story10688.xml

story10688.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-07-13

I am OK; really I am??? no I am not.




Never in my wildest dreams I thought I would be part of the most devastating action in the US history on civilians.
It was just another day, bright blue skies, and a gentle breeze in the air a beautiful September day. It was 8 am and I was having breakfast by my kitchen window, buster (my dog) as usual was crawled up on my feet waiting for me to take him out for a walk.
The radio was on and as usual Ron Cuby was getting on my nerves with his extreme liberal rhetoric. But hey that?s what makes this country great, he can say all the wrong things he wants and I can say all the right things I want. Freedom and opportunities is what attracts thousands of immigrants to the shores of this country some in-dangering their life to make it across the border.
I always knew somehow that I would be coming to the United States, since I was little growing up first in a small town near Rome, then in a new neighborhood in Rome whenever asked what will I do when I grow up my answer was always the same, I will be moving to the United States Of America and I will be an Architect. Dreams only in America can they became true.

It was about 8:30 on September 11 and Buster and I were in the yard he was chasing a bird and I was looking up at a plane flying unusually low over the Hudson river, I could hear the roaring of the engines as if it was next to me. It reminded me of the plane that took me to New York, I was just a teenager then traveling alone to my new world, I was scared because it was my first time on a plane, It was big and loud but everyone on board was friendly and made my crossing a pleasant one. The plane took off from Rome and flew to Lisbon first and there it took on additional passengers, a nice man got on board and he sat next to me, I had my guitar with me and he said if I would play something for him, so I did, then he asked if he could play and I handed him the guitar and he played many songs till the captain announced our arrival to New York.
Once in New York, my Dad (he came with my Mom one year earlier to set up a home for me and my two sisters) came to pick us up, he drove across the Triboro Bridge so we could see the New York skyline. It was beautiful the towers weren?t built then but all the others recognizable landmarks were in place.
The sky was clear and the air was warm just like this September morning, it was almost 20 to 9 now and I was in my car getting on the Taconic State Parkway heading south, I was heading to East 79th street were we were working on 3 apartments for a successful Money Market manager for a leading New York firm.
As I was driving I put the radio on to listen to the traffic report when I heard a report that something had just hit the world trade center, At first I dint think anything of it, I said to myself. ? It most be the anniversary of when Orson Wells was reporting aliens landing in New Jersey, so I dint pay attention to it, no way that a plane could hit the world trade center, but then as I was driving I could see that something was drastically wrong. People were pulling over to the side of the road to listen to the news; traffic started to move extremely slowly and by looking at the faces of the people inside the cars you could sense the horror in their faces. I had to make a stop to my attorney?s office that morning before I could continue to the city. When I got upstairs to his office, people were crying some upset, that?s when I was told that the second tower was hit. Then we knew that it was not an accident but this was an attack on America.
I left the office and headed downtown, I was on the Bronx river parkway near the Bruckner expressway when I heard that the Pentagon was now hit. The police was closing every crossing in and out of the city, this was the first time that I realized that we were vulnerable. I was worried about my brother in law and his crew, I thought that other attacks would come so I was calling him on the cell phone to tell him to find a way to get out of the city because there were other reports of bombs in other buildings.
Somehow he was able to make it out late in the morning.
That day was a dark day for me, I needed to go down to ground zero and help but I could not cross into Manhattan, so I turned around and went home, there like millions of Americans I was glued to the TV hoping for good news, but mayor Rudy was talking about the possibility of tens of thousands of fatalities.
In any one day the world trade center complex had 50,000 people and the timing was right for a disaster, close to 9 a.m. The networks were showing over and over the critical pictures of when the towers were hit and when the collapse happened, We were at war we were being attacked, some old timers equated this attack to pearl harbor, on that beautiful December Sunday morning.
That night I could not sleep; I was watching TV till the next morning. Finally at about
6 AM I decided to try to make it into the city, but my brother in law convinced me to stay out of the city, I needed to help or at the very least show my support, so I talked to a few people and convinced them to march with me on South Broadway starting in Yonkers with flags and find our way down town, we were all set when we realized that we would need some sort of a permit to do that since we would be marching in a public street, so I went to Radford street and went to the public affairs office of the Yonkers PD and told them what we wanted to do, they were all for it but then asked us to reconsider the plan because that would mean that once we got in the Bronx The New York city police department would need to assign personnel to escort us, and at the moment New York didn?t have extra personnel to assign to the parade. So I looked at the woman sergeant and said you are right better plan this for another day.
That day I was frustrated because I was listening to the news and prediction were bad and they were already talking about the loss of hundreds of fire fighters and Police officers, and they were bringing in national guards and state troopers, I knew then I had to go.
