Miracles and Fate on Floor 78

torahcafe.com september 11 2001 was an absolutely magnificent day was beautiful it's a gorgeous fall day there wasn't a cloud in the sky certainly not like london the temperature was perfect everything was perfect it was 20 to 7 in the morning i had my briefcase over my shoulder i had my cup of coffee in my hands and i yelled up to my wife bye hon love you see ya i yelled up to my kids bye kids have a great day in school love you all and i started to walk out the door and all of a sudden my wife yelled down to me and she said did you do boros book order barack is my third child i currently have five and he was eight years old at the time and i learned something that day teachers have a wonderful way of torturing parents it is called the scholastic book order now i understand i don't think you have this year but in the states teachers usually from grades kindergarten until about fourth or fifth grade they issue these pamphlets that have a list of books and games on them and it encourages the children to order books that they should read and get them used to reading my son who was eight years old was no different than any other eight-year-old maybe a little bit more whiny than most kids but and he was the type of kid who wanted like every game and like every book on a list now my wife normally dealt with this but my wife is a school administrator she runs a special ed department in the girls yeshiva in far away queens and she had just opened school so she was like super busy on top of that if you remember it was exactly one week before rosh hashanah and of course she was in charge of making sure the meals were prepared and everything was done so given all that she didn't really have the time or the okay to deal with her with him and she said it's your job says to me it's your job to do the book order with him i went okay now as i mentioned it was one week before rosh hashanah and if anybody remembers that year rosh hashanah was tuesday wednesday so yom kippur was the following thursday the first days of sukkot's tuesday wednesday the last days will tuesday wednesday basically i was going to be working about two days a week for the next four weeks so i made up my business to be in the office as early as possible and stay as late as possible in order to get my work done so i wouldn't fall too far behind so she said to me did you do box book order i said no i didn't she says you're not leaving the house until you do the book order i put my briefcase down put my cup of coffee down went into my kitchen proceeded to negotiate with my eight-year-old for the next 20 minutes i whittled him down to two books i felt pretty good interestingly enough the two books that he picked were from a series called survivor does god have a sense of humor or what well i filled out the parachute and i wrote the check put into an envelope oh by the way really important and you're going to see this throughout my story you're going to see a whole bunch of coincidences and at the end of the day i learned a lot out of those and i'm telling you now god was looking out for me that day there's no other reason why i'm here today you see my son's book order was due on monday but he left his pamphlet in school on friday so on monday my wife wrote a note to the teacher asking her if he can have an extra day to fill it out and put the order in and she said the note back saying of course and she made sure that he had the pamphlet with him had my son brought his pamphlet home on friday i would have done the book order with him on sunday and today somebody else would be standing here telling you a completely different story because i would have been in my office at eight o'clock in the morning and i would have been dead but because he left this pamphlet in school on friday i am standing here today to tell you my story one coincidence wait for the rest so i filled out the tear sheet filled out the check put in an envelope made sure he took it with him grab my briefcase grab my cold cup of coffee and off i went i got to i got to the trade center at 20 minutes to 9. my office was on the 101st floor we occupied the top five floors when i went to 105. my office 101st floor let me tell you something it was a magnificent view it was unbelievable as a matter there were days where there were white clouds covering and we were the only thing sticking up all we saw was white and the tip of the empire staple it was magnificent it was fantastic i loved it so the way to get up to my office on 101st floor you couldn't go all the way up with one elevator you took an express elevator from from the from the lobby to 78 and on 78 you got out and you changed it was a sky lobby and you changed for the elevators that would take to the higher floors so i'm standing waiting for the first elevator to come down they're about 11 or 12 of these things and by the way these things were fast there was one elevator in the middle of the lobby that went straight from the lobby all the way to windows on the world which was on 106th floor it got there in under a minute these things they flew people said people used to say when they took the elevators up their ears used to pop because of the speed and it was unbelievable so i'm standing there waiting for elevator the first elevator that comes down was all the way on the right side of the lobby so i ran down to the end of the lobby and i got into the elevator i get up to the 78th floor wide open floor to ceiling windows a lot of natural light it's very pretty i get out on 78 and the elevator bank that i need to get to my office was all the way on the left side so i got out of the elevator like i did every day hung the left started walking down to that back of elevators i must submit about two and a half meters from that bank of elevators went as best as i can describe there was an explosion i thought a bomb had gone off in the elevator the entire building shook and i mean shook the lights went out the place filled with smoke and i was thrown off my feet and i am not embarrassed to tell you i was screaming i had no idea what had happened but i had never been so scared and i heard people yelling firing the elevator and all kinds of stuff but i had no idea i looked around and i saw there was a light an emergency light in between two banks of elevators so i figured that's got to be a safe place and i remembered when i was a kid i learned that when there's smoke what do you do what do you do you stay low to the ground right i literally crawled to that light and i stood up and i'm looking around trying to figure out what to do i walk behind the bank of elevators and a lo and behold i find an office there i had been in that building i'd been working in that building for eight and a half years never knew there was an office