These 9/11 Heroes Chose Saving Lives Over Escaping World Trade Center

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — The following article was reposted with permission from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.

It was dedicated on April 4, 1973. It was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, just 28 years later. Its architect, Minoru Yamasaki, wrote: “The World Trade Center should be imbued with the feeling of man’s belief in both his greatness and his humanity.”

The World Trade Center was more than a place to work. It was a place to live. And tragically, for 13 heroic men of the World Trade Department, it is where they died. They could have escaped to safety but chose to stay. In 2005, they were awarded the 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor by President George W. Bush, along with firefighters, police, and first responders.

Heroes they were, these 13 World Trade Department civilians who navigated the chaos of 9/11 to break through sheetrock, direct and guide uniformed first responders, man command posts, lead people out of the towers, and prevent others from walking into danger.

Their commitment, understanding of the physical campus, and dedication in the face of fire, smoke, and confusion aided in the saving of thousands of lives. To understand the sacrifice made by these men who could have escaped to safety but chose to stay, it is essential to understand what the World Trade Department was. The Port Authority dreamed the 16-acre campus and its iconic Twin Towers into existence, and the men and women of the World Trade Department gave it life and nurtured it.

Unlike today, the Port Authority owned and operated all the buildings on the campus, except for the hotel. If an elevator didn’t work, someone in the World Trade Department had it fixed. If firefighters needed training on where standpipes were in the towers, someone in the World Trade Department showed them. If tenants needed assistance, or floors were to be leased, or vehicles were to be managed into and out of the campus, the World Trade Department was there.

Much of the work was not glamorous, but to the individuals of that department the work was their lives. They were:

• Joseph Amatuccio, manager of WTC operations and maintenance.
• James Barbella, property manager in Two World Trade Center.
• Edward Calderon, operations control center supervisor.
• Carlos DaCosta, assistant general manager of base building services.
• Frank DeMartini, manager of WTC construction and project management.
• Kenneth Grouzalis, property manager for the subgrade levels of the World Trade Center.
• Douglas Karpiloff, security and life safety director of the World Trade Center.
• Robert Lynch, property manager.
• Peter “Pete” Negron, environmental coordinator for the World Trade Center.
• David Ortiz, locksmith.
• Eugene Raggio, general operations supervisor.
• Francis Riccardelli, manager vertical transportation systems.
• Edward Strauss, superintendent, World Trade Center operations.

The names and the titles don’t offer much insight into who these people were. But their loved ones remember them vividly.

Melissa Raggio thinks of her father, Eugene, every time she is with her family at Disney World, a place she visited with her dad. It’s at the parade before the evening fireworks when a song from Disney’s “Hercules” plays.

I have often dreamed of a far-off place.
Where a hero's welcome would be waiting for me.
Where the crowds will cheer when they see my face.
And a voice keeps saying, "This is where I'm meant to be."

Dina Amatuccio, said of her father Joseph, “I always knew he was a hero.”

During interviews with the families of these men, the word “hero” was spoken often, yet none of these families said that their husband, their dad, or their cousin thought himself a hero. It is not a title they would have been comfortable with.

Raggio joked that her dad, a very big man with a very little dog named Tinkerbell, loved to work nights because he felt he was “semi-retired;” he could do his banking and errands during the day. But she made clear that her dad never thought of himself as separated from the World Trade Center. “When you find a job you love, you really don’t work. He was the classic case of that,” she said.

Dina Amatuccio echoed that sentiment when she spoke of her dad Joseph’s connection to work, “[When I think of my dad], he’s in his Port Authority shirt and carpenter jeans… He loved the Port Authority. He was there since he was 18.”

Several of the widows met their husbands at a Port Authority facility. Theresa Riccardelli, wife of Francis, said, “I met [Francis] at the World Trade Center.” She worked for McGraw Hill at the time and had to come to the World Trade Center for a work-related meeting, and Francis asked a friend of his to introduce them.

Jane Strauss met her husband Edward at the Lincoln Tunnel; she was a toll collector, and he worked inside the tunnel as a facility operation agent, now called a tunnel and bridge agent. Edward Strauss has been described as a gentle giant – his dress shirts had to be custom made because he had a 22-inch neck. His size put people off at first, but not once they knew them.

If hero was mentioned often to describe these men, so was family. Jane Strauss talked of weekly lunches at work where everyone pitched in for the costs, where people would socialize as family, but always return to the job at hand.

The job, the friendships, the family – that was all part of the World Trade Department definition.

Crystal Ortiz, whose father, David, was a locksmith, said of the 9/11 attack and that her father stayed when he could have left, that “it was a moment bigger than him.”

Yet, when listening to her and her brother Richard speak of how their dad always put people before himself, it became clearer that the moment – 9/11 – was not bigger than David Ortiz or the other 12 men honored with the Medal of Valor. These men were bigger than the moment and that is why they stayed.

“We need people like that in this world,” Richard Ortiz said.

Asked what object he might leave by his dad’s name on the 9/11 Memorial that would show passersby who David Ortiz was, Richard said, “I would bring a key… a key that would open all the doors” and allow people to come in and out.

Peter Negron, “Pete” Negron’s older son of two, said he would leave a softball at the Memorial because as a boy, he watched his father play, and was coached by him, and now 25 years later as a grown man with three daughters of his own, he coaches his girls sharing his father’s love of the game

Peter’s mother, Leila, said, “We were the most important things to him.”

Again, family comes to the forefront of her memories of a husband who liked breakfast for dinner every Friday night, and who after taking a picture of the World Trade Center came home to tell her that not only would he work there one day, but he would own it. Leila reflecting on that moment, said that she said to Pete, “Well, you do you,” and then she laughed.

But she also recalled a phone call in the middle of the night from the World Trade Center about a suspicious package found on a floor that Pete Negron was responsible for. After Pete hung up, she asked him to promise if anything ever happened at the World Trade Center that he would leave and come home. He told her he could not promise that, and Leila said when the Twin Towers were struck, “I knew” he would stay and help people.

Austin, Pete’s younger son who has no real memories of his dad, said, “All I can really say is that I take every story... every memory and I try to be the person, the man, that I think that [my dad] would want me to be and that and more. I know he’s watching us, and I think he would be proud of how we are doing.”

The Edward Calderon family – wife Deborah, son Jeremy, and daughter Ilene – tell joyful stories of their husband and dad, who had a theater background, served in the Marines, and had a love for the Port Authority. He was a hero, they all said. But he was also a character dressing-up as Batman, circa Michael Keaton, who once appeared at the family home’s front door to admonish his then-young son to eat his vegetables, and when asked by Jeremy where the Batmobile was, replied matter-of-factly that he parked it up the street.

The juxtaposition between the comedy of daily life and the great tragedy that has defined these men’s lives for the public at large is never lost on their families and colleagues.

The stories are too numerous to mention. But what cannot be stated enough is these men of the World Trade Department, from different backgrounds, with different levels of education, and with different roles at the World Trade Center shared key things:

They loved the World Trade Center.

They loved the World Trade Department.

They had two families – the one at home and the Port Authority at their other home.

They had hopes and dreams like all the people on the World Trade Center campus on Sept. 11, 2001.

But unlike so many of those thousands of people, they stayed by choice.

They stayed to help colleagues.

They stayed to help tenants.

They stayed to help first responders.

They stayed to help strangers.

They stayed because that is what heroes do.

Minoru Yamasaki said, “The World Trade Center should be imbued with the feeling of man’s belief in both his greatness and his humanity.”

It was.

Send local news tips and correction requests to eric.kiefer@patch.com. Learn more about advertising on Patch here.