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MICHAEL NESTOR: I'm Michael Nestor, I'm the Deputy Inspector General for the Port Authority of New York New Jersey.

LIZ THOMPSON: I'm Liz Thompson, Executive Director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

RICHARD TIERNEY: I'm Richard Tierney, I'm with the Office of the Inspector General for the Port Authority, and I worked in Tower 1 on the 77th Floor.

HOST: On the morning of September 11, 2001, Nestor, Thompson, and Tierney were eating breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Together, they rode in the last elevator down in the moments before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building at 8:46 that morning.

NESTOR: We usually got there around 7:30, because we were there every day -- we had breakfast there everyday. So we got there, pretty much our regular time and saw the same people that we always see: the hostess Doris, Jan, the waiter.

NESTOR: We were sitting right almost in the center, when you walked in.

THOMPSON: Right, they always sat in the center.

NESTOR: In the center, at the window.

THOMPSON: I just went in and Doris Eng was her usual divine self; she greeted me with a smile. And I was sitting facing the Statue of Liberty. And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous morning. We just commented on what a perfect day it was.

NESTOR: We said goodbye --

TIERNEY: We said goodbye to Doris, to Jan.

NESTOR: Yup, Dick and I got the elevator first. And then we heard Miss Liz screaming down the hall. And we held for her. We rode down, and I guess we were joking around or talking.

TIERNEY: We said something to each other, you know, light conversation, whatever.

NESTOR: And it didn't take long. Those elevators were fast. It didn't take long. And then we got off. And the plane hit.

NESTOR: I guess when we figured out who didn't get out, and we were the only ones up there that did get out, you know. It kind of sunk in as time went on that, my God, we were the last people to leave that place alive.

THOMPSON: I mean I often thought that if I had had another cup of coffee and gone to the ladies room, then that would have been that.

NESTOR: Things just kind of, for us three, fell in place. For a lot of other people it didn't, you know?  And you just wandered into luck, or unluck, or misfortune or good fortune,

TIERNEY: I think about how close I came. But not deliberately. It just comes upon me. This sense of,  kind of a disconcerting sense of how close, you know, of how close I came to not being here today.

NESTOR: There is nothing you can do to change what happened. There was no right, wrong, smart, stupid. It was just a matter of -- I don't know if it was luck, fate, or what it was. You made left turn; we're here having this conversation. You made right turn, and we wouldn't be having this conversation, we wouldn't be here. And it was just chance.

HOST: Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson and Richard Tierney were three of the four passengers on the last elevator down from Windows on the World. Everybody who was at Windows on the World at the time of impact -- approximately 170 men and women -- perished. 

Producers: Karen Callahan and Dave Isay / Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by Dan Heller.

"The Last Elevator" premiered September 11, 2003, on Morning Edition. Copyright © 2003 Sound Portraits Productions. All Rights Reserved.

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This piece is available in the following audio formats [3:38 min]:
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		56 kbps Real Audio
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		intro
		transcript

		Doris Eng's memorial page on CNN.com
		Jan Maciejewski's memorial page on Remebering September 11, 2001
		Sound of the WTC elevator, courtesy of the September 11 Digital Archive (1:03 min, MP3 file)

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