on that floor all i knew was the elevators a security desk and a security guard i was it i opened the door to the office and sitting on the floor right next to the door with her back against the wall is this woman's security guard and she is crying her eyes out and i leaned over there and i said man calm down we're gonna be okay we're gonna get out of here and i walked further into the office and i saw there was a guy there who was the fire warden for the floor now for those of you that don't know i don't know what they do here but in the states in every major office building they have one guy on every floor who is the designated they call the fire warden and he is the go-to guy so if anything happens in the building he calls management or management calls him and he disseminates the information to everybody on the floor so matt does get bombarded with phone calls from everybody on the floor now i knew he was the fire one because he wore a stupid red hat and it said fire warden on it and i know that because i have the exact same one because i was the fire warden for my floor so i ran over to the guy and i said to him what do we do where do we go the guy looks and he goes i don't know of course he didn't know we didn't know what happened all we knew was was a bomb that went off in a building i mean that's what we knew that's what we thought he's trying the phones the landlines they're totally dead the mobiles nothing working i go back outside trying to figure out a way to get out and i bump into a co-worker mine her name was virginia di chiara virginia was on the elevator that i was about to get on when the plane hit the doors had started to close and they jammed open about a foot and as she described to me the walls of the elevator collapsed the ceiling collapsed there was a cable that was in the elevator that snapped and was sparking in the elevator the jet fuel came down the sides of the elevator ignited by the sparks and there was a wall of fire there were three people in that elevator roy bell virginia and a woman by the name of renee roy bell was the first one to jump through that fire and jump out of the elevator and he suffered second-degree birds virginia jumped out right after he did she suffered third degree burps and renee who was the last one out ultimately died from her birds this is all in a space of six eight ten seconds maybe that was the difference between life and death that day at least for these three people so virginia was there and she's walking like this and she sees me just me ari please help me and please whatever you do don't leave me i said to virginia i promise i won't leave you and we will get out of here now here's the irony virginia was hired the year before and she was an internal auditor and the first department she audited was mine needless to say she didn't give me very good marks as a matter of fact she almost got me fired so our relationship we were not good friends but here she was and here i was and you know what god put me in that situation literally to me is a test saying like what are you going to do and i did the only thing i knew and that was to help her our relationship did not matter didn't matter we weren't friends didn't matter she almost got me fired here was another human being in trouble and i was there and i was gonna do whatever it took to help her i wasn't gonna run away i did and i helped her and i brought her into that office and i gave her some water to drink she couldn't hold the cup an eight-ounce cup of water she couldn't hold that's how badly our hands were burned so i had to pour it into her mouth give her some relief i turned to the fire ward what are we doing he goes i don't know all of a sudden into the office walks another security guard and she's carrying a two-way walkie-talkie radio and i'm thinking of myself a radio that's health there's help on the other end of that thing but she was crying her eyes out and i'm going like i got to do something i ran over i grabbed literally grabbed him and i said ma'am you gotta calm down i said you've got a radio and you can get us help you need to calm down you need to get on that radio and you need to get us help now and she calmed down a little bit and she was like whimpering and she was like 78 we need help unfortunately there was so much chatter on that radio i realized we weren't going to get help from there i walked back outside into the hole looking for a way out come back in and all of a sudden the fire warden turns and says okay we can get out stairwell on the left sterile on the left it was at that point that i realized which i i realized there are signs in these big buildings in most buildings that i actually look for today every time i walk into a new building in the states they're usually red and white here they're green and white you know what they say exit right i found the exit sign and i walked towards the exit sign and some guy ran ahead of me and we had to go around a bend and he opens it there was a door there he opens the door sure enough there's the stairwell he yells i found it i'm thinking great now here's another interesting point in the trade center there were hundreds of staircases most of them went down 10 20 30 flights and that was it and then you had to come out on the floor and walk around get to another stairwell to continue to go down this one went from 78 all the way down to one how did he know i have no idea i don't know where he got the information from the phones weren't working i don't know but somehow he did and so the guy opens the door he says i found it i'm looking out there and i see there are lights on the stairwell i figured maybe there were emergency lights i wasn't really sure but i said to myself better to be safe and i turned around was roy bell the fire warden myself virginia and then there were six or eight other people from the floor with us and i turned around to the view behind me i said does anybody have a flashlight thinking to myself if the lights go out in the stairwell it'll be pitch black and two people behind me yep got a flashlight and i remember thinking to myself where did you get a flashlight and why are you carrying it but i figured i didn't care i said folks if the lights go out nobody panic we will have light and the next thing i did you women will appreciate this i looked at virginia's feet and i said thank god she's wearing flats because there were high heeled shoes in that stairwell all the way down women had just kicked them off to get down as fast as they could so we started to head down fireward and roy bell myself virginia i remember the order because i remember telling virginia if you feel faint you can fall forward you can fall on me i'll catch you i'll carry you of course roy bell wasn't very happy with that because he said if she