Being there
Cistercian alumni in New York City and Washington, D.C.,
share their perspective on the day that changed our lives.

[Published in the December 2001 edition of The Continuum, the alumni magazine of Cistercian Preparatory School in Irving, Texas.]

By David Stewart
“My PATH train from New Jersey was scheduled to pull into the World Trade Center at 8:40 a.m.,” recalled Mike Smith ’77, who returned to work Sept. 11 after a one-week vacation. “As usual, it was a few minutes late.” The acrid smell deep within the WTC basement caught his attention, but Smith shrugged it off as perhaps an electrical fire — just another everyday annoyance of working in New York City.
Caroline Riskey’s subway train pulled into the World Trade Center at just about the same time. She was running late and would not make it to her desk on the 99th floor of the South Tower at 8:30 like usual. She had left husband Keith Riskey ’93 a few stops north of the World Trade Center. Keith and Caroline were married at the Cistercian Chapel in April. As she stepped off the crowded train, a wave of people carried Caroline up and out on to the street.
Smith knew “something was not right” as he neared the end of the long escalator ride up from the basement. Reaching the Concourse just below street level, “Everyone was being instructed to exit the building immediately. As I walked quickly to my usual exit, World Trade Center police were assisting injured people. The Concourse was filling up with smoke.”
As he hit the street, Smith encountered debris, primarily paper.
“People were pointing up,” he said. “As I turned to look, I noticed the hole, the black smoke, and the fire billowing out. Although it was a frightening sight, from street level it didn’t seem as if it were a large hole.”
Bystanders guessed that a small propeller plane had hit the tower. The pilot probably had a heart attack in-flight. “This was a typical pre-September-11th reaction by New Yorkers,” Smith reflected, “‘don’t be afraid; don’t over-react — we’ve seen it all and it will be okay.’”
Resisting the urge to have a more thorough look at the scene, Smith walked east, crossing Broadway, past the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and into his 11th floor office at AIG Inc., about one block north of the New York Stock Exchange.
Stepping off his subway, Greg Nettune ’96 ran “head-on into a group of a few hundred office workers fleeing.” Nettune lives in Brooklyn with a number of roommates, including Ramsey Al-Rikabi ’96 and Zach Herigodt ’96. Spilling out on to the street, Nettune was beffudled by the “paper debris raining down from the sky. My first confused thought was, ‘A ticker tape parade in this part of downtown?’ No one around me seemed to know what had happened. Rounding the corner from the subway exit, I saw the first tower burning. I walked one block closer, now standing amid the gathering crowd.”
Keith Riskey had just arrived at work at the Manhattan offices of Electronic Data Systems, about a half-mile north of the WTC. Everyone was buzzing with the news that a plane had crashed into the North Tower of the WTC. He tried contacting his wife at her South Tower office at AON, an international risk management firm.
“Hi. It’s Tuesday and I am in my office today,” said her voice on the recorded message that she had updated the night before. “Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”
It was now about 8:55. “Suddenly people began leaping from the top floors,” Nettune said. “The sight of the jumpers transfixed me, although I still had a vague notion that I would make my way to work. I remember repeating, ‘Oh my God,’ like a nervous mantra as the jumpers fell. People around me also were repeating broken exclamations, hugging coworkers, weeping, and praying loudly.”
“As the shock turned to nausea,” he said, “I made my way out of the crowd, heading away from the WTC. I couldn’t watch anymore. I turned the corner towards my office at Helen Keller Worldwide. Then I caught a glimpse of a huge plume of fire overhead and heard an explosion. The second tower had been hit.”
“Windows exploded around me. Police screamed to stand back away from the glass. I hid with a small group in a windowless garage entrance on the street adjacent to the WTC complex for a few moments.”
“For the first time that morning,” said Nettune, “I felt fear. I remember thinking that New York was under attack. From where I stood I could not see the towers but I could see the flames from the second explosion in the sky above the street. After what must have been only a few seconds, we decided to head for the Brooklyn Bridge.”
