I first met Nathan Goldwasser at his son Ethan's Bar Mitzvah in 2004. I didn't know Nathan had survived 9/11 until I heard him get up to speak about his son. On September 11, 2001, Nathan was working at his job at Met Life on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower. That day was also Ethan's tenth birthday.
American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower just a few floors above where Nathan worked, between the 94th and 98th floors. Nathan spoke movingly at Ethan's Bar Mitzvah about how he climbed down all those flights of stairs from the 89th floor, hoping to make it home to his son's birthday party. His family didn't know he'd survived the collapse of the North Tower until he showed up at home. There had been no way to contact them.
I spoke with Nathan today to get his reaction to Osama bin Laden's death. He told me he found it very reassuring that the perpetrator of 9/11 had finally been caught. For him, it meant that every day, for ten years, someone was looking for bin Laden. All those years of planning finally paid off.
And as the ten year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Nathan said the death of bin Laden will bring a better sense of closure, as if the events of the last ten years have come full circle. Even the new World Trade Center is under construction, he told me. Nathan Goldwasser, who survived the worst terrorist attack on American soil, had one word to sum it all up:
Nathan appeared in a documentary on 9/11 called "Inside 9/11." Click here to take a look.