falls on you what's going to happen to me i said roy don't worry about it we'll be good we started to head down we got down to the 75th floor three flights when as far as i'm concerned one of the biggest miracles of the day happened to me other than the fact that i wasn't killed when the plane hit my mobile phone right now you're thinking yes so why well let me tell you something about the trade center you could never ever get reception in that building i used to be in my office standing by the window going like hello can you hear me now hello can you hear me now anybody old enough to remember that commercial can you hear me now no it doesn't matter it was a verizon commercials can you hear me now it's very good anyway you couldn't get you couldn't get reception in the trade set and on that day forget it because you know we were trying to call when he was trying to get information there was no reception all of a sudden my phone rang i'm in the middle of a stairwell in the middle of the building doesn't get reception my phone i was so shy i forgot about hello it's my wife on the other end of that phone and she was telling me something about a plane going into the building i had no idea what she was talking about i said to joyce i'm on the 75th floor i'm in a stairwell i'm on my way down now is not a good time i said i'll call you when i get out of the building and i hung up the phone not realizing of course that it was going to be hours until i got to her again roy bell goes like oh my god you got reception on your phone can i borrow your phone call my wife i said of course i handed him the phone he dialed he hit send nothing dead i literally looked up and i said thank you god because at least my wife knew that i was alive that i wasn't killed when the plane hit she knew i was alive which kind of comforted me so that she wasn't in that state of limbo so we continued on down and we got down to about the 50th floor and virginia turns to me and says to me ari i can't go on i can't do it my first instinct was i'll have her sit down we'll rest a little bit and then we'll get up and keep going and then i thought to myself you know what if she sits down she may never get up and if she doesn't get up there is a good chance we're gonna die and honestly that wasn't on my agenda for the day so i said to know virginia you can do this and there was somebody else who had a bottle of water and they gave her to drink and we poured on our arms to try and give her relief from the burns and now i'm coaching i'm counting down floors 45 44 42 you're doing great we're doing great we're doing great and we were until 38. we got to the 38th floor it was backed up with people see what happened was the firefighters were coming up so in order for them to be able to go up they stopped the people from going down so we hit this huge crowd and one of the people one of the women in the crowd turned around as we were coming down saw virginia went like oh and virginia goes ari how bad is it i got virginia you look great you're fine look i knew she was in trouble i mean it was bad but i had to keep her spirits up i mean that was the least i could do medically i couldn't help her but at least keep her spirits up which is what i tried to do but i'm scared i don't know what to do and so i started to yell out i said is there a paramedic in the building i said i have a burn victim here if you're a paramedic please come and help otherwise please step to the right and let us through so we can get help and people did now i'm telling you this this stairwell was two people wide it was one it was two that was it how they ever expected to evacuate 50 000 people i have no idea wasn't my problem although that day it was but it doesn't really matter but the people squeezed over and they opened the path so that we can go down it was unbelievable we got down to about the eighth floor and there was water all over the place see the sprinklers worked very well on the lower floors where there was no fire upstairs no i forget it was totally knocked out there was no sprinkler or nothing all right that fire raged but there was plenty of water on the eighth floor it was ankle deep i'll never forget i turned to virginia and i said to virginia take it real slow because if she would slip and fall there's no way i'd be able to pick her up you couldn't touch her her arms was so it was you could trust me when i tell you you couldn't touch her and i remember i got to tell you this i was wearing a brand new pair of trousers that day the fear of the woman i said if anything happens to these trousers my wife is going to kill me and so i did this yeah that's what i did it lasted a flight after one flight of stairs i was like i'm not doing this it's ridiculous i figured if i ever get out of here i'll deal with my wife later and we head on down we got down to the first floor and the fire warden keeps going down i go where are you going he goes we got to get out through the garage i went like okay i figured he knows right so i turned to virginia and i said look we already went down 78 flights of stairs what's another four or five and we continued on town we got down about two flights when all of a sudden the door on the first floor opens up and some guy who i didn't see yells down where are you people going i yield back up we're going out through the garage he goes no no you can't get out through the garage you got to come back up here and come out through the first floor i turned to virginia i said we got to go back up to flights she said a few things that i can't say in mixed company or in any company and we had to back up let me tell you something what i heard later was there were people in that garage that never got out who was the guy who opened the door i don't know i never saw him i only heard a voice and why did he pick that moment to open the door i don't know but that guy voice angel saved our lives that day we got out on the first floor and i'm looking around and oh my god we're right by the lobby of tower one i'm figuring great you go through the revolving doors go through the lobby go out the revolving doors you're out on the street the fastest way out of the building but there were police and firefighters there and they were telling us no go the other way go walk through the mall walk through the atrium welcome there's a lot of stores to walk it's a long way out to get out of the building but we did and i'm very happy we did because had we gone out the way i wanted to go out that would have put us out on west street you know what was going on on west street that's where the people were jumping my feeling exactly if i would have seen that and i saw it on tv and i saw the new york post had a picture of it of one guy floating in the air if i would have seen that live i wouldn't be