The next morning, Thursday September the 13th at about 5 a.m. I made it across Broadway between the Bronx and Manhattan, I drove down the west side till I got to 23rd street and then went on an inside street and made my way down town till I got to 14th street were I encountered a road block, a state trooper asked me for my ID and wanted to know why I was trying to go down to ground zero. I told him that I worked in construction and I was an architect and I am sure they can use me at ground zero. At first he was reluctant to let me by, but then he said, ?Son go in and be careful when you get down there, things are not settled yet.
At that moment I felt such a joy to be able to drive thru, I drove to within a few blocks to ground zero and parked the car, then I walked with my construction helmet on and new gloves in my back pocket down west street were the road was lined with hundreds of people yelling ?God bless you ? ?Thank You?, I didn?t know what that meant till I saw fire fighters and police officers coming out of ground zero full of white dust, I walked past the cheering crowds with my head held high and went into ground zero, with all the people there and construction equipment moving around, it was unusually quite, people talked in a low voice, no doubt that if someone was trapped and could scream you could hear the cry for help, the remains of the towers was only a few story high, where did it all go, 2 towers each 110 floors, where did they go? If the concrete and furniture pulverized what happened to the people that were trapped inside? I could not make out the remaining pieces of the buildings, it took a while before I could get my bearing, it felt as if I was in the middle of a bombed city during World War II in Europe. Oh my God, I was never in a war zone is this what it looks like!!! Smoke was still coming from the rubble, fire fighters were spraying the area with water and construction crews were all along the perimeter of the collapsed buildings removing debris.
There was a group of volunteers pinning American flags on people?s backs, They put one on me and I went in and joined a crew of iron workers clearing rubble from a shaft that went down to the garage levels, The shaft was about 30 feet high, so we put ladders from the top down to a concrete beam and then another ladder from that beam to the floor below, It was dark and there were reinforcing rods all over making it impossible to get thru, when all of a sudden a young iron worker and his Dad came down with a torch and cut the steel out of the way, after about 30 minutes we had a safe avenue to follow, when we got to the parking level below we were walking in about 1?-0? of water, we made our way to an area were I thing there were shops but I wasn?t sure, we heard voices, and then saw some flash lights shinning, in my group I had about 10 guys and we were exited that we had found people alive, we started to scream and call ?anyone there??, is anyone there?, and then we would hear ?HELLO?, we could not go too fast because there were chunks of concrete all over the place and parts of the floor above in many areas was down, when we came face to face to the people we thought we were rescuing, turned out to be fire fighters that made their way thoughts us from the other side. We looked at each other at first with joy then confusion then disappointment, we didn?t know whether to be happy or sad, We had not found anyone; we looked at each other and we all new we were disappointed. The firefighters told us that they had checked that area and there was no one there, to go back the other way.
We crawled thru another shaft and it was time for us to come out for a while, up above everyone was busy moving rubble in a bucket chain, It was 9 am by now and we were sitting next to the collapsed bridge that crossed west street, we were tired, medical personnel was going around checking everyone?s eyes and washing out the dust from the concrete from the eyes, part of the bridge girder crushed a few fire trucks, Police cars and some private cars, in particular a pick up truck the cab was crushed were the entire thickness was now only about 18 inches, no one new if there was someone inside yet, till they brought a police dog and it turned out that no one was in the car. We all smiled and started to give each other high fives, till one guy said ?they?re pulling someone out? a body was found deep in the ruble and was in a bag draped with an American flag. As the fireman walked by me I could smell death, I know what death smells like, a few minutes later another body was pulled out, the same smell.
As the bodies passed past workers everyone would stop and put the right hand on their hearth, some would say a prayer some would just weep, young and old, across from me there was this big man with tattoos all over his body with a red banner on his forehead, white beard longish hair in a pony tail, tears coming down his dirty face, you could see his lips tremble and his fist clutched. An old timer (fireman) which looked just like the fireman next to President Bush when he made his famous remarks, ?we hear you? was on top of the bridge and asked for a handful of guys to start removing rubble from that area to make it easier for the iron workers to cut up the steel in pieces, how ever he said dogs have detected bodies buried here so be careful. Everyone was working hard no one wanted to find a death person we all had hopes, maybe I will find someone still alive. Maybe I will be able to save someone. An area was already cleared and no bodies were found, it was late afternoon by now but you could not tell because there was so much dust in the air that the sun could not get thru. Iron workers started to cut peaces of big thick girders that were bent like a pretzel, My god the force that most have took to bend that still, how can anyone survive that?
Where I was working I could smell death, the same smell from the earlier bodies that were pulled out, that was the same smell of my father when he died.

