Two weeks later, Neil Goldberg is still stunned. Wally Clark pinches himself every now and then to make sure he's not dreaming. Both Key West residents were in New York on 9-11-01, the morning the World Trade Centers collapsed— and both men have chilling recounts of what they saw.
"On our approach into La Guardia, the airplane veered dramatically and banked to the right," said Clark, who has flown into New York hundreds of times on trips related to his international shoe business. On this particular visit, he intended to finalize details on his new, 57th Street office. "I knew this was not a normal flight pattern, but I didn't see anything until I looked back and both towers of the World Trade Center were in flames."
Clark was in the air, eye-level with the burning towers, and certain that terrorists had bombed the world's business hubs. He wouldn't know until he was ushered from the plane minutes later that other commercial airplanes were the missiles of choice in that heinous act— or that his plane was the last flight into New York that day, and for days to come.
Neil Goldberg was already on the ground.
"When the second tower collapsed, it was black as midnight," said Goldberg, owner of Sunlion Jewelry on Duval Street. "We couldn't see or breathe, and we had to flow with the giant blob of people, literally thousands of people, heading toward the Staten Island Ferry.
Goldberg was in Manhattan on a combined business-pleasure trip. His conch pearl collection had been selected to be part of a Museum of Natural History touring exhibit, and on Monday morning, he had delivered the pearls to the museum. Then he had planned a few days of sightseeing with Arielle, his 7-year-old daughter. In fact, on Sunday evening they had viewed the sunset from the top of the World Trade Center.
Early Tuesday morning, he and Arielle traveled by subway from their hotel in midtown down to Battery Park on the lower tip of the island, just a few blocks south of the World Trade Center, where they were to catch the boat to the Statue of Liberty.
"The subway was packed with people until the train pulled into the station below the World Trade Center," said Goldberg. "It was 7:30 a.m. After that stop, only one other guy was left on the train with us.
"At 7:45, we bought our tickets at Clinton Castle and we were on the ferry's upper deck. I was busy being tourist and daddy, taking lots of pictures, when we heard the first explosion. I turned around, started video filming and didn't stop until I ran out of floppy disks.
"When I first saw the airplane approach the second tower, I thought it was a rescue plane or one coming in to drop water or chemicals on the first smoking building. With thousands of other people, I was just stunned when it flew right into the second tower."
Clearly audible on his videotape, little Arielle's voice leaps in horrified octaves as the plane explodes.
"There were no sirens for two or three minutes and everyone watched in almost silent disbelief," said Goldberg. "By now, the first tower is burning, and the second was a wall of smoke. We were just three blocks away.
"Needless to say, the trip to the Statue of Liberty was cancelled and, back on land, we were caught up in the crowd running to escape the smoke cloud coming straight down the street in our direction. We got under some outdoor umbrellas to shield against the ash, but when the debris started flying everywhere, the whole crowd broke windows to get inside a Battery Park restaurant for protection.
"But when the smoke became unbearable inside, we had to go back out on the street and deal with the debris. Shattered glass and sheet metal bits were flying through the air. People were jumping in the river; you just couldn't see or breathe," he said.
"The throng of people literally carried us to the Staten Island Ferry— and we were able to get on. The t-shirts we used to filter our air didn't come away from our faces until the boat was well out on the water."
Goldberg says, by then, both towers had collapsed and "the noise was like nothing I had ever heard. Ash and gray smoke clouds turned the sky into somethong akin to a nuclear winter."
Arielle clutched her stuffed wolf and carefully followed her father's directions: "She was by my side the whole time. She was very brave, and when we got off the ferryboat on Staten Island, my first concern was to get her some shelter. I flagged down a passing car on the street and asked the driver to take us to the nearest hotel," he said.
For 36 hours, Goldberg and Arielle holed up in Hotel Richmond on Staten Island— described by Goldberg as a $50-per-night flop house. "You know, one of those places that rent rooms by the hour," he said. "But we were grateful for the shelter."
They caught a train headed back home to Florida on Thursday morning. Enroute to the train station, Goldberg says people overflowed into streets from three different bomb scares. And during the trip home, the train was caught in Gabrielle as that storm crossed Florida.
"A tree on the railroad track caused a six-hour delay," Goldberg said. "It would be fair to say that this wasn't the best vacation we ever had."
They finally got home last Saturday, September 15.
Wally Clark's take on the mayhem was equally unsettling, just not as in-your-face as Goldberg's account.
"Our pilot never said anything, but I think he saw the other airplane coming around the building at us, which is why he veered and banked," said Clark. "I was amazed at how quickly authorities closed the airport and shut down all the traffic lanes and bridges on Queens."
For five hours, Clark sat in the limousine he was lucky enough to hail, in miles and miles of traffic going nowhere: "It just felt good to be alive. No one was honking; everyone was courteous. If a car was going the wrong way on a ramp, cars parted to let it in the slow flow. It was hard to believe this was New York."
After many attempts at finding a hotel, later that day Clark smooth-talked his way into the Marriott Courtyard: "I am a shoe salesman, after all," he said.
But his quiet safe haven turned into another chaotic scene when armed troops stormed the hotel.
"Apparently, some of the terrorists stayed here the night before they attacked us," he said.
Clark continued to crisscross paths with these terrorists. "I was at the airport Thursday night to catch a 6:30 flight to Milwaukee, but the incoming plane we were to take was turned back at the last minute, and La Guardia was shut down again. Four men believed to be involved in the highjackings were arrested," he said.
"I felt like I was dreaming; this couldn't be real, it had to be a movie. I still can't grasp it, especially when we drove across the Queensboro Bridge and Manhattan's skyline was so radically changed by the loss of those towers."
"I don't want the terrorist to win this one; I'm flying on to Spain and Italy, as originally planned, for some rest and relaxation, then on to business in China," said Clark in a phone interview from the safety of his Milwaukee home.
"I've talked to some of my business associates in China who keep saying `the Americans won't let the bad guys win'— and I think they're right.
"The stock market didn't fall as badly as everyone predicted, and I'm going to pursue business with the anticipation of good sales: How much bad TV can people watch, anyway?"
More importantly, Clark asks, "If we don't stop them now, can you even imagine what they will do next?"