standing here today i would have been locked up i'd been in an asylum i wouldn't have been able to deal with it i thank god every day that they were there to tell us to go the other way and as we're going out the the water was was from the sprinklers were dripping down virginia later told me she says every time i drop hit her off she was like a knife going through her arm i can't imagine the type of pain she was in and she said to me is walking out ari please call my mom tell her i'm okay and i said give me the number i'll punch it into my phone and as soon as we get out of the building i'll make the call and we got up to we got out towards the exit of the building we left us out on church street and they were policing firefighters and telling everybody uptown uptown people started people were running uptown they're running away from the building as fast as they could i turned to a company i said i have a burn victim here what should we do where should we go and he says go across the street in front of the millennium hotel we're setting up a triage center there'll be ambulances there bring her over there that's what we did we went across the street and sure enough an ambulance shows up i help her into the ambulance i turn around step out of the ambulance and i breathe a sigh of relief because i figured at least now she's getting medical attention something i couldn't give her the only thing i can do is keep her spirits up but i couldn't help her medically now she's getting medical attention i was relieved thank you i was relieved and i stepped out of the ambulance and i turned around i looked up at the buildings and there was a guy standing next to me and i turned him and i said to him how did building two get on fire and then i looked at me like i'm crazy you see i never heard the second plane i don't know why people think i'm crazy or i'm deaf one of the two maybe it was because i was so focused on getting out that i just blocked everything out but i never heard the second plane i literally thought the winds had blown the fire from building one to building two guy looks at me says what are you nuts he goes two jetliners when i do the bills they're calling it a terrorist attack i'm looking at him like what are you crazy what i'm running scared because you know this never happened before i'm trying to dial the phone i'm trying to get a hold of virginia's mom trying to get a hold of my wife there's no reception whatsoever i'm running into the ambulance out of the ambulance i'm going back finally i said to the driver the house i said wait a minute why aren't you leaving you have a burn victory he says we can't leave until we fill the ambulance they were expecting a huge amount of casualties now fortunately or unfortunately it never materialized because you're either very much alive or very much dead there really wasn't all that in between if you were above the plane you were dead if you were below the plane you were alive it really wasn't much else unless you caught like in one of the elevators which is what happened to these people but there weren't a whole lot of casualties so he says we're expecting a huge amount of casualties we can't leave and virginia's going nuts she can't she says i'm gonna faint i can't take the pain finally they loaded the ambulance they say okay ready to go i'm thinking thank god and all of a sudden virginia turns to me and she says to me ari you're coming with us now i don't want to say that i was in a comfort zone because of really what was going on but the reality is i knew where i was and i knew if i had to get anywhere else i would know how to do that i knew the subways i knew the buses i knew the streets i would know how to go there the thought of getting into an ambulance and going god knows where on that day didn't excite me secondly and more importantly once she's gone and i know she's getting help do you know where i'm going i'm going back to the building because i'm looking for my friends i'm looking for my co-workers i'm looking to help i'm not going anywhere it was my nature i mean i just i wanted to help so i tell virginia virginia you don't need me anymore i said i'll get a hold of your mom she'll meet you at the hospital you're gonna be fine you don't need me anymore she turned to the ambulance driver and she says we're not leaving unless he comes with us and i look at the ambulance driver and he's looking at me and i see in his eyes he's thinking this is not a camp service but i'm looking in and i'm thinking you know maybe for our own psychological well-being maybe i should just come and he said fine hop into the front and i got into the front of that ambulance and we pulled away we were only of one of a few ambulances that actually got away from the scene that day i have friends who are members of atsala in new york that showed me pictures of crushed ambulances at the scene virginia thanks me every single day for saving her life and i say you got it all wrong who saved his life if she wouldn't have insisted that i get into that ambulance i would have been standing at the base of that building when it came down and i would be dead no question in my mind none but she insisted i get into that ambulance we pulled away we got to the hospital i helped get her into the emergency room and then as new york is so known for they threw me out see they said to me um are you a relative i go no she goes you can't stay but i brought her in here i'm her co-worker she's got nobody else i'm sorry you can't stay here you have to leave and they literally threw me out i turned to virginia i said listen virginia i'll get a hold of your mom she's going to be a real soon you're going to be okay and i walked out and i walked out of the hospital when i got out into the street all of a sudden i heard somebody go wow did you hear tower 2 collapsed and that hospital was on 12th street and 7th avenue and you had a clear view straight down to the trade center and sure enough tower 2 was gone god now anybody in this room been to the trade center okay do you remember how big these things were do you know if there's a real estate person in this room they were 50 000 square feet per floor they were massive 107 floors massive let me tell you something i saw the hole in the building i remember it i remember like yesterday i saw the fire i saw the hole but you know what i saw the firefighters going up and i figured to myself they'll put the fire out it'll take a couple of months to get the building back in shape heck i can use a vacation but the fact that this thing just collapsed i had a pit in my stomach like you wouldn't believe i was just i was running so scared i'm trying if i can't get reception on my phone i'm trying to look around for a pay phone a pay phone what's the last time anybody in this room use