Page 207 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade7_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 3.7
continued
September 11 perspectives
mirth: joy, merriment
my Notes
4 Before, he’d wake up at 4:45 a.m., five days a week, jump on the train to the city, and do his job. Like the thousands of lunch-pail workers who pass each day through the tunnels to the island, Demczur wasn’t part of the Manhattan clichés: the vaunting ambition, the ceaseless pace, the glare of art and commerce. Instead, like the steel frames within a skyscraper’s facade, he was one of the people behind the city’s glamour, those who built, maintained, and ultimately removed piece-by-piece the twisted wreckage of the World Trade Center.
5 “Window cleaners have been much like the glass they clean: transparent,” says Richard Fabry, publisher of an industry magazine.
6 But Jan Demczur [pronounced John DEMshur] was never a guy to seek attention. Small and demure, he spoke little, and except for occasional mirth in his pale blue eyes, he revealed few emotions.
7 Content with a predictable routine, he rarely missed a day at work, was honest and industrious, paid his mortgage, and spent time with
his wife and kids. His Jersey City house, which had a view of the Twin Towers, was just minutes from the PATH train that took him straight to the sprawling Trade Center, a place he liked to call his second home.
***
8 That Tuesday, he punched in at 6 a.m. and spent most of the morning cleaning glass doors and partitions on floors 90 to 95 in the North Tower, the impact zone. He worked through his 8 a.m. break so he could finish those top floors early otherwise he’d be there until 9. He finished at 8:20 and took the elevator down to the 43rd-floor cafeteria.
9 At about 8:45, finishing his coffee and danish, he left the cafeteria, and dashed to make an express elevator about to run up to the 77th floor. At 8:48, as he and five others zipped up the shaft, they felt a jolt and then the building sway. The elevator dropped before the emergency brakes ground it to a halt. Later, when smoke started seeping into the car, they knew they had to try to get out.
10 Demczur quietly took charge. After they pried open the elevator doors, he saw the surface was drywall. “Does anyone have a knife?” he asked. No, nothing. So Demczur started chopping at the wall with the 18-inch blade of the squeegee. When the blade broke and fell down the shaft, he used the handle. It took over an hour, but the six men took turns scraping and poking, and finally burst through to a men’s bathroom on the 50th floor. Startled firefighters guided them in different directions. Demczur went down the stairs.
11 The other tower collapsed at 9:59, when he was at the 11th floor. Soon engulfed in darkness, dust, and confusion, he put his hand on
the shoulder of the stranger ahead, continuing down. Seeing him in a maintenance uniform, firefighters screamed to him, “How do we get out?” Demczur had them pan the smoke and dust-filled hallways on the third floor with their flashlights, and he spotted an exit to another stairwell.
He instinctively held it open as others went through first, until a fireman grabbed him by the arm and led him out.
12 Outside, emergency workers gave him oxygen, and water to rinse his eyes. He made his way to the West Side Highway, just a few blocks away, and was finally able to see the sky. “When I look up, and see the tower
180 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 7
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