Sonny Sonnenstein

Charlotte exec escapes collapsing
WTC tower
Erik Spanberg
Senior Staff Writer
Charlotte Business Journal

Sonny came home, despite the vengeance.

A day after escaping the 81st floor of 1 World Trade Center, Sonny Sonnenstein had one form of photo ID in his possession. The ID? A visitor's badge from the World Trade Center.

His is just one of the thousands of stories from a day of hate and destruction unparalleled in modern America. The quirks of fate taking a life here -- and saving one there -- are embodied by Sonnenstein, a principal at Charlotte-based Core Technology Partners.

Sonny, a native Long Islander, came to Charlotte a decade ago. His wife of six years, Diane, works at Bank of America Corp. They moved to their Mountain Island Lake dream house last Thanksgiving. The thirtysomething couple is career-minded, well-traveled and, this week, shaken to the core.

Sonnenstein met with several New York clients Monday, then began his day at 1 World Trade Center Tuesday. He arrived at 7:50 a.m. and went to see his project clients from Bank of America on the 81st floor. Just another day, checking on a client, making the rounds.

After a brief conference call at the BofA offices, Sonnenstein and several New York-based bank employees were chatting when a loud crash, at 8:45 a.m., sent shock waves through the building.

It felt as if the 110-story tower's knees had buckled. Moments later, Sonnenstein and the others gaped while chunks of concrete and debris whizzed past the office windows.

"When we saw the stuff falling, my first thought was a bomb had exploded," Sonnenstein says. "I never would have thought it was a plane."

Sonnenstein and the bank staffers headed for the nearest stairwell. Before Sonny made his way there, though, he stopped and grabbed his computer.

"And I remember this: For some reason I turned my computer off before I left," he says. "I have no idea why. Then I grabbed my bag and got out of there. My wallet, everything else, it was in my sportcoat. I left it sitting there."

He won't see the sportcoat again.

Sonnenstein and the bankers descended one flight of stairs before smoke forced them back to where they had started. There, several bank employees suggested an alternate stairwell, one suffering minimal smoke damage from the fire raging several stories above.

Thousands of people jammed the stairs, gently but briskly picking their way down. Two people on each step. Panic, thus far, hadn't set in.

Several times the evacuees stepped aside to let others pass. A few were gasping from asthma. At one point, several women with singed hair and peeling, burnt skin scurried past, victims from higher floors.

Making the call
Twenty minutes after 1 World Trade Center was hit by a hijacked American Airlines Boeing 767, Sonny Sonnenstein stopped for a breather. (No one on the stairs had any idea of a second hijacked plane hitting 2 World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m.) The cluster of workers had reached the 41st floor, the halfway point of an hour-long attempt to escape. Traffic from the lower floors now added to the burden and clogged the stairwell.

Firefighters shouldering heavy equipment headed the other way to battle the blaze high above. Sonnenstein and another man had been carefully ushering a fearful young woman down, working to calm her fears.

At 9:05 a.m., Diane Sonnenstein received a call from her husband, who, she learned, was in the World Trade Center.

"I had just gotten to work, I didn't know enough to ask anything," she says. "He said he was in the stairwell, and he sounded calm. A couple of times I heard people asking them to step to the right so they could get injured people through. I didn't even ask which tower he was in."

Sonny promised to call Diane when he reached the ground. Then he checked CNN updates on his cell phone. Before he lost his connection, he read two planes had hit the World Trade Center. He mentioned the scant headlines to people on the stairs; all assumed the planes were small, errant private jets.

Nobody around him thought the towers would crumble. After the initial buckling, the skyscraper had steadied itself.

Across town, Tom Gottcent, a Core Technology colleague, frantically called company founder Peter Pampillonio back in Charlotte. Gottcent and Sonnenstein had dinner together the previous night. Gottcent knew of the World Trade Center meeting and left voice-mail messages on Sonny's cell phone, then called Pampillonio.

"I couldn't get Sonny, all the circuits were busy," Pampillonio says. "It was surreal." Trapped with nothing more than network TV coverage, he feared the worst.

