Ari Schonbrun, left, who survived the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, with Rabbi Laibel Schapiro, director of Chabad of the Shore in Long Branch. Schonbrun talked about his experience June 2 at the Chabad center.
Photo courtesy Rabbi Laibel Schapiro
July 8, 2008
At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Ari Schonbrun was on the 78th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center, waiting for an elevator that would take him to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor.
Suddenly, the building shook, the electricity went out, and the area quickly filled with smoke, Schonbrun told an audience on June 2 at the Chabad of the Shore center in Long Branch. During those moments, he said, his life changed forever.
“Every lesson in life is a learning experience,” said Schonbrun, a New York resident. “I learned a lot about myself and God that day.”
Schonbrun, who is still an executive at Cantor Fitzgerald, a global financial service firm, does a lot of public speaking about his 9/11 experience. The company employed 1,000 at its WTC offices; 685 died and many others were badly hurt.
“And I walked out of the building without a scratch,” Schonbrun said. “There is meaning in that.”
After the first plane hit the tower, Schonbrun was thrown through the air by the force of the blast.
He then saw a Cantor Fitzgerald auditor who had suffered third-degree burns.
“Her name was Virginia, and she said, ‘Ari, please don’t leave me,’” Schonbrun told the audience. “I promised her I wouldn’t.”
A fire warden told the growing crowd that they could leave the building by using a nearby stairwell. Led by the warden, they slowly reached the 75th floor, when “one of the biggest miracles of the day” took place, said Schonbrun.
Although cell phone service had ceased, he said, “mine rang, and it was my wife. I told her I would call back when I got out of the building. At least she knew I was alive.”
Overcoming obstacles all the way, the group carefully descended to the first floor, where another fire warden told them to exit through the garage, another five flights down. When they were three flights away from the garage, a voice called out telling them to return to a first-floor exit.
“Who was the guy who told us to use the first floor instead of the garage?” Schonbrun asked. “And why at that moment? Somebody was on my side that day.”
As they neared the revolving doors in the first-floor lobby, Schonbrun told Virginia they could pass through onto West Street.
“But that’s where people were jumping from the building,” he said. “That’s what we would have seen if we had gone the way I wanted to go.”
Schonbrun chose another exit, a door that led to Church Street.
When they went to an ambulance parked across the street, Virginia asked Schonbrun to stay with her, so, instead of leaving, he said, “I jumped into the ambulance.”
Theirs was one of the few medical vehicles to safely leave the area that day. As they rode to St. Vincent’s Hospital, Virginia thanked him for saving her life.
“But I thought she got it wrong,” Schonbrun said. “By insisting that I get into the ambulance with her, she probably saved my life. There were a lot of other ambulances that were crushed by falling debris.”
‘Add a little light’
When he left the hospital, Schonbrun borrowed someone’s cell phone, called Virginia’s mother, and then tried to call his wife. But the line went dead.
A man then offered the use of the phone in his nearby apartment, said Schonbrun. “I finally got through to my wife, and she started to cry. The last time we spoke, I was on the 78th floor of Tower One, but the tower had collapsed. She was trying to figure out how to tell our children that Dad was dead.”
He went to his brother’s office on 48th Street, Schonbrun said, and “it was the first time I had cried all day. I had tried to be strong for others, but when I saw my brother, I just lost it.”
Since his 9/11 experience, Schonbrun said, he is “less work-driven.”
“When my kids asked me to go to an activity, I usually said no, because I had to work, even in the evenings and on weekends,” he said. “Now, I’m wherever my kids need me to be. That’s what’s important. God sent me a message that day. It was time to be less concerned with materialism and take time to study, learn, and perform mitzvas. There is darkness in the world, but if you add a little light, the darkness will run away. And I realize nothing was a coincidence on 9/11. It was the hand of God.”
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