I've seen this
powerful story in multiple media outlets. Credit given to
John Breunig of the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate for the story.
The note is just five words and two
numbers.
But if a picture is worth a thousand words, these
five words and two numbers have changed the picture completely for Scott's
family. Family members refer to it simply as "the note." The note
that floated from the 84th floor of Two World Trade Center to chaotic streets
below, and was tenderly preserved as it traveled from hand to hand and through
time to reach them.
Denise Scott
learned of her husband's message in August 2011, just weeks before the calendar
marked a decade since he died in the World Trade Center's collapse.
For those 10 years, his family members believed he
likely died instantly when United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the tower at
9:03 a.m., near the floors containing Euro Brokers offices.
The words of Denise and her children overlap as
they consider how the note changed their oral history of Randy's final moments.
Each delivers a piece of the agonizing account as though trying to spare the
others.
"I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn't
trapped in that building," Denise, 57, said Friday from a front room in
her Stamford home with two of her three daughters, Rebecca, 29, and Alexandra,
22, at her side.
"I thought he was killed instantly,"
Rebecca interjected.
"It was so close to impact," Alexandra
concluded.
Randy Scott's daughters fought tears as his message
again triggered new mental images.
In a steady tone, their mother explained the power
of the note. "You don't want them to suffer. They're trapped in a burning
building. It's just an unspeakable horror. And then you get this 10 years
later. It just changes everything."
"84th floor
West Office
12 people trapped"
It is not these words alone that change the
narrative of Randy Scott's final moments. The other content on the note is a dark
spot, about the size of a thumbprint. It is Randy's blood, and the clue that
eventually enabled the medical examiner's office to trace the source of the
note through DNA tests and deliver it to his family a decade after he
apparently tossed it from the 84th floor.
Not long before writing the note, after the first
plane hit One World Trade Center, Randy, 48, called Denise at Springdale
School. She was in class with her first-grade students, so someone
picked up the school line and passed along the message. Thinking the first
crash was minor incident, he just wanted her to know he was fine. The full news
of the terrorist attacks would not reach Denise until later that morning, when
Rebecca called her from Ohio, where she was attending college.
For the next few days, they considered Randy a
missing person, checking bars, restaurants and hospitals.
In the years to follow, Denise recorded key
information in a black notebook. On Friday, four days before another Sept. 11
anniversary, she consulted the notebook when needed to ensure she was accurate
in sharing details. She glibly refers to the space in the front of the home as
"the 9/11 room," since it is here that so many friends and family
members gathered nearly 11 years ago waiting for news and consoling one
another. Though Denise quickly dismissed her own name for the room, it is
accented by reminders of one of the most famous days in U.S. history: The New York
Times book "Portraits: 9/11/01" on the coffee table, the
faint names of the victims weaved into an American flag on the wall over the
piano, photos of Randy with family members and at play.
The home, which they moved into two decades ago, is
blue with white trim. Red shutters were added to complete the color scheme
weeks before Sept. 11, 2001. Now they make an indelible reference point.
"We're the red, white and blue house," Rebecca says wryly when
offering directions.
After returning Friday from a day with her
second-grade class at Springdale,
Denise tells the story of the note like a school teacher. She avoids dramatic
embellishments ("I try not to personalize it; just the facts") and references
her black notebook when needed. Her account is punctuated by flashes of
emotion, pauses to ensure accuracy, and laughs when describing her husband.
Denise was out of town visiting a friend in August
2011 when she received a call from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of
New York. With the passage of time, and the evolution of DNA technology, the
office will sometimes call families with news that something has been
identified, most often fragments. This call, though, came from Dr. Barbara
Butcher, chief of staff and director of Forensic Investigations at
the ME's office.
"I said, `What kind of fragment?' "
Denise recalled. "She said, `No, it's not a fragment. It's something
written.' And that's when I just fell apart."
Denise did not know the contents of the note, or
how it had been linked to Randy. The uncertainty made her grateful that she was
able to process the news away from her daughters, for fear of upsetting them.