That was just a few years ago, he had a tumor in his stomach that was pushing against the main artery down to his right leg, he was admitted in San Cammillo hospital in Rome, he had to be taken there from the hospital in a small town about one hour away from Rome, My cousin was the ambulance driver and on the way to Rome the ambulance broke down, and had to wait for a tow truck to take them to the hospital in Rome.
The health care in Italy is at the same level of a third world country, I cant understand how we can have some of the best medical schools in the world and yet the worse medical care. My dad was hospitalized in Rome for about 9 months, that was during operation desert storm, at that time everyone was afraid to fly but I took advantage of the cheap fares and every two weeks I would get on a plane and go see him for the weekend.
He was in a big room with about 20 other people, he would smile when he saw me walk in and turn to his friends next to him and say ? that?s my son he comes from New York every two weeks to see me? he was proud of me then he would complain to me about the nurses but would beg me not to say anything to them because they would take it out on him when no one was around, He was my dad and I never saw him afraid, he wasn?t afraid of the tumor but he was afraid of the nurses? My God! when I was there many times I would stay overnight with him I would sleep on a beach chair next to his bed, we would talk and from time to time I would clean a wound on his back that would not heal. It was a hole about the size of a half dollar, everyday getting a little bit bigger. that?s were an experimental pacemaker was placed to help blood flow down to his leg, and for 10 years it had worked, but now it wasn?t helping anymore so the doctors decided to take it out but the wound would not heal, if that wound would not be cleaned daily you could smell the foul of death. Finally in July the doctors told us that they had to cut the leg from the knee down, after talking to my sisters and mother we decided that if we wanted to keep him around a bit longer we had to give the doctors permission to cut.
At noon Saturday in July the operation began and by night fall I was able to see my dad, his leg was bandaged, I stayed with him thru the night and from time to time put a wet cotton on his lips, he would open his eyes look at me and his lips would tremble and tears flow down his wrinkled face. Just like the ironworker at ground zero.
The next day he would complain that his foot hurts, the foot that was no longer attached to him. Oh God please help my Dad, there were times I could no longer hold it in so I would go outside in the court yard and weep like a baby, I didn?t want to see him suffer. Back at ground zero we would work hard to search for what we now knew would only be body parts, I wasn?t ready for what was coming next, I wasn?t ready. No one was ready, From the smell I knew that just a few inches under that mess there were bodies, we started to dig faster and faster till I pulled out a foot, a men?s foot, the right foot of an older man, it could have been my Dad?s foot, I pulled the foot out and held it close to me, the fireman shout out, ?don?t look at it, put it in that bag, don?t look at it.?
I couldn?t put in the bag, not yet, I said a prayer, I took the flag that was pinned on my back and wrapped around the food, I could see the bone and the muscle, I could see someone trying to run away from that devastation, he had almost made it, he was almost out, he almost lived. I can only imagine what that man went thru, running across the bridge from the world trade center to the financial side, running and screaming, other people must have been with him, as he ran and looked back he most have seen the tower come down, he must have seen the floors of the worlds tallest structure come down on top of him, he was only a few feet away from the end of the bridge, only a few more feet, Dear God help me, just a few more feet, and then the walls of the bridge must have closed on top of him with such force that the parts we were finding were clean cut.
Did he suffer, or did God take him away before the steel crushed him.
Almost 3,000 souls were taken that day, they all became Gods angels, looking down on us and guiding us thru these difficult times.
My Dad pasted away on valentines day, he is my guardian Angel, I was there when god said to him ? it?s time?, it was one of the many weekends that I spent with him, this time it was different, he wasn?t waking up, he was in a coma, he was home with us because the doctors said that there was nothing also they could do for him and it was only matter of time, so it would be better if he was at home.
The room smelled of death, no matter how many times you cleaned the wound you could see the inside, his body was rotting but his hearth didn?t want to give up he wanted to live, just like that man running away from the falling building, I dint know if he knew that we were there, but when I put my finger in his hand I could feel him holding it, maybe it was my hope, I don?t know but I could feel his grip. My sister would feed him chicken broth he would swallow but he would not open his eyes. Finally that evening at around 9 pm he was breading heavy, my sister called me and said that this was it, it was time, she knew that when he started breathing like that with a deep sound as if he was gasping for air, it was time. And just a few minutes past midnight with me holding him he took his last breath, I held him close to my hearth, just like I held that foot close to my hearth, that foot was someone?s son. Someone?s brother, someone?s dad, he could have been my Dad.
I could not let it go just as I could not let go of my dad, I held them both, Oh God please help me, don?t make them die, God grant me this wish.
Then the fireman held me and took the foot draped in the flag and we put it in a bag and took him away.
My Dad was in my arms when my sister gently said ?Enzo its time, we got to get Dad ready? say good-bye, its time. In my town we didn?t have a funeral homes, so it was our responsibility to get the body ready for the funeral.
We called for a casket, and my sister and I dressed my dad in his best suit, crisp white shirt, and beautiful red tie, We were careful we dint want to wake him, we didn?t want him to suffer anymore, I had to make his tie for him. I put it around my neck and smiled and made a beautiful knot, Then I put it around his neck and adjusted it, I was scheduled to fly home the day my Dad died, so I didn?t need the thicket anymore, so I put it in my Dad?s coat pocket, that was his thicket to heaven.
His eyes and mouth were partially open and I dint know what to do, so I took some clear tape and taped his eyes closed and took a hank chief and rapped around his face to keep his mouth closed.
The casket arrived and we put it next to the bed, gently we placed my dad in the casket just like that foot was placed in the bag, we put his shoes on his foot and the other shoe next to his body, and we waited for dawn, at about 7 am I took the masking tape away from his eyes and hank chief off his face and got him ready for the funeral.