With his wife’s offices now under attack, Keith Riskey became frantic. He caught a cab to his apartment. From there, he watched on television as fire consumed the two towers. No word from Caroline. Panic set in.

Dr. Kittu Parekh ’90 had watched the second plane strike the South Tower on TV from the apartment of a friend near 34th Street and Broadway. Parekh is a medical doctor with a degree in Public Health from Harvard University. He was visiting the City for just the second time. Almost immediately, Parekh rushed down to the street and flagged down a policeman.
“I am a resident from out of town, I am prepared to help out if needed,” he said. The policeman whisked Parekh to the NYU Medical Center at 34th and First Avenue.
At the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, Nettune’s thoughts turned to Texas for a moment. He stopped at a pay phone and left a message at his father’s office. “I’m okay,” he said. Then he joined about 20,000 others on the Brooklyn Bridge, which had been closed to vehicular traffic soon after the second plane hit.
In Washington, D.C., Will Carty ’95 watched on television at work as the second plane struck in New York. At his desk in the Rayburn House Office Building adjacent to the Capitol, he began to hear reports of a small (perhaps unrelated) fire on the National Mall.
“Then somebody walked by my desk and told me that the Pentagon exploded. We were evacuated immediately.
“There was panic everywhere, and as we scrambled to leave the building we heard some secondary explosions from just across the river where the Pentagon was on fire. F-16’s tore through the air above the Capitol. We could see the smoke beginning to rise in thick plumes, and everyone just got as far away as they could as fast as they could.
“We heard that the Pentagon had been hit and that there were still planes unaccounted for,” Nettune remembered as he walked among the throng of refugees fleeing the flaming city. “We thought, ‘Here’s 20,000 people on New York’s most famous bridge. What an inviting target!’”
“I ran into my roommate Zach Herigodt who was crossing the Bridge going into Manhattan on his bicycle. I was relieved to see a friend and I told him what I had witnessed. He decided to ride closer to the scene. Just after parting I heard, felt, and saw the South Tower collapse.”
“People on the bridge began panicking,” Nettune said. “A woman passed out. People began walking out over the steel buttresses as if they were going to jump into the East River.”
Back at Keith Riskey’s apartment, the door opened. Caroline appeared. Since having been swept out of the World Trade Center complex over an hour before, Caroline had witnessed the fire, the falling debris, and the terror. She had been making her way the 16 blocks back to their apartment ever since. The Riskeys could only fathom how lucky they were.
Mike Smith was in his 11th floor office just blocks from the WTC when the South Tower collapsed. Within minutes, smoke filled the floor and the building’s fire alarm sounded.
“I gathered my things to head down to the street and called my wife to tell her what was happening. I warned her that I would be out of communication for a while since cell phones were not working,” Smith said.
“When the elevator doors opened,” Smith said, “the lobby air was filled with dust. Peering out the windows, we noticed substantial debris on the street. What had been a clear blue day turned ash gray. We realized that one of the Towers had actually collapsed. With damp cloths pressed over our noses and mouths, we evaluated our options.”
Before they drew any conclusions, the second tower collapsed, making “the street outside completely black.” A new wave of debris swirled by the window.
After about four hours of treating patients with nicks, cuts, and smoke inhalation, Dr. Parekh was whisked down to a location at the Chelsea Pier, several blocks away from the site.
“The smell of burning plastic and the dust were terrible,” he said. “You couldn’t walk without coughing. There was a visceral feeling to the whole event. It was very strange, almost a surreal experience. I didn’t feel like it was happening when it happened. Everyone was in a state of shock.”
Parekh visited with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel. They decided to build a large triage center at the Chelsea Pier location to prevent the anticipated casualties from overwhelming local hospitals.
“It was decided to build a 150-bed hospital, half surgical and half medical,” said Parekh, “The thought was ambulances could pick up victims at the site, deliver them to the triage center, then dispatch them where they needed to go. Unfortunately, I was there through the first night and second day and I saw two people. We had 800 doctors just standing by.”
