Reluctant Hero

by Michael Benfante

  Sure, I had a choice.

  Why’d I make the choice I made? I didn’t know any other way to be. What’s the big mystery? It’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? After 9/11, I participated in this BBC documentary on human instinct. Why did I have the instinct to help instead of ignore? Was it because my father was that way? Because I was raised that way? Some say the logical thing to do is run from trouble. It’s a safety thing. Self-preservation. But I didn’t see trouble or inconvenience. My mind worked like this: How long have you guys been here? It’s sixty-eight floors. You need to get out of here. Let’s get going. I didn’t do a cost-benefit analysis of my needs versus her needs. I saw myself in a situation together with her. We were in the same situation. I left it up to her. If she had said no, who knows what I would have done? But she said yes.

  I should’ve asked my interviewers, “Why are you really asking me that? Is it because you believe that most people would not do what I did?” Maybe I felt that the question itself was cynical and counter to what I believe most people would do and what I saw many do on that day. At the moment of the 48 Hours interview, I was finding it hard enough living in a world where I survived something so many had not. But I knew then, and I know now, I would not have been able to live with myself at all if I passed her off and she didn’t make it.

  Doing 48 Hours was very different than the other media interviews in another respect. It was a taped show. The interview portion was fine with me, but then the producer, Joe Halderman (nice-enough guy then, he later claimed infamy by blackmailing David Letterman) started asking me to give him some B-roll. “We just want to shoot you walking along the river over here,” he’d say, or “Let’s film you like you’re looking for new office space.” It was staged. I felt that this wasn’t something I should be doing. I understand what it takes to make a show, but that was hard for me. For me, it wasn’t about making a show. For me it was about the message. That day and that moment, I started to feel a distance between what I was doing and the message. And that got me feeling queasy. 9/11 had taken place less than two months earlier. I asked them, “Do I really have to do this—the B-roll?”

  The subject matter, 9/11, wasn’t entertainment. I didn’t want to be a celebrity. I just wanted to be useful. And so many people said my story was helping others. So every media call to me was akin to somebody saying “Can you help?” and me responding the only way I knew how, by saying “Yes.” Sure, Joe, you can film me walking along the river.

  My hectic media schedule had put an increasingly major strain on my relationship with Joy. The kind of public demand I was getting would be tough at any point in any relationship, but we were nine months away from our wedding date, and I had not been around to talk about that or much else. Joy’s frustration reached its limit. To make things right, I surprised her by booking a long weekend for us in the Cayman Islands.

  She was excited. A vacation meant we could finally be alone uninterrupted, undivided. Away from the media calls, she could see whether the old Michael was still around. She could see whether I still had the ability to focus on her. She needed answers to these questions, and she was looking forward to getting them.

  A day later, I got a call from a producer in Germany asking me if I’d consent to being a featured guest on Menschen 2001, Germany’s enormously popular annual People of the Year program. I called Joy to see if she’d like to change our plans. She hung up on me.

  Eventually, Joy’s brother talked her into the trip to Germany. We couldn’t have had a nicer time. We got there on a Thursday, and our hosts, the production company ZDF, really rolled out the red carpet for us. The shoot was live on Sunday night. We were to fly back on Monday. On Monday morning, we were taking it slow, going out to buy gifts for everyone at home. I don’t know when it did, but at some point it dawned on me that I had been reading our return flight information wrong. Standing in a toy store on Friedrichstrasse, I realized we had less than an hour to get to the airport. We were late.

  Actually, we were too late. We moved as fast as we could but missed our connecting flight. We’d have to stay the night. I was stressing. I had already missed a day of work and had to get back. Our first-class tickets, purchased by ZDF, were no longer available. I’d have to pay $300 extra to get new tickets, plus pay for a hotel. Nobody at the flight desk could do anything about it. Sorry. Joy was stressed too. She went out to grab a cab while I was still trying to haggle with the airline. Eventually, I gave up and went out to the cab, starting to load our bags in the trunk. I say to Joy, “Wait, I just want to make sure I have my boarding passes for both Berlin and Frankfurt.” I go back into the airport and get the guy at the desk to reduce the $300 cost to $150. In the middle of our conversation, he jerks his head up as though someone cattle-prodded him in his ass and stares me straight in the face.

