LINTHICUM, Md.—Thomas Battillo will never forget. He will always remember his son’s phone call. He will always remember the sound. He will always remember working on Wall Street. And he will always remember his colleagues who were not lucky enough to have a son who called them on the morning of September 11, 2001, to ask about his school field trip.
As we're approaching the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, Battillo is again thinking of that sunny Tuesday morning back in 2001.
It was his son’s phone call that saved Battillo’s life on that fateful day when terrorists slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center. He will never forget how lucky he was that he took the call before walking into the World Trade Center for breakfast. The tattoo on his left forearm ensures that he will never forget those who the terrorists murdered. Battillo sports the tattoo proudly. It depicts the World Trade Center towers in front of a flag with 9/11 inked above the towers and “Never Forget” below the towers.
Battillo is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) assistant federal security director for mission support at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and was a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on 9/11. On that day, he and his colleagues were going for breakfast at Windows on the World restaurant on floors 106 and 107 of the North Tower (Building One) of the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhattan.
“It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, and I got a call from my son who was going on a field trip,” Battillo said. “I decided to take the call outside of the building.”
They were talking “when the first plane flew over my head and into the building.” A few minutes later, the second plane circled around and hit the other tower. That’s when we knew we were in big trouble,” Battillo recalled.
With the towers only a few blocks from Wall Street, Battillo hustled back to the New York Stock Exchange for safety.
“When the towers fell, it felt like an earthquake,” he said.
When the ash, smoke, soot and dust from the fallen buildings entered the Stock Exchange building, officials told everyone to leave because the debris infiltrated the HVAC system of the building.
Battillo went to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and took the ferry to Outerbridge Crossing where he was able to catch a ride from a stranger, who dropped Battillo off at a New Jersey transit station. Battillo was able to get home from there.
Eventually, Battillo retired from Wall Street, although he knows several traders from the Stock Exchange who decided to join TSA.
“We were familiar with the fast pace and the noise on the floor, and that’s what it is like at a checkpoint,” he said.
For Battillo, TSA’s mission to protect the country from future terrorist attacks in the nation’s transportation systems was personal. So, he joined TSA, in 2011 first working as a TSA officer at a checkpoint at Newark Liberty International Airport, later at TSA headquarters in northern Virginia as Section Chief in Operations Management Security Operations and the last two years overseeing mission support at BWI.
About a year after 9/11, a friend offered to get a group of the 9/11 survivors a tattoo that says, “Never Forget,” and now, more than 20 years later, it remains emblazoned on his forearm.