 That morning I was driving into work, like I normally did every morning, and I was a couple blocks away from Broadway because our office was right on Broadway. It was a couple blocks away, and I had my radio on listening to morning music. I had my AC on, windows rolled up, so kind of outside ambient noise. I couldn't really hear anything, but I distinctly remember hearing this loud, kind of like an explosion. When I pulled up in my normal parking spot, I remember getting out of my vehicle, and there was a couple people congregated on the corner, and they were kind of looking up in the direction of where the towers are standing, and we were looking up and you see smoke billowing from the top of the World Trade Center. So I remember walking into the office, and our admin chief, his name was Mr. Martinez, and I remember him, he was on the phone, and I remember walking into the office, and I told him, I said, hey, Marty, did you hear that explosion? Something crashed into the World Trade Center. People were saying it was like a Cessna or something, and he said that he had no idea. He didn't hear anything, so he goes over to the window, and he's looking, and he's kind of like, wow, I didn't hear it. He's like, it's crazy. So I go into the captain's office, and as I'm looking for this paperwork, I hear Marty just screaming, and he yells out for me to come and run to the window, and as I drop what I'm doing and I'm running, that's when the building shook at first, and then you hear the impact of the second plane that hit. As soon as the concussion wave kind of hit the building, because again, we were only one block east of the towers at that time. The building shook, and I remember telling Marty that we have to get out of this building right now. He said, I'm going to run up all the way to the top and just tell people to forget the elevators and just make sure that they go down the ladderwells. So I did that, ran to the top. I believe it was, I don't know, maybe 15, 16 stories. And of course, you know, my adrenaline is pumping, so I'm just running up, opening doors and hallways, screaming for everyone to just take the stairwell down, going up to the next floor and doing all the way, doing it all the way up and then all the way down. But by the time I got to the lobby, and I remember running out of the ladderwell, the scene that was unfolded like outside of the building was something like a movie. I mean, it was people just running everywhere, screaming. There's debris, paper flying in the air, just that accurate smell. And I remember I run out and I grabbed the police officer and I told him that I'm a United States Marine, that I work upstairs in a recruiting office. Was there anything that he wanted me to do? Once he came to, he asked me, he said, listen, just run down to one police plaza. He's like, and start pulling out the police barricades and just start pulling them out across Broadway trying to block civilian traffic. He's like, there's going to be tons of emergency service vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances, you name it. And of course you can hear all the sirens in the distance and everyone trying to respond, first responders. And I remember pulling out the police barricades and traffic is gridlocked, it stopped. I don't know how, somehow we were able to deviate all the cabs and the buses and just civilian traffic away from Broadway and just allow emergency service vehicles. I remember as I was standing there amongst the barricades that I had helped set up, you know, obviously I would turn and kind of look up at the Twin Towers and I remember watching people hold hands and jump. And to me, I can't imagine how awful, I can't even find the words to describe it, but the fact that those people would choose to jump to their deaths because they didn't want to burn or either that or they knew that there was no hope for them to be rescued, they chose to hold hands and jump. It wasn't just one or two people, I mean I saw multiple people just jumping from the World Trade Center and electing that that's the way that they wanted to go. And I just, in my mind I just find that it just incredible like that they chose, that action was the lesser of those two evils. I remember we're standing there and then all of a sudden the ground starts shaking. And I remember hearing like this rumbling as the ground shakes and I remember looking behind me and all of a sudden all I see is the police officers that were behind me just kind of motioning for everyone to start running and just to move and that's where I kind of looked over my shoulder and you could see the tower starting to come down, the first tower. And again it was surreal. So I remember just turning and just bolting with everyone. Everyone just starts running and screaming again something out of Hollywood, something that you've seen in a movie. And we're running and we're running and all of a sudden I remember looking back and just the smoke and the debris, just the cloud just engulfing and consuming everyone. It changed my life and the fact that you never know when something is going to happen. And you have to take, you can't take things for granted obviously. That morning again just like your average American, your average New Yorker, you get up and go to work, carry out the plan of the day as we like to say in the Marine Corps. And just like that, your life changes. I think that day basically just answered any doubt whatsoever in my mind of what I wanted to do the rest of my life because I knew obviously at that point that the United States, our military in some way, shape or form, we were going to go ahead and take the fight to whoever it was that caused this, which we now know. And so it just solidified it. And so I knew that there was no question in my mind and I knew that eventually once I was done recruiting duty that I'd be able to get in there and do my part and feel a little, I don't know if more proud is the right word, but feel a little more justified being that I was a native New Yorker and that a little more personal to me because I was there that day when it happened. And I tipped my hat to all those Marines, all service members who are serving now post-911. Prior to that there were many reasons why people joined the military. I'm sure some joined because they were patriotic. There was other reasons to do it, job skills, trade skills, the ability to go to college and maybe do a little traveling. And after 9-11, I don't think there's down too many people's minds on why they decided to join and raise their right hand when they could have easily said, no way, not me, I'm good. So I definitely tipped my hat to all those who decided that they wanted to answer the call and do something for their country.