  “Mr. Benfante?” he says.

  “Yes, Benfante. B-E—”

  “Wait a moment please,” he says. Christ, they’re gonna nail for me the other $150. An official-looking woman in a different version of the airline’s uniform came out with another guy.

  “Mr. Benfante,” she says. “This gentlemen over here will take care of you. I am so sorry. I did not see the show last night, but I heard it was marvelous.” The fee to change both flights was waived. They rebooked us first class and paid for our hotel. “We are honored to have you flying on Lufthansa Airlines. We didn’t realize it was you until one of our staff back there who saw the program recognized you.”

  I am in Germany. Not Chicago, not Boston—Germany. What is happening?

  Back in New York, as we headed into December, the flood of national media recognition reached a peak. A&E’s Biography with Harry Smith broadcast their Top Ten Biographies of 2001. Bush was number 1, Giuliani number 2, followed by the NYFD/NYPD at 3, me and John at 4, then Osama bin Laden at 5. What an honor. That list generated a ton of additional attention and media requests. I seriously considered shutting off my phone after that.

  Later that month, we reached the pinnacle. Marvel Comics put out a 9/11 collector’s edition of Spider-Man with an all-black cover. Tina told me about it. They didn’t use our names, but they drew two guys carrying a woman in a wheelchair down the tower stairwells. I had to go to Bayonne to get a copy. Unbelievable. It was us. We were in Spider-Man.

  By the time Christmas arrived, my glorious national profile bore little resemblance to my tense private life. I took off from work the week of Christmas through New Year’s. Work had almost become an annoying obstacle in the way of the rest of my life. No longer a private company, Network Plus’s stock was tanking. Pressure to meet our numbers no longer came from my CEO but from anxious shareholders and ominous investment banks. The company was no longer like a family but more like a chain gang with no hope of ever pleasing its pit boss. Morale was low.

  At home, I had become farther and farther removed from our wedding planning. Joy took it all on her shoulders. That was not easy. She was from Michigan. She didn’t know her way around New Jersey like I did. But I was 9/11-consumed. I knew about the wedding checklist items—the band, the deposit, the menu—but I had no real feeling for them. The wedding became her thing. The extent that I was available was to whatever extent a wedding plan item was 9/11-related. We were pulling at each other, but in opposite directions. I was always trying to get her to understand what I had to deal with. She would plead with me to understand what she had to deal with. Both of us charged that what the other was dealing with was ultimately only about him or her. Arguments. Strain. Anxiety. Distance. Day by day, the gap in our communication widened. Small rifts enlarged into major differences.

  My fiancée. How she must’ve looked at me and thought, Here we are. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with this guy. We’re going to be a team. We’re going to start a life together. Planning a wedding together is the first step of our new partnership, which will lead to a family, and this guy is not here for any of it. Something else completely took over our lives. Well, it took over
my life, and she became an involuntary passenger. How many times did I tell her “You just don’t understand”? But it is impossible to comprehend that which is not communicated. I was giving her nothing to understand. What about what she was going through? I should’ve made our wedding the priority. I didn’t. Joy looked at me and saw a wall, the same one she saw when our eyes first met in the lobby of Robert’s Upper East Side apartment building on 9/11; still up but stronger, more layered. I insisted there was no “wall.” I argued that people needed to hear my positive story, and that if I was asked, I had to tell it. But I went too far. Joy understood what I had to do, but I went too far. She held in her hurt and did not speak it. But it built up inside of her.

  By Christmas 2001, we were two people separately holding in their frustration, confusion, and rage. I was unable to share my pain. She was unable to help me heal that which I did not share. We had to plan a wedding and pay for it. We thanked God on Christmas that I made it out of that tower, but our gratitude competed with our silent frustration. And the phone never stopped ringing.

