Michael Benfante (Author),
Dave Hollander (Author)
Print Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (August 11, 2011)
Language: English
ASIN: B005JDD5UA
Description
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Michael Benfante went to work, just like he had day after day, at his office on eighty–first floor in the World Trade Center North Tower. Moments after the first plane struck, just twelve floors above him, Benfante organized his terrified employees, getting them out the office and moving down the stairwells. On his way down, he and a co–worker encountered a woman in a wheelchair on the sixty–eighth floor. Benfante, the woman and Benfante’s co–worker then embarked on a ninety–six–minute odyssey of escape—the two men carrying the woman down sixty–eight flights of stairs out of the North Tower and into an ambulance that rushed her to safety just minutes before the tower imploded.A CBS video camera caught Benfante just as he got out the building, and almost immediately, the national media came calling. Benfante sat on the couch with Oprah Winfrey, where she hailed him as a hero. Almost one year to the day after 9/11, Benfante got married and the woman in the wheelchair sat in the front row. That’s the storybook ending. But in the aftermath of 9/11, Benfante began a journey fraught with wrenching personal challenges of critical emotional and psychological depth in Reluctant Hero. Benfante shares the trappings of his public heroism, the loneliness of his private anguish, and the hope he finds for himself and for us. Because all of us—whether we were in the towers, in New York City, or someplace else—we are all 9/11 survivors.
Review
"This fast-paced, moving story of 9/11 and its aftermath presents the experience of the hard-working Benfante, who became a national hero after helping colleagues in the WTC north tower to the staircase after the building was hit and, with a coworker, carrying a wheelchair-bound woman down 68 floors to safety. . . . Benfante and journalist Hollander present an appealing story of personal and national trauma and the difficulty for the individual, and the nation, of moving forward. Showing the unhappiness behind what looked like one of the triumphant images of 9/11, this is recommended reading." --Library Journal.com
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