A few minutes later we were told to clear the area because an ironworker was trying to cut a beam. And as I was been helped down from the bridge, someone lost his footing and pulled me down, I fell about 8 to 10 feet down to the roadway below, I felt a sharp pain on my head and shoulder, I was gently removed from there and brought to a make shift triage where I was stabilized and then transported to Saint Vincent hospital for
x-ray. At about 4 am I was released to my family and was asked to arrange for an operation on my shoulder to repair the damage in a hospital near me.
Americans became united in the hunt of those responsible in this terrible act, on the news there were reports that the Italian prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had said that Italy would not join the coalition that president Bush was putting together to fight the terrorists in Afghanistan, I was ashamed and mad at the same time that my mother land was not helping my adopted land, I tried to call the Embassy here in New York but could not get trough, so I decided to take my American flag and my Italian flag and go down in person, to show them my displeasure.
When I got there I double parked my car and walked in the building with the American flag draped around me and the Italian flag in my left hand, and returned my Italian flag, my right arm was in a sling and the physical pain at that moment was gone but my hearth was in agony, I could not believe that my native land was not supporting us, I didn?t want to give up my flag.
The people at the embassy tried to calm me down and explained that what was being reported was not true, Italy in fact was helping us in the fight against the terrorists, in the lobby of the embassy reporters had gathered to see what was going on and asked me questions about how I was injured, after a while I asked for my flag back and went home. The next morning I got a call from my Mom in Italy upset thinking that something horrible had happened to me, it seems that I had made the front page of the local Italian paper explaining what had happened to me and what I had done at the embassy.



I am OK; really I am? no I am not.



Enzo Ardovini