It was afternoon when the three members of the Class of ’96 were reunited at their Brooklyn apartment; each relieved to find the others safe. “I was in a state of awe and fear and nausea all day,” Nettune said.
Smith spent the rest of the day moving from the lobby, to the cafeteria, and finally back to the 11th floor, as the air in the building improved.
“Most of the people in the building bailed out over the course of the day,” Smith said. “Several colleagues stayed, one of whom had a car and volunteered to drop me off at the home of my sister-in-law on the Upper West Side on his way home. We waited until 3:30, when reports of gas leaks (and the related risk of fire and explosion) began to circulate. The elevators had been turned off, forcing us to walk down the 11 stories.”
As they hurried out through the lobby on this extraordinary day, the ordinary grabbed Smith’s attention. “There was a janitor going about his business, shining the floors, as if nothing had happened.”

“I don’t even know how I am dealing with it,” Nettune said. “It still seems unreal. Everyone from my office got together one morning recently. Everyone told their stories. Some had been in the office building when the attack occurred. A Catholic priest and psychologist came in to counsel us on dealing with grief.”
“It’s been nice having close friends around like Zach, Ramsey, and our other roommates. Telling people your story has been cathartic. Right after it happened, it was hard to put into words. But there were so many people with worse stories. I guess it’s the kind of thing that just takes time to deal with.”
Andrew Robbins ’88 was on vacation in Italy when the tragedy occurred. But the impact of September 11 strikes him regularly. “Every night when I leave work,” Robbins said, “I look directly down West Broadway to see the lights from the relief effort reflected in a towering, rising haze of dust. There is also the disturbing omnipresent smell. People talk about the skyline, about how there is an obvious void, how downtown looks so ordinary. There is a general citywide sadness that something very special to NYC – one of its pride and joys – was viciously and violently taken away.”
Kittu Parekh reflected from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, “The experience taught me to appreciate a lot of everyday things. It highlighted the finality and the tenuousness of life. A cousin of mine from Pakistan had been working as a consultant for JP Morgan in the World Trade Center. He ate breakfast in Tower One everyday for months. By chance, his project was completed the Friday before September 11.
“It reminds us of the importance of random occurrences and chance meetings. It teaches us not to worry about little things. It really changes our perspective on life.”
A Muslim whose parents are Pakistani, Parekh also felt the sting of reprisals aimed against those of Arabic descent. “It was difficult when Islam was brought in to it. But most media coverage has been very fair. The terrorists are a bastardization of the religion just like the KKK is a bastardization of Christianity.”
From across the globe came a very different story of recovery. “The toughest thing about the attack for me has been the lack of an outlet for grief,” said Todd Bryan ’86, who is studying Chinese as he seeks employment in China. “Generally the attitude here is, ‘You got what you deserved, too bad.’ As I know very few Americans here, there has been very little opportunity to grieve and get this out of my system. I feel as if a family member has died, but I am not allowed to go to the funeral, and everyone around me is vaguely happy that the person died.”
“I know many people will look back on this as one of the saddest times in their lives,” Bryan said. “I will also unfortunately look back on it as one of the loneliest.”
“I am proud of our country and I know we will not only rebound, but will react with a level of dignity and justice that other countries will find more surprising than any faults they find in our foreign policy. For this, I am extremely proud to be an American.”
“On a personal level,” said Arun Dhingra ’86 who was preparing to take a flight from LaGuardia Airport to Boston when the attack occurred, “I suppose I feel the same feelings of shock, sadness, anger and fear as most Americans though my wife’s and my sense of immediate fear might be slightly higher because we live in Manhattan.
“I pray for the victims and their families,” Dhingra added, “and was touched by the calls of concern I received from my Cistercian classmates and Fr. Gregory. After all these years, our bonds remain as strong as ever.
“For me, recognizing the importance and longevity of these types of relationships is the one good thing that has resulted from all this.”