Tobacco road
Attired in khakis, a blue shirt and tasseled loafers, Sonnenstein wasn't seized by intense fear until he reached the lobby. A faulty heel on one shoe made the hour-long trek tricky: "There's a shoe-repair place in there I meant to stop by, I thought about it that morning. The heel on one of my shoes kept slipping."

Water from overhead sprinklers doused the lobby. Elevator doors resembled pinched empty Coke cans. Rescue workers hustled people out, instructing everyone not to look up. The woman Sonnenstein escorted down slipped her shoes back on. Sonny waited and hurried her out the door.

In Charlotte, Diane Sonnenstein and the rest of the workers at Bank of America's Corporate Center left the office soon after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. A coworker took Diane to her sister's office several blocks away in uptown Charlotte, then they went to their mother's house.

"We were all armed with our cell phones, just waiting," she says. "When I heard the building had collapsed, I didn't have a good feeling."

Sonny had a worse feeling. He walked a block with a throng of escapees, then heard FBI agents instructing everyone to run -- and not turn around. Sonny sprinted for several blocks, who knows how many in such an adrenalized state, finally ducking into an office lobby.

An indescribable explosion sounded. Pieces from the explosion flew in all directions. A nearby voice said, "See, there's only one building standing." The ashes and dust looked like a heavy snowstorm. Sonny mistakenly thought it was 1 World Trade Center.

After 20 endless minutes watching the debris scatter, Sonny got back on the move, walking, he prayed, toward safety. Cell phone? Jammed, no matter how many times he dialed. Pay phones, same story. People stumbled through the streets dazed, covered in soot and ash.

Sonny ambled on, hoping to reach midtown New York. Radios and TVs blared all over. One man told Sonny to walk toward the Empire State Building, where a major cell phone tower might help complete a call. A stranger offered a cigarette. Sonny accepted on the spot.

"I'd never smoked in my life, but I figured, what the hell," he says. "I took two puffs and proceeded to snap it in half. I guess I wasn't very good at it."

His cell phone finally kicked in, but Diane couldn't be reached at work. Frustrated and exhausted, Sonny thought about tossing his phone into the street. Finally, he left an unforgettable message at her office: "Honey, I'm alive. I ran from the smoke. I love you."

At Third and 29th, he stumbled into the lobby of his brother's girlfriend's apartment. Soaking wet, sweating, flecks of ash coating his hair like a silver coiffure, he had found safety.

The girlfriend, Iris, and her roommate kept reaching over to make sure he was, in fact, real. Sonny finally contacted Diane at her mother's house. Three hours had passed since his call from the stairwell. They wept. The cliches of a husband and wife offering long-distance vows of love suddenly seemed anything but trite. Instead, it became everything.

By the time Sonny's brother arrived from the Bronx, everyone in Iris' apartment was riveted to the TV coverage. It seemed both near and far to Sonny. Long-suffering through a low-carb diet, he opted for five pieces of New York pizza for dinner.

Twenty-four hours later, he was in a rented Ford Escort with Gottcent, driving home. "I have no ID," he says. "Who is going to let me on a plane now?"

Are there the requisite big lessons and meaningful moments in this episode? A new lease on life, a realization of what really matters. Survivors' guilt? Anger?

Why did Sonny come home when so many others didn't? Was Sept. 11, 2001, a dreadful day because of what he endured -- or a great one because he survived it?

Driving down a New Jersey interstate, the same bedeviling cell phone in hand, Sonny ponders when the realization of what he's survived might sink in. When he might feel he's made it home. Will it be a glimpse of the Bank of America tower? Ericsson Stadium? A Harris Teeter?

Not even that. For the moment, the singularity of a love just discovered shades the rest of the world from existence. Or hides him from that world.

"What means the most is seeing my wife, definitely," he says. "Everything else is just metal and concrete and, as we learned this week, it's not even close to permanent. It's not anything. I just want to hug my wife. That's all."