A man who grew up in Lake Orion has dedicated his life to make sure nobody forgets the men and women from Michigan who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Economist Patrick Anderson co-founded the nonprofit Michigan Remembers 9-11 Fund in 2007. It works to memorialize the victims and honor the heroes. Anderson opened up about how he escaped the morning of the attacks.
“I don’t tell the story very often because it’s kind of painful to go through it,” Anderson said.
Anderson was in his hotel room on the 39th floor of one of the World Trade Center towers.
“It generally starts with feeling the first plane hit the building. I still remember that feeling, and that sound, and that fact that I couldn’t figure out what happened. Like most people, it was just, you didn’t know. You couldn’t figure out what happened,” Anderson said.
There had been an announcement in the hotel for everyone to stay in their rooms.
“It was terrible,” he said. “You saw dead people and you saw fire. And it was awful. There’s no easy way to say that and usually, I just leave that out. But if you looked outside, you already saw dead people.”
“It made total sense to me that they were saying ‘stay in your room.’ If you looked outside, you could see that if you were outside you could die. It made sense. But I ended up leaving my room. For me, it felt like I was tapped on the shoulder by an angel. It said, ‘Get out now or we’ll see you not in this world,” he said.
With one shoe on his foot and the other in his hand, Anderson made a run for his life. It was chaos at the bottom of the World Trade Center. People were racing out and first responders were rushing in.
“I’ll never forget getting out of the building and finally realizing what was happening only after I got out of the building and looked up and then just that moment of realizing that people were actually trying to kill everybody. That was a horrible moment, and for me, it was as I was running out of the World Trade Center and the second plane going right over my head,” he said.
About five seconds after he came out of the building the second plane hit. He raced across the street to hide underneath a garbage truck as the crash debris and jet fuel began to rain fire down below. Anderson said he made it with about two, maybe three seconds to spare.
“That was the moment where, for me, time stood still and I could not reconcile the fact that this plane was heading directly at the building I was running out of. I mean, I was stopping seconds because I didn’t want to admit what I was looking at,” he said.
His fight for survival was hardly over. Anderson would need to get much farther from the buildings ahead of their collapse and the first responders were the next guardian angels to arrive for him.
“I remember three firefighters that were there. They got me out. They didn’t get out,” he said. “I’ve got a crime scene bag that the New York Police Department got and sent to me months afterward. It has, like, part of a briefcase of mine and a picture and everything. ... I just can’t open the thing and the last time I did I just remember that World Trade Center smell and that’s a powerful reminder.”
It’s not easy for Anderson to talk about his experiences and it certainly won’t be easy on the anniversary. Yet, he will speak about and he feels he has to.
The Michigan Remembers 9-11 Fund is taking donations to make sure Michigan victims are memorialized and remembered for years to come.
“Funds raised help to ensure that future generations remember September 11, 2001, as a day of loss and tragedy, but also as a day of heroism and sacrifice. Our mission is to honor those who lost their lives on 9/11/01, including 42 with Michigan connections, and to celebrate Michigan’s first responders who protect and serve our communities daily.
At the moment, our efforts are focused on maintaining an interactive map of 9-11 memorials across Michigan, along with a remembrance page for the 42 victims with Michigan connections. The annual Run to Remember and scholarship/essay contests are on hiatus while we search for a new volunteer executive director, but we hope to resume those activities next year.”
Anderson will also be speaking at the 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony in Plymouth Township on Saturday.