the payphone by a show of hands yeah well that's kind of what it was like nobody i know does anybody know people look at me like i'm crazy i paid for it what are you crazy all of a sudden i saw a guy walking down the street and he was talking on his mobile and i'll never forget i was thinking to myself when this is all over i'm going to find out who his carriers and i'm going to switch to them there were a lot of stupid things that went through my mind that day let me tell you but i ran over to the guy and i said excuse me can i use your phone it's an emergency and the guy goes uh yeah sure he says hi listen some guy needs my phone i'll call you back and he hung up and he gave me the phone which i thought was amazing as it is but so i picked up the phone i dialed and the first person i called was virginia's mom i told this to my wife six months later she was so mad she was like why didn't you call me first i said i promised i'd call her mom who's going to break my promise so i called her mom i said hi miss diciara my name is arie schumann i'm a co-worker of your daughters virginia's and she is alive but she is severely burned and i recommend you get down here as quickly as possible saying vincent's gave her the whole story and the next thing i heard was screaming and crying i have no idea what's going on all of a sudden a male voice gets on the phone i assume she gave the phone to her husband i told him the story he thanked me i hung up the phone i said the guy can i make one more call now he heard what was going on he says of course so i dialed my wife i hit send nothing dead i went forget that carrier but i don't know what to do i'm desperate all of a sudden i see a restaurant around the corner restaurant they have phones so i go running into the restaurant i bumped into the waiter and i said excuse me can i use your phone the way it looks and he goes well it's not my restaurant it's not my phone what's wrong with you i blow right past them because i saw people in the back on the phones and i ran to the back and there's a woman standing there and she looks at me she goes do you need a phone i go yes cause you're gonna have to wait wait i can't wait this is an emergency you don't understand i need to make this call there were two guys sitting at a table and they were eating breakfast or lunch i don't even know because i had no idea what time it was the first time i looked at my watch it was a quarter to one remember that time because i'm going to get to that guy looks at me and he says to me do you need a phone my apartment is five doors down you can come to my apartment and use my phone now this is new york city i'm looking at this guy and i'm thinking axe murderer but i'm desperate and i go like uh yeah sure thank you so much and he says to the guy he says listen i'm gonna let this guy come to my apartment use my phone and we walked out of the restaurant we went around the corner and as we went around the corner in the distance there was a pay phone with a line of people on it and all of a sudden as we're walking this one woman comes off the line starts walking towards us i don't know where she was going she comes walking towards us and as she gets us he stops her and he says to her do you need a phone you can come to my apartment and use my phone and you saw the look in her eye because now there were two of us she was thinking ex-murderers and she goes like uh no thank you and she continued on we got to the door of the apartment building he unlocks it turns to the people on the pay phone line and says if anybody needs a phone you can come up to my apartment to use my phone who was this guy let me tell you something he was an absolute saint his name was john rockasalva john rocasalva that was his name i'll never forget it as long as i lived the guy was an absolute saint i found out five years later five years later there was a reporter who interviewed me who happened to be in the same place the same time doesn't matter and he said to me that john's phone bill from that day alone was over three hundred dollars three hundred dollars and the reporter asked me he said why he goes i didn't know how else to help i figured that's the best way to help guy was insane it was unbelievable so he opens the door to the apartment building and i'm looking inside and it was a six-story walk-up no elevator and i'm looking and i look up and i go like god please let him live on the first floor please i mean i was tired he lived on the first floor it was unbelievable he opens the door to his apartment it was more of a closet than an apartment i tell you new york city i mean this this thing was so small you couldn't change your mind in this apartment that's how small that's how small it was it was ridiculous guy didn't have a tv didn't have a radio he didn't have a mirror in his apartment how do you shave without a mirror whatever but he had a phone it's good so there's the phone i pick it up i dial i dial my wife i get a fast busy signal trouble on the lines hang up pick it up dial again fast busy third time same thing now in the meantime he was going up and down bringing people off the line for the pay phone so there's a guy standing behind me taxi on the show he says uh excuse me can i try now i want like sure go ahead he picks up the phone he dials yeah hi honey it's me i'm some guy's apartment yeah i'm on camera hangs up the phone there's a woman behind him she goes next she picks up the phone she dies yeah it's me i'm some guy's a problem but i was still civil i was like uh do you mind if i try one more time i go sure no problem i dialed picked up the phone i dialed i got a fast busy now i don't want to say i was paranoid which i was but i really really thought that they were out to get me i think i thought to myself they missed me in the trade center they're tracking me they know i'm here they're keeping the fast busy so i would stay there and they're going to get me there let me tell you something just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really out to get you don't forget that i picked up the phone i said one more time i dialed and it started to ring my heart was pounding i said thank god phone rang and all of a sudden on the other end bino's face gekko may i help you joyce schonbrunn please who's calling her husband hold on no no no and then you get the music they put you on hold they put you on perma holes put you on hold and completely forget about you figuring the music will pacify you and at some point in time you just hang up and go away it couldn't have been more than 30 maybe 60 seconds it seemed like hours and all of a sudden my wife picks up the phone i say honey hi it's me she started to cry i said honey what's the matter tower one had collapsed the last time she spoke to me where was i i was on the 