story10255.xml

story10255.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-12-13

Hello again,

This is my second entry into the 911digitalarchive. After receiving an email from its curators, I decided to use their encouragement and post a follow-up. Even now, some 2 years and 3 months later... I have found it difficult to open my heart and write some more of my life's story. What was so mundane... is now so surreal. 911 was a transition that has yet to be fully realized. This much is clear and has been so poignant.

Have I changed since 911? Surely, I have become a source of stress in my immediate environment... my family and at my work. This, combined with my hearing problem, has made me nearly unbearable to my wife and kids. "Business as usual" is just not good enough for me now. I do not recognize token 'anythings'... I don't pretend that I haven't learned from the experience.

Since I forwarded my "911 story" on August 25th, 2002 to the 911digitalarchive... (story #1461) I have learned much. One week after posting my 911-story, I learned that I DID know a victim of the 911 attacks... within a month after that... I learned that I knew 2 of the victims. The fog had returned that month. My innocent remorse turned bitter. I read the 'updates' of these two men's lives... posted by their families as memorials on the internet at the "Legacy.com" site. Memorials both. I knew both these men... even though I doubt they remembered me in the slightest. This we will never know will we? Anthony Portillo was an architect, a professional suffering much the same way I had when I worked in the tower... and Angelo Amaranto had been my janitor. Whereas Anthony, as an architect, had a future in the company over the long-term while I was there... was aloof... I felt as if an interloper. Mr. Amaranto on the other hand... befriended all those around him and oozed warmth and friendliness... as a janitor... was totally in a service position and was a point of brightness that I could rely on always.

Mr. Portillo was obscurred in my memories due to his aloofness... Mr. Amaranto ..."Angelo" to me still... was like an angel. Angelo was difficult to find since he was listed as a victim under his janitorial service company name. He had worked on numerious floors in 2WTC. Such was my passion a year ago... that I literally waded through hundreds... maybe thousands... of names of 911 WTC victims before it was apparent of my past associations, depressing as they were. The arrow of despair was lodged solidly in my heart at this point. Curiously enough, I never maintained communications with my other coworkers from 2WTC. It would have been too much like trying to associate with a group that I had voluntarily 'divorced' from... cheapening their memories. Better to remember them as we did- independently... eternally.

I feel guilt too... heart-rending guilt... that (as most survivors do) I survived and that they did not. I cannot help but recall all the brown-bag lunches I ate under the palms of the World Finanatial Center Winter Gardens... with my creepy sense of portending despair... sitting all the while in the "most structurally 'survivable' locations that were not already occupied. I know this makes me sound like a 'whack-job'... but it is the truth. And all this was 10 years into their... no, 'our'... past. How much sense does that make?! This is the life I live today.

So what else has changed in my life you might ask... "quite a bit yet not enough" would be... is my response. I was approached, during the summer of 2002, by a dean from DeVry University in Tinley Park, Illinois to teach a class in Environmental Science as a part-time or adjunct instructor. I started teaching in November of that year and have been going strong, on two of their campuses, ever since (I have taught 7 classes to date). I find this opportunity very fulfilling. How fulfilling you might wonder? It is probably the only thing that has kept my life together... that is how fulfilling. Rather than point at all the deficientcies in my life... I will leave it here. I came that close to becoming a victim myself. Obviously, a more pathetic one... -I am better today. Millimeter by millimeter, I have come to measure my own worth as such as to justify perpetuation. I am able to give of my memories to my students, share my stories, and prepare them for 'world justice'. We have more of that in our future you know... hopefully it won't be as hard a slap next time. Ironically enough, one of my students this semester is named Osama. This is how I know it is real... and not just a bad dream. God shares his sense of humor with those who are able to appreciate it. I guess I am able now.

I don't see myself posting another entry into your archive... not for quite awhile, so use your drive space for the real victims. Thanks for the opportunity to relive my own memories. May we all forget, and remember, at that same time -and Thank You.

Greg Kientop December 13, 2003