumpers. "You could hear them," he says. "It was a big thud, like the sound of sacks of cement hitting the ground."
When he returned to the Associated Press bureau, a sequence of 12 shots stood out.
THEY caught a man, seemingly calm, plunging to his inevitable death.
The picture was published around the world, causing widespread revulsion, as if merely looking at them was to intrude upon a moment of private agony. After September 12, the picture was rarely shown again, but Tom Junod couldn't get the image out of his head and spent years trying to discover the identity of the Falling Man.
It was executive chef Michael Lomonaco who finally solved the mystery.
"Jonathan fitted the body type, the skin colour, and it left the door open for a possibility that it was really Jonathan," Lomonaco says.
Jonathan's father is still too upset to speak about his son but his sister, Gwendolyn, is ready to talk.
"Jonathan was a person who just loved life and it was contagious so that when we were around him, you couldn't help smiling and laughing." Nobody will ever know for sure if Jonathan was the Falling Man, although the evidence makes it highly likely.
In one of the pictures, his white shirt is blown away by the wind to reveal an orange T-shirt - identical to the one he wore to work.
But as Gwendolyn says: "It's not about trying to find out who he is, but what his death says to all of us." And what it says is ... never again.
He said that some looked like they jumped, others fell because they couldn't hold on, some were obviously pushed by the terror stricken people behind them trying to get to fresh air and some seemed to just step out into space, not knowing in the thick smoke that they were walking through a shattered window.
Other friends and family who witnessed the same from different points said the same thing.
And the Democrats want to put 9/11 out of the publics mind saying "It was just one bad day 4 1/2 years ago. Why do we have to keep talking about it." What a vile group.
If only one plane had been hijacked and hit one of the towers it seems possible that the cause of death of any victims would have been listed as accidental.
The ability shared by liberals and Islamofascists to deny reality is simply stunning. That's why trying to talk to them is like talking to someone who's insane. Reality is whatever they want it to be at a given moment, with no reference to facts, evidence, or logic.
Never Forget
Never Forget
Many communities still acknowledge the 9-11 tragedy by having their "Community Day" on the Saturday closest to the September 11 date. Firefighters, Police and First Responders are honored at these ceremonies (and at regularly-scheduled church services that are held in the 9-11 time frame).
Thanks for posting. My prayers for all the victims and their loved ones. I know God reached out to them and they are in His hands.
My thoughts about the enemies of this country, both here and abroad, are unrepeatable.
I haven't seen this footage in a good while. Had to fight the tears back.
Never ever forget.
At that moment, yes.
"His father, Alexander, a Baptist minister, has still not come to terms with the manner of his son's dying. "I can't talk about it,"
A parent's worst nightmare: their own child precedes them in death. That the son's death was so public, brutal and senseless makes the anguish all the worse. Prayers for this family. Never forget.
crashing more than one plane was probably the muzzies biggest mistake. Crash just one and it would have been dismissed as an accident.
Has anyone seen a picture BOOK of 9-11......a book with all the faces of people who died? A book with all that is shown in what was captured on that day?
"His father, Alexander, a Baptist minister, has still not come to terms with the manner of his son's dying. "I can't talk about it,"
A parent's worst nightmare: their own child precedes them in death. That the son's death was so public, brutal and senseless makes the anguish all the worse. Prayers for this family. Never forget."
I guess this is one of the people the charming Ward Churchill believes deserved to die...
Yes we could, but the person with the guts to do so, does not have the power to make the decisions.
>>>>Excuse my ignorance, but why doesn't it hurt? Is a person who falls that far dead before they hit the pavement?>>>>
Yes, but you're dead before the brain can process the neural information it is receiving and perceive it as pain. :-(
God bless all the people who died that day. I don't think the jumpers were suicides, rather humans seeking one more moment of terror-free existence in their lives.
Pinz
My 14 year old nephew and I were down at Ground Zero a few weeks ago.While I was looking in the other direction,he was handed a flyer which claimed that 9/11 was a CIA/Defense Department job.
I wish that we had saved it.It was so pathetic that it was funny.
In the week following 9-11 there was another fatal plane crash near NYC, the airliner from the Dominican Republic. It was determined to be accidental....but many people suspected it was a terrorist act, but the government wanted to cover it up because the country couldn't handle another terrorist act at that point.
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