Thomas Battillo was a trader on Wall Street when he narrowly escaped the 9/11 terror attacks 23 years ago. Today, he works for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to ensure that day never happens again.
"It's not a job. It's a mission," Battillo told FOX Business. "We work weekends. We work holidays. We miss things with the family to be at the airport to make sure that we're doing the security business that we need to do."
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Battillo, then a trader working at the New York Stock Exchange, was headed to breakfast with his colleagues at the World Trade Center.
It was a regular, beautiful Tuesday, he recalled. Battillo said his colleagues headed to the Windows on the World restaurant, located on the 106th and 107th floors of the north tower, when he got a call from his son who was going on a school field trip. It was the phone call he credits for saving his life.
WORLD TRADE CENTER REBUILD REVITALIZED LOWER MANHATTAN AND BROUGHT HEALING
Instead of heading upstairs, Battillo decided to take the call outside. While they were talking, "the first plane went over my head, [and] we watched it go right into the building," he said.
Shortly after, he watched the second plane fly into the south tower.
"At that point, we knew this was not any kind of accident or a mistake, but something very, very serious was going on," Battillo said. "And we were watching as people were breaking windows on the top floors to get air and then people were jumping at that point. And just to think that people lost hope and thought that this was the right way to go was just mind-boggling."
He remembers running back to the stock exchange for safety, but after the towers fell, he and his colleagues were forced to evacuate. Battillo took the ferry to Staten Island where he stayed with a friend until he could make it back to New Jersey.
Battillo's colleagues never made it out of the tower that day. They were among the nearly 3,000 people that died in the attacks. It's a reality that never gets easier for him, even as the years go on, he said.
"I went to the memorial services afterward… no bodies, no closure," he said. Some spouses didn't get to say goodbye before they left for work on that September morning, he added.
"We were just ordinary businessmen just going to work and then to have to experience all of that… It never gets easier," he said.
In 2011, Battillo became a TSA officer in Newark, New Jersey, and worked his way up the ranks. Now he serves as the TSA assistant federal security director for mission support at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
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Battillo said he is still healing from that day.
"Just knowing that I'm able to put my family on a plane, and it is safely going to get to a destination, and this will never happen again under our watch, is really the best therapy I think I can ask for," he said.
