Description: This beeper belonged to Goumatie Thackurdeen, an employee at Fiduciary Trust Corp, which was housed in the 97th floor of the South tower. The beeper was recovered from the debris of the World Trade Center.
Context: When the first plane crashed into the North Tower, people in the South Tower could see falling debris and feel the heat of the explosion. Employees of Fiduciary Trust assessed the situation and began evacuating. Before leaving, Goumatie called her mother to say she was exiting the office.
People began streaming into the stairwell. Shortly thereafter, a plane crashed into the South Tower, impacting the 78th-84th floors. According to newspaper reports, 99 percent of the people below the points of impact survived. Yet for those above the impact zones or trapped in elevators, there was no escape. Goumatie was one of 87 Fiduciary Trust employees killed in the attacks.
Description: This piece of scorched limestone facade was recovered from the wreckage of the Pentagon.
Context: The Pentagon, completed in 1943 under the urgencies of World War II, was built to provide a central headquarters for an expanded U.S. military. On September 11, hijackers crashed an American Airlines Boeing 757 airliner into a portion of the Pentagon that had been reinforced recently as part of a building renovation and counterterrorism effort. The plane crashed just outside the building and slid nearly halfway through it. It totally destroyed a section of the first two floors of the five-story building. The heavily damaged upper floors initially held but, with an intense fire raging, soon collapsed.
This material from Officer Isaac Ho'opi'i includes his uniform (shirt with insignia, trousers, boots, and name tag), his shield, his dog Vito's collar and shield, a K-9 patch, and a poster of Vito.
Description: This crushed file cabinet was recovered from the debris pile at the World Trade Center.
Context: The World Trade Center complex was home to a wide variety of businesses, including a number of retail stores on the plaza and underground levels. This file cabinet came from a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream shop that was a popular fixture on the plaza. Terrorist attacks such as those of September 11 often target civilians rather than combatants.
Description: Jan Demczur, a window washer at the World Trade Center, used this brass Ettore Corp. squeegee handle (now missing its brass channel and rubber blade) to escape from an elevator on September 11.
Context: When a hijacked airplane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center, six men, including Polish immigrant window washer Jan Demczur, found themselves trapped in an express elevator at the 50th floor. Thinking quickly, Demczur and the others pried open the elevator doors and used this squeegee handle to cut their way through the drywall of the elevator shaft. They squeezed through the hole in the wall, fleeing from the building just minutes before the tower fell.
Description: This M&M dispenser, soot-covered calendar, and desk copy of the U.S. Army code were recovered from the Pentagon office of Charles A. Reimer, Deputy Division Chief, Strategic Leadership, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff Operations/Army G-3.
Context: Charles Reimer, a civilian employee for the Department of Defense, survived the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. His office was on the third floor of the D ring (the E ring is the exterior), and was directly above the path of the airplane as it slid through the first and second floors of E, D, and C rings. As flames shot up past the windows and the area filled with smoke, he helped a fellow worker escape from the building. In the Pentagon attack, 125 employees were killed and 140 were injured; on board the airplane, all 53 passengers, six crew members, and five hijackers were killed.
These floor signs hung on the exterior of the elevator door frames in the World Trade Center. The 73rd Floor indicator is rectangular and painted black with the number and Braille equivalent in raised silver. It was recovered from the debris at the Staten Island recovery site at Fresh Kills.
This material from Officer Isaac Hoopii includes his uniform (shirt with insignia, trousers, boots, and name tag), his shield, his dog Vitos collar and shield, a K-9 patch, and a poster of Vito.