"I was a mess. Because I didn't know what it
was," she said.
She slowed her cadence for emphasis, a heartbeat
between each word. "It ... was ... 10 ... years ... later. It was the 10th
anniversary, and they started replaying everything. It was hard enough anyway,
and to get a phone call 10 years later. It's not even (a call) 10 years later
to learn there are more remains, more fragments. They call them fragments. It's
10 years, and now it's something else again. And it's something I had no idea
existed."
Her sole confidante was Steve Ernst,
Randy's best friend. When they went to New York to see the note, she took a
substitute for her traditional notebook.
"She leaves the house with this (black) book,
we know something's up," Rebecca said.
Denise also brought a sample of Randy's
handwriting, thinking she would need it for identification.
"The minute I saw it I didn't need to see the
DNA test," she said. "I saw the handwriting. It's Randy's
handwriting."
Butcher retraced the note's path through the years.
Someone on the street found it immediately and handed it to a guard at the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York. Just then, the world changed.
"He went to radio, and the building was gone.
The building collapsed," Denise said.
The Federal Reserve kept the note safe, eventually
turning it over to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The museum
worked with the medical examiner's office, which traced it to Randy in summer
2011. "I'm speechless that they actually were able to identify it,"
Denise said. "This note was written on September 11. It came out of a
window. Somebody had it. People had their hands all over it."
Butcher posed a question for her to consider. The
museum wanted to exhibit the letter, with Denise's permission. She agreed,
asking only that they embargo it until she told her daughters.
Jan Ramirez,
chief curator of the museum, said the note is "exceptionally rare. I don't
know of anything else like it."
"There have been other pieces of paper that
came out of the towers that day, to which we have been able to attach some
powerful stories, but none have been quite as rare and unusual and inspiring
and sad and touching as this particular one. It really is in a class by
itself," she said Saturday.
Denise's decision on the exhibit came easily;
choosing the right time to share the news with her daughters became a tortured
process. The 10th anniversary passed; Alexandra had started her fall semester;
holidays came and went.
In January, Denise's father died. She decided the
time was right to bring her three daughters -- Rebecca, Alexandra, and Jessica
-- into the family room and share the news.
"I was bawling, because I recognized his
handwriting," Rebecca recalled.
They knew it had changed not just their father's
narrative, but that of the 11 other people referenced in the note.
"Everyone hoped that it was right on impact.
That he didn't suffer," Alexandra said. "Because not only to know
that he was trapped but what he was going through? And we knew the guys in his
office too. And they had kids and they had families, and to think that they
were terrified."
Rebecca, Alexandra, and Jessica dismissed their
mother's anxiety about her decision to delay delivering the news. The Scotts
also knew they had to widen the circle, reaching out to other relatives and to
the families of Randy's co-workers. The five words and two numbers had written
a new narrative for them as well, a narrative Denise found herself repeating in
the months to come, "again, and again, and again, and again, and
again."
In March, Denise and Rebecca took a hardhat tour of
the museum, which is not yet open to the public. They were shown the area where
Randy's note will be displayed as part of an exhibit to document the final
moments inside the World Trade Center.
"It's so amazing to think that Randy Scott
wrote it and it eventually ended up with his wife and three daughters, which is
an amazing arc of a day," said Ramirez, the museum's curator. "We are
incredibly proud to be able to show it and I think it will be one of the most
powerful artifacts in the museum."
The Scotts are aware that if not for the spot of
Randy's blood, they and other families could have one day seen the letter in
the museum without knowing its origins. Over the past 11 years, some families
have chosen not to be notified by the medical examiner's office when fragments
are found.
"I can't do that. I can't do that,"
Denise repeated. "The last notification of remains I got was in 2008. And
I can't do that. I can't leave him there. I cannot leave him there."
Better to know the truth, even when it comes in the
form of a message that took a decade to be delivered.
"It tells people the story of the day,"
Denise said.
In just five words and two numbers.
.jpg)
