by Barbara Nevins Taylor 

Little things jog 9/11 memories almost every day. When 9/11 actually appears on the calendar, I remember every bit of what happened all too clearly.  I see my husband Nick Taylor and I walking against a sea of people down Varick Street minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower. People heading north were fleeing the terror in the towers and we were headed toward it so that I could report for my television station UP9 and the sister station Fox5.

But the daily memory flashes almost always involve other people, too, those lost, those who behaved heroically on 9/11 and in the days after, and the people I interviewed.

I found these photos in my desk drawer recently and thought about the man and what he told me. I don’t remember his name, but I recall vividly the story he told me on West Street where we had our TV truck set-up in the days after the attacks. He lived in the Archive Building on Christopher Street and drove a motorcycle.  When he went down to ride it to work that morning, he looked south down Greenwich Street and saw the North Tower in flames. He was a dentist and thought he could use his medical skills to help. So he rode down to the burning towers and began to try to take care of the people injured at street level.

He really wanted to tell his story not because of what he did, but because he, like many others I spoke with, wanted to find someone who was missing.

The scene was chaotic with metal and dangerous debris flying everywhere and people were bleeding and crying. Almost immediately after he arrived, while he was bending down over someone who had fallen, a man came up to him and offered to help. “He said his name was Manny and that he was a paramedic.  We began to work together. He kept bringing people to me and I did what I could and then we heard a roar and more screaming and the South Tower collapsed and I dove under a firetruck.”  

When he came out  from under, the man was gone.  The dentist was distraught. He wanted to find this person who had joined him to help others. “You called me doc,” he said as our camera rolled. “Please let me know that you are alive. You called me doc,” he repeated.

I don’t know if he ever found Manny. And  I don’t know what happened to the dentist. But he and his story and the image of Manny maybe lost in the debris remain firmly embedded in my memory.