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.
This article is almost pornographic in its loving attention to detail.
life
Ouch - Marking for later read as well.
I'm in NY right now and not ready to deal.
DD
Awesome article. Thanks for posting the link.
That is exactly what I was thinking. That perhaps the people took the only way out that had any hope- by jumping they thought they had a tiny, tiny chance to somehow survive. By staying, they had no chance.
Of course, as was pointed out by others, not everyone jumped, some fell, some were probably accidently pushed.
Oh gosh, it is so hard just typing this. :(
It will be a cold day in hell before I ever forget 9-11, no matter what the traitorous MSM and Democrat Party say or do!
If you read the entire article, Jonathon is identified at the end.
Yes, I have 3 books.
Can you tell me where I can get them? I want them to show my neices and nephew...and grandson....do they have pictures of people falling from the buildings? THAT'S what I do NOT want forgotten.
Quite frankly, I could not read the whole thing.
I have HUGE acrophobia. When I get near a ledge in a building or a flat glass window (and yes, I visited the WTC observation level before the attack) I get dizzy and panicky.
I thank God that I have never had to choose between the flames or the jump.
And I prayed that God would take he life of those who had to make that choice. Else I would not believe in a merciful God.
I MUST believe that God took them on the way down.
I MUST.
Prayers for his family.
The best of the 3 books is called Here Is New York. There website is www.scalo.com. E-mail: publishers@scalo.com
You can also try www.hereisnewyork.org
There are 2 pictures of jumpers. The book is 843 pages of pictures that professional and amateur photographer's took on 9/11. The book was published in 2002.
Some graphic images. Very powerful. If you want your family to NEVER FORGET, I recommend buying this book. I paid $50
The other 2 books I have are from LIFE. The 1st one is called ONE NATION, America Remembers September 11, 2001. My best friend's son was killed in Tower 2. He was FDNY, Rescue 3 Firefighter, Tom Foley. On page 152 and 153 are pictures of his sister and brother, who is also a fireman, but was not working that day.
There are pictures of jumpers in this book also.
The introduction is by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. LIFE had survivor's relatives come into Manhattan and they were put in a photo booth that took life size images of them. Besides being in the book, they had an exhibit of these life size survivor photo's that was shown around the world.
This one cost $25.
The 3rd book is a sequel to the 2nd. By LIFE, it's called THE AMERICAN SPIRIT, Meeting the Challenge of September 11. Introduction by President George W. Bush. This one cost $30
Published by LIFE Books, Time Inc. Their website is www.LIFE.com
I got mine at Barnes and Noble. I highly recommend all 3 of these books.
The 2 by LIFE Books, have stories along with the pictures.
I got an idea how many when watching the French brothers' wonderful (yet horrible of course) documentary on 9/11, the one that was originally to be about a fireman coming of age, fighting his first fire. (And what a fire that was, his first...) It's the film that has the only moving footage the world has of the first plane hitting the tower.
In all the scenes filmed in the lobby, at the emergency command center, after the towers were hit, there was this sound, this incredibly loud hideous sound, OVER and OVER and OVER, quite often, in the background. We were told that they were people, hitting the ground. It was so thick with people falling that they said not to go out certain ways. Tragedy almost unmentionable.
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And, it would seem, his third day out of Jr HS.
You just don't get it do you? I quoted that sentence, I didn't write it. How are the GED night classes going?
Thank you.
Thanks for posting this article, although it brought me to tears. He had a wonderful smile.
Missed this yesterday. An answer to that question many of us have wondered for over 4 years.
He (Jonathan Briley) was a sound engineer.
I am talking about soemone else. The falling man was originally improperly indentifeid by someone whose name I will not repeat
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