75th floor of taiwan she was sure i was dead she had no doubt in her mind she hadn't heard from me she was sure she was wondering who was going to say kaddish for me because my oldest male child was eight years old sparkle she was wondering how she was going to tell the kids that daddy's dead she had no idea how she was going to deal with it she lived through this thing twice let me tell you thank god i have i did get out and i am around to talk about it and i talk to audiences all over the world okay because it's important after she calms down she says to me what are you gonna do you know they shut the city down the tunnels are closed the bridges are closed there's no transportation no subways no buses nothing what are you gonna do i go i don't know i said maybe i'll call ellie and go to his office ellie was my brother my younger brother he worked up on 47th street and sixth avenue i'm down on 12th street in seventh year i said maybe i'll go to ellie's office i don't know but i'll call you when i get to my next destination how scary was that we're so used to being in constant touch you need to speak somebody take out your mobile call if i hung up that phone i either have to pick that phone up to make the call or go someplace else and pick up another landline to make the call that was the hardest thing of the day just not being in touch i looked at john i said john do you mind if i hang out a little bit i was really tired i said you mind if i hang out a little bit he goes no problem and i sat down i took off my wet shoes and socks he looks it he goes oh your socks are all wet would you like a clean pair of socks you can have one of mine who was this guy i was like from kansas or something that's unbelievable the guy was so he was a saint he was an absolute saint i hung out there for about 15 minutes realized i got to keep going so i figured i was gonna go to my brother's office i thanked him very much put my wet shoes and socks back on and i left now i gotta go to my brother uptown where's uptown i'd never been in that area i had no idea where i was so i stopped somebody i said excuse me can you tell me how to get uptown guy looks at me like oh crazy goes uptown follow the crowd everybody's going uptown because nobody was going downtown that's for sure so i followed the crap i got to 8th avenue and 12th street and i'm going like wait a minute i have a friend who's got an office on 9th avenue and 16th street but not just any office this guy had a workout room a billiard room he had showers all right it was a financial printing business you know they were used to having people come in for like entire weekends yeah that's great the only problem that i had was i'd have a change of clothes that was my problem but i went in there and i walked through the double doors and receptionist looks at me and she says to me ari are you okay now i had no idea what i looked like because as i said before john did not have a mirror in his apartment so i know what i look like but i looked at her and i said yeah i'm fine she goes can i get you anything i said yeah a conference room a phone and some water that's all i need i didn't realize how thirsty i was until that particular moment in time and it was so nice turns out by the way my friend was not there in the office he was in florida god bless him i went into the conference room and i started calling everybody i knew just to let them know that i was alive the only people i couldn't get a hold of that day were my parents my parents live in israel and you couldn't get an international line out for no money but i had a niece who was living in belgium aviv and aviv called my sister-in-law in west hempstead new york west hampstead new york my sister in west hempster told i would be in belgium that i was alive so i've called from belgium to my parents in israel to let them know that i was alive so i knew at least that they knew that i was alive so i felt okay all of a sudden a guy walks in he says to me would you like some lunch like a lunch what time is it 421 i went like wow i said you know i really appreciate it but i'm strictly kosher so i don't think you can help me the guy goes oh no problem we have kosher clients here all the time i'll just call the restaurant across town and i'll order something for you because they're not going to deliver because i'm sure they deliver all the time i'm thinking this guy's clueless i said pastrami on white bread fries and a coke knock yourself out [Music] the guy came back about two minutes later he goes uh they won't deliver i'm going duh but the guy felt really really bad for me because he knew i was hungry so he says listen you know what we have a pantry and we've got chip snacks and we've got you know granola bars and juice help yourself to anything you want so i went into the pantry and i took out some chip snacks some granola bars and some juice and i ate my lunch in the meantime i called my brother and i said you know what do you want to do i said why don't you come down here and we'll walk over the brooklyn bridge i don't know he says you know why don't you come up here we can walk over the 59th street bridge i didn't want to go up there and honestly the reason i didn't want to go up there and i told him this was this was a terrorist attack my brother at the time worked on 47th street and 6th avenue is anybody familiar with new york city does anybody know what what area that is it's the diamond district do you know who works in the diamond district jews lots and lots and lots of jews now they're calling this a terrorist attack and i'm thinking myself if you're going to continue to attack what's a great place to hit and i explained this to my brother and he says to me ari we have a bomb-proof vault anything happens i'm in the vault i'm not going anywhere i'm like okay you win i'll come up to you but whatever you do wait till i get there do not leave remember there was no transportation i had to walk from 16th street all the way up to 47th street and i said just don't leave i'm coming because i couldn't call him fine i left that office i told the receptionist if anybody's looking for me uh call my brother's office and i started heading out i started walking i got the 6th avenue on 23rd street let me tell you something it was it continued to be a magnificent day was like a snow day without the snow and you have no idea what that's all about because you live in the uk but that's okay but i'm telling you it wasn't a car on the street it was like just silence there was some restaurants that had you know outdoor cafes that people were were eating and like nothing happened and i was so angry because i had just come from hell and they're sitting there eating lunch whatever it is done i didn't say anything i just kept walking all of a sudden 23rd street