Stanwood grad tells of tragedy he saw in N.Y.

By Leslie Moriarty

Herald Writer

Stanwood native Ben Luce returned to his job Monday morning at the New York Mercantile Exchange, about two blocks from where the World Trade Center stood a week ago.

"It was a very eerie feeling," Luce said. "Travel here is quite different now. I use to take the subway to work. Now the only way to get there is by ferry."

The Mercantile leased a number of ferryboats to get its employees to work on Monday, he said. Because the building is so close to the site of the World Trade Center wreckage, only employees are allowed in the building.

Most of the restaurants and the stores in the area were in the World Trade Center complex, so the normal retail trade was absent.

There wasn’t the normal New York City hustle-bustle.

"There is a very different feeling here," he said. "And a different feeling on the (trading) floor. I still know two brokers who are missing. So when they had the ceremony before the trading day began, it was very emotional for me."

He said people who are working in the area are being offered masks, but they are not required on the street.

"There isn’t any smell in the air anymore," he said. "In fact, today was a beautiful, sunny day."

But even the sunshine doesn’t calm his memories of fleeing the destruction a week ago. While the memories are fresh, he vows to remain working in New York City. His fiancee is in law school, and "it’s home," he said.

The 1994 graduate of Stanwood High School shared his account of last Tuesday via e-mail:

"Our building, the New York Mercantile Exchange, is located about two blocks away from the trade center. I was sitting in my office when the first plane hit. There were three people in my office, and none of us were aware that the attack had happened until a co-worker came in and told us that a plane had hit the North Tower.

"We immediately turned on the TV and were watching live coverage on CNBC, and then the second plane hit. Our building was evacuated immediately and all the exchange members gathered by the Hudson River and stood around with stunned looks on our faces. We looked up and saw somebody jump out of the building. We couldn’t believe it. We stood in shock for I don’t know how long.

"Finally, I started to make my way out of the area along the river and met with some co-workers and we decided to get out of there. We just started walking north up the West Side Highway trying to get as far away as possible.

"While we were walking north we saw people on Rollerblades and bicycles going towards the World Trade Center with cameras. I guess they thought it would be a great novelty to get up close to the incident.

"My friends and I looked at each other in disbelief at these people’s actions. If they had seen and experienced what we saw they wouldn’t have wanted to go down there. Then we saw the unthinkable. We were about 20 blocks away when we turned around (we had been glancing over our shoulder literally every other step) and saw the south tower collapse. It was surreal. It was like something out of a movie.

"About 20 blocks later we turned around again and saw the North Tower collapse. We couldn’t believe the towers were gone. We just turned around and started walking toward my friend’s sister’s apartment in midtown Manhattan.

"We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the coverage and just sitting there in utter disbelief. Finally, limited subway service began and I took a train to my fiancee’s, Kasey, brother’s apartment in downtown Brooklyn. It was quite a relief to be back with her.

"After a few days I am realizing how many people I know have been directly affected by this. My fiancee’s brother is the senior assistant medical examiner for the city so he is in charge of identifying all the victims from the incident. As you may have heard on TV, sometimes he only gets a limb or an organ to with which to work, so his job is unbelievable.

" … Kasey has a high school friend who had a brother who worked on the 92nd floor and he has not been heard from. I was told yesterday that a girl from Yale with whom I graduated is missing. I’m sure the list will grow over the next days and weeks of the people I know directly and indirectly.

"On the bright side many people I know from the area made it out unharmed… . Thank God for that."

Luce’s mother, Teresa Luce, said her son went to work in New York as a natural gas trader after graduating from Yale University in 1998.

"I knew when I heard the news on Tuesday that he was in the area," she said. "He works two blocks from there and he takes the subway to work.

"I knew he would stop on the way to work at the WTC Mall to buy donuts for his clerks. When I heard the news, I was in disbelief. I saw the first tower collapsing and then the second. All I could do was pray.

"And then the phone rang and it was Ben. He’d gotten out of his building with co-workers and was walking north. He called me on his cell phone as they were walking north."

You can call Herald Writer Leslie Moriarty at 425-339-3436

or send e-mail to moriarty@heraldnet.com.

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