  Things Change

  Network Plus folded late January 2002. I got the word directly from our CEO. The company was filing for bankruptcy— Chapter 11 and then Chapter 7. I had to let everybody go. It wasn’t exactly a Happy New Year.

  Our office goes through 9/11, the trauma. We go on Oprah. I get them all, one by one, to come back to work to show this will not defeat us. This will not defeat us. This is what America is about. This is what our company is about. We’re back. We’re selling. It’s a different office. Bad location. So what? We can make it work. Then just like that, boom. Everybody has to leave. Find another job. No notice. Just a phone call. You tell them, Mike. I told them. What the hell? What can you say? What do you feel? What sense is there in the world? Two jet planes and two collapsing towers couldn’t break this office up, but corporate mismanagement could. We beat the terrorists, but we couldn’t beat the accountants.

  We were putting on a wedding in seven months. What did the end of Network Plus mean for me? I was asked to stay on to manage the assets of our office while the company was in receivership. I’d get a modest salary. I couldn’t afford not to have a salary. At best, this was a Band-Aid on my financial situation.

  Starting in February, I sat by myself in an empty office and coordinated the deconstruction of Network Plus, a company that I helped build. I missed my guys. I remembered our Christmas party a few months prior. I got back from Germany and gave out posters of original Berlin Wall graffiti. The reps presented me with gifts and plaques of appreciation for what we did on 9/11. I felt loved by these people. I felt love for them. We rented out SPQR, a restaurant in Little Italy. We had the whole place. What a special night for us to pause and look at each other. We were more than mere co-workers. The next and last time we got together again as a group was the day I let everyone go. I felt so at a loss in that moment. To all those guys: I always felt that I never did thank you enough.

  And that was it. I walked into that empty office every day from February to May. There was no selling. There were no more in days or out days. Instead, I inventoried pencils, paper clips, and tissue boxes. I filed reports.

  The media requests and public appearances did not let up. I began, however, to see a change in their character. The first sign of this was when I attended a United States Senate Hearing before the Special Committee on Aging about Emergency Preparedness for the Elderly and Disabled.

  Senator Larry Craig headed the committee. He wanted to examine what happened on 9/11 and see what we learned from it. (A few years later, Senator Craig’s actions in a public accommodation would put him on the other side of the hearing table.) This was no media interview or black-tie dinner.

  I walked in to it feeling that I should’ve written something down. I was nervous and unprepared. Would I get in trouble for something? What trouble? Who needs this? I was also embarrassed by Network Plus having folded and felt reluctant to do much in public.

  It was a field hearing, held in a conference room in NYC. The impressive array of panelists included the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Aging, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s U.S. Fire Administrator, the Director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, the Associate Director for Epidemiological Science, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and New York Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman. Really, what could I add? Who was I to comment?

  I listened to all the experts go before me. I was the second-to-the-last speaker. I was asked to retell what happened once I met Tina on the 68th floor and how we got out. I told my story. After grilling some of the other panelists about the preparedness conditions and responses that day, Senator Craig asked me some short, perfunctory questions about whether or not Tina’s portable wheelchair was used and whether we’d ever had a fire drill before 9/11. Then we engaged in the following dialogue:

  Senator Craig: Well, Michael, your testimony is special. I am sure many people have praised you, as they should, for your help and persistence under those most difficult circumstances. I think all of us, when we hear people like you and testimonies given, question ourselves whether we could’ve performed as well under those circumstances. My congratulations to you.

  Mr. Benfante: Thank you, Senator. Just one more thing.

  Senator Craig: Please go ahead.

  Mr. Benfante: All things considered, I agree with Congressman Gilman that it was a tremendous emergency response. I know there were many lives lost, but I think just in the way that our Fire Department and Police Department and rescue workers responded, there were more lives saved. It just should be acknowledged.