a bus a new york city bus pulls up i'm going wow so i ran and stopped about a half a block from where i was i ran down and i jumped on the bus and i took out my metro card in order to pay that's who used to pay i took out my metric card the bus driver was a woman she looks at me she says to me put that thing away we're not charging today and i'm going like wow has new york city changed or what this is great and she says okay i'm not making any stops if you want to get off the bus ring the bell and i'll stop and we got up to about 44th street some guy rang the bell so i figured i'm just going to get off there and i'll walk the other three blocks and i got to my brother's office and i rang the bell who's there it's ari shaumbra and i'm here to see elliot just a moment please and they buzzed me in my brother's office was on a lower level i walked through the front doors facing me was a double glass doors and i walked through the doors and my brother was standing near me and he grabbed me and i grabbed him and i hugged him and i cried for five solid minutes i had been really strong that day because i needed to be i needed to be for virginia i needed to be for myself now finally there was somebody that i could lean on and i just lost it and i cried my brother hugged me and he said to me ari it's gonna be okay we're gonna get ahead of you so after about five minutes or so we both calmed down people in his office are asking me what did you see where why papa you know everybody wants to know i said to my brother what are we going to do we heard there was limited subway service and i really didn't want to go underground on that day because you know i didn't think it was safe my brother says come on let's go let's go i said okay we got outside we asked the cop if the subway was running he said it's limited subway service we got downstairs we got on an f train we went out to queens in the meantime when i was in my friend's office i called a friend of mine won the car service diana clemente who happens to be jewish by the way her mother was jewish her father wasn't and we were we did business together our firm used their her car service and i called her up and it was amazing because i called her and when i called i said that inclement it said just a moment then she picks up i said hi diane and sorry she started to cry she said to me oh my god ari i thought you were dead no thank god i'm not but i said if i get out i said i know you can't send a car for me in the city but if i get outside of the city can you send a car to pick me up take me home she goes absolutely here's the number you can call and 24 7 call that number they'll give you whatever you want so my brother and i got out to queens and i called the number and i said i'm on you know i'm in queens i gave him the address and he said no problem we'll send the car i looked at queens boulevard the traffic was at a total stand still i knew it was going to be at least an hour until that car got there and i figured let me try and make some calls and i dialed my parents and the phone rang and my father picked up the phone and i went dad it's ari and he started to cry i said dad why are you crying i'm alive and not only that i know that you know that i'm alive because i've evie from belgium spoke to me in west hampton renewable establishment told me in belgium that i was alive and she called you from belgium to let you know i was alive what's the matter didn't you believe her he said no he said i believe anybody he said i wasn't going to sleep tonight until i heard your voice and i remember thinking to myself god i'm so glad anyway i didn't wait till tomorrow to make this call we talked a little bit the car showed up my brother my brother called his wife to tell her to meet us at my house we got back to my house about 5 30 in the evening i walked into my house there were 20 people in my living room and i had no less than 100 phone messages i still have the cassette tape back then it wasn't digital's cassette i still have the cassette tape with the messengers on i learned something very important that day you have no idea how many friends you really have until they all think you're dead the reality is i did learn a lot that day let me tell you something and apologies if anybody works on wall street or in finance but i work on wall street the motto of the day is greed greed plain and simple guys are multi-millionaires they're in their offices at 7 00 a.m why the bigger house the bigger boat the bigger car the nicer vacation the next promotion that's all they care about that is what life is all about and i was guilty of the exact same thing until that day my kids used to say to me daddy can you come to the class play no day's got to work daddy can you come on the class triple going to the zoo some of the other daddies are going you can go right no daddy's got to work daddy can you come to my trial it's it's after school so it's after work so you could be there right no daddy's got to work late daddy's got to work daddy's got to work daddy's got to work that was always the refrain until that day today daddy's on the class trips that is the school plays daddy's wherever his children need him to be because at the end of the day the experiences that my kids go through i want to make sure that i'm a part of it my job will be there tomorrow and if it's not i'll figure something out but the experiences that my kids go through i want to make sure that i'm a part of it not wait till they're 20 30 and 40 years old like the cat stevens uh song cats in the cradle if you if you never heard it listen to it it's a great message but that's what i wanted to do i wanted to make sure that i was a part of their lives now not later but there's another side to it some people call the spiritual side call it what you want i realized i was plucked out of a burning building and given a second chance i was given a second chance it was like god was telling me you know what maybe you were good maybe you weren't but i'll tell you what i'm going to give you a second chance what are you going to do with it and i got the message loud and clear and i decided to change now i'm going to tell you something i was the same guy on wednesday that i was on tuesday nothing for me had changed other than the fact that i lost 658 of my friends and co-workers nothing else changed in my life i was the same guy it took between six and eight months until it finally sank in and that i really really understood what happened as i told my story more and more it started to sink in i was like wow you were you were given a second chance and i changed now let me tell you something the world as we know it back then was bad today it's a hundred times worse god is always giving us messages he's always sending us messages the trade center was only one do you know it was like nobody's listening you guys weren't involved in this but in in uh 2003 there was a major blackout in the in the northeastern united states and 50 million people were put in the dark million people i don't know if anybody remembers this 50 million people were put into the dark and everybody's looking around going like why wonder why i know why do you know why because god was telling these people and our nation as a whole the united states as a whole and probably the rest of the world you guys are in a state of spiritual darkness and you don't even know it you're so busy with your life you don't even know it and he put 50 million people in the dark and he said this is the darkness you're in understand people didn't get it you know what he did next he brought the meltdown financial meltdown that's what we had no eight so he started hit people in their pockets did we listen no do you know what he did he brought bernie madoff figure there's the icing on the cake we hit a lot of the wealthy people now we'll hit a lot of the charities and a little lot of the other people with a 65 billion dollar scam did we listen no so now you brought iraq isis isil he keeps sending us messages and he's telling us you got to do something different you got to change i keep sending you these messages you're not doing do you know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results that's insanity but you know what that's what we do every day now as i said to you i decided to make a change i decided to become a little bit of a better person and one of the things that i took upon myself was to stop swearing let me tell you something when you walk on wall street these guys are worse than drunken sailors the stuff that comes out of their mouths is unbelievable but i said i am not going to swear anymore no more curse words no more full out of words and i stopped and do you know what happened the people around me that work around me when i told them this first they laughed but then after a while they knew arie schumer doesn't curse and if they're around my desk neither today and if we're in a meeting and somebody's there and we're talking and somebody slips with a curse word he'll go i'm sorry excuse me i didn't mean look at the effect that i had on people around me because i made a decision you know my favorite analogy all right is i made a decision i affect people if i handed out candles to every person in this room mine was lit nobody else's was lit okay and i went to you and i had you like your caleb from my hand is my candle diminished in any way no is there twice as much light as there was before yes there is and then you light and then you like you like and before you know it we've lit up a room because each one of us made one decision one just one that's how you light up a roof that's the light of a city that's how you light up a country that's how you light up the world by making one decision i challenge my audiences around the world believe me i've been around the world and i challenge every one of my audiences take upon yourself one thing one mitzvah one thing not 613 not 365 not 248 one but own it so that when people see you they'll say you know that guy he's the guy who always goes to visit the sick no matter who it is you see that guy every time a beggar comes around he gives them you know a half a pound it doesn't matter what it is it doesn't matter what the mids phase it could be anything but take something that you're not doing today and own it you know how long it takes to make a habit 30 days you do something for 30 days it becomes habit take something and own it when you leave here tonight go home write it down whatever it is and put it on your refrigerator because if you don't and you're not looking at it every day it'll be gone i guarantee you in two days you're gonna totally forget about it you need to remember and remind it is so important because you'll see the effect it'll have on you and i'll have on everybody else and at the end of the day it won't be just one thing because after you've com after you've done that you'll say you know what maybe i'll take on another and maybe i'll take on another and before you know it we can light up the world but remember you know in the prophets it says that we are a light unto the nations right everybody know that we are a light unto the nations how can we be a light unto the nations if we're not even a light unto ourselves we gotta start here start with us me i do this a lot but i can't do it alone i can't i need help and i ask every audience help me because you know what we got to make a difference and this is the way to make the difference i'm going to end with a very short story it's about a young executive 35 years old climbing the ladder of success buys himself a brand new jaguar he's driving down the city street maybe he's going a little too fast see some kids darting in and out between the cars and all of a sudden wham his car gets hit by a brick and he stops by slams on the brake stops the car puts it in reverse pulls back jumps out of the car sees this kid grabs his kidney system what's wrong with you why did you throw the brick in my car look at that dent you know what that's gonna cost me to fix why did you do that this little kid looks and says please mr please i didn't know what to do my older brother fell out of his wheelchair and he's in the gutter and i couldn't lift him up and i couldn't so the guy looks and says where's your brother he takes him by the hand and they walk down to the end of the street and sure enough there's a boy in the street with an overturned wheelchair so he takes the wheelchair he puts it right side up and he picks the boy up and he puts him back in the wheelchair he takes out his handkerchief and he starts wiping away the blood from the scratches a little boy starts wheeling his brother away and he says thank you mister thank you so much he walks away and this guy walks slowly back to his car with a lump in his throat and he looks at the deck in his car and he vows never ever to fix it because he never wants to forget what happened you see god whispers to our minds and he whispers to our hearts but we are so busy running through life we've got to deal with life we're so busy running through life that we don't listen so you know what happens every so often he throws a brick at us to wake us up now me i've had the brick thrown at me you guys you have a choice you can listen to the whispers or you can wait for the brick thanks for listening

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

Views: 312,876

Rating: 4.8498025 out of 5

Keywords: September 11, 9/11, Miracle, Twin Towers, NYC, Manhattan

Id: _lyO9-33_CE

Length: 61min 18sec (3678 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020