  I guess I may have sounded out of line. The senator was quick to assure me: “Certainly, I am not critical, and I don’t know many who are.” But they were being critical.

  During that hearing, I got the creeping feeling that it was designed more to focus on what we did wrong or what we could have done better that day. They were looking to find fault. They were looking to point a finger at one thing or another that was the reason for the scale of loss, rather than to look at all the right things we did. They should have been listing the ways our fire department, port authority, police, and citizens acted in order to save people. How can we replicate that? should’ve been the question, or at least a question, asked. The selfless acts, the nameless sacrifices: What can we take away from those actions?

  Let’s face it. Most people who died in the Towers were above where the planes crashed. I don’t know how any other community could’ve reacted any better or gotten better results.

  Maybe I was too close to it. But I saw those firemen—maybe seventy-five to a hundred of them—marching up the stairs, knowing they were walking into potentially unconquerable danger, hoping to save one life and understanding that their selfless bravery could cost them their own. I saw heroic acts minute by minute, floor by floor, hundreds of such acts. There was so much right done. I saw it.

  This was February 2002. 9/11 was only six months earlier, but our nation had gotten past its Kumbayah moment. Now, little by little, everybody was grabbing pieces of 9/11 for other reasons, their own reasons. The “story” of 9/11 was slowly getting picked apart, co-opted, externalized. People were hijacking 9/11 to support their own agendas. I wanted my story to represent an awakening in us. I wanted my story to show how amazing, kind, and self-sacrificing we all could be in the face of unimaginable horror. And the only reason I was speaking publicly about it was because I felt that society’s collective consciousness had come to agree that now was the time for all of us to check ourselves and realize what is truly important: How precious life is and how we should not take it for granted. How noble we could be to and for each other.

  It was only six months earlier that everybody seemed united in the spirit of being good to one another. Volunteers were digging in the ground to find what remained, and other volunteers were bringing them food. So many were grievi
ng, and so many were trying to comfort. “WE ARE ALL AMERICANS,” France’s Le Monde newspaper declared on 9/12. “This is the end of irony,” pronounced the editor of Vanity Fair. There was unity—unity of grief, unity of aid, unity of recognition of the sacrifices made in the Towers by the firemen, by the hostages in the hijacked planes, at the Pentagon, and in the days of loss and gratitude that followed.

  My point, my whole point, was that I was not the only one. I wanted to point to the untold and uncountable acts of heroism on 9/11 and in the days following and say, “Look at who we really are. Look at who we were on 9/11. Look how we acted when the fire came. This is the best of us, the best in us. Now let us be our best selves, the best nation, the best community every day forward.”

  But sitting in that hearing, I could sense a current of thought moving in a very different direction. That room sowed seeds of blame and division, not credit and unity. Sadly, it wasn’t just that room. It was only six months later, and it was as though the world wanted to forget those good feelings. Being our best selves, the best community demanded too much of us. The window started to close. And thus, I saw the world begin to go back to business as usual.

  The “awakening” was only in my head. Corporate America apparently had no ethical epiphanies in the wake of 9/11. Just one month after 9/11, the Enron scandal came to light. The pensions and personal savings of so many good people had been wiped out, and lives were destroyed. Tyco, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, Arthur Anderson, Qwest Communications, and others led a mind-boggling and seemingly endless parade of titanic corporate criminality.

  And you want to talk about irony? One of America’s favorite TV shows was a “reality” show called Survivor. That’s right. It was called Survivor. But the way you “survived” was not by helping others and everyone making it out together. Just the opposite. You win in Survivor by carefully and strategically deceiving others, by lying and tricking until one person, and only one person, is left. Then you “win.” There were three separate versions of this hot reality show in the twelve months following 9/11. Each production rated in the top 10 of America’s most watched shows, notching over 20 million viewers each time. These were the “survivors” our country had become interested in. The ongoing but still very fresh story of 9/11 survival had exceeded the national attention span. The reality lessons of 9/11 survival was no match for the lessons of reality television’s Survivor.