Scott Raab - Once More to the Sky: The Rebuilding of the World Trade Center

Ironworkers Mike OReilly, Sean Daly, Tim Conboy, Gary Holder, and operating engineer John Shaffner stand on the steel frame for the derrick crane at the top of 3 WTC, with One World Trade Center in the background. July 2015.

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Foreword copyright 2021 by Colum McCann

Prologue copyright 2021 by Joe Woolhead

Epilogue copyright 2021 by Scott Raab

Copyright 2021 by Hearst Magazine Media, Inc.

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2021

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Cover design by Tristan Offit

Cover photographs by Joe Woolhead

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Raab, Scott, 1952- author. | Woolhead, Joe, author.

Title: Once more to the sky : the rebuilding of the World Trade Center /Scott Raab, Joe Woolhead.

Other titles: Rebuilding of the World Trade Center

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021020415 (print) | LCCN 2021020416 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982176143 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982176204 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: One World Trade Center (World Trade Center, New York, N.Y.: 2014- )History. | One World Trade Center (World Trade Center, New York, N.Y. : 2014- )Pictorial works. | SkyscrapersNew York (State)New YorkDesign and constructionHistory21st century. |

SkyscrapersNew York (State)New YorkDesign and constructionPictorial works. | Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)Buildings, structures, etc.History21st century. | New York (N.Y.)Buildings, structures, etc.History21st century. | World Trade Center Site (New York, N.Y.)History21st century. | World Trade Center Site (New York, N.Y.)Pictorial works. | New York (N.Y.)Politics and government21st century.

Classification: LCC F128.8.W85 R33 2021 (print) | LCC F128.8.W85 (ebook) | DDC 974.7/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020415

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020416

ISBN 978-1-9821-7614-3

ISBN 978-1-9821-7620-4 (ebook)

COLUM M C CANN

H e is still up there, a quarter of a mile in the sky. He holds, in his hands, an aluminum balancing pole. He walks, he kneels, he salutes, he runs. He carries his life over the city. He makes eight passes along the three-quarter-inch wire, all the time refusing the idea of failure. Back and forth he goes, a slice of daring between the two towers, though the towers themselves are gone.

It all happens in the backspin of memory, of course, or in the smithy of the imagination, but Philippe Petits tightrope walk across the World Trade Center towers in 1974 still happens today precisely because it wasor rather, isa work of art. Petits walk speaks to the human need for both beauty and shock, for presence over absence, for the act of creation in the face of destruction.

The walk also speaks to the art of the narrative. Stories are the fundamental building blocks of our universe: They are as old as time itself. Once upon a time Stories outlast death. And when we tell themespecially if we tell them well, and honestly, and candidly, and proudly, and tinged with the music of the humanwe bring the world alive again.

So if we go to tell the story of a place that insists on being called the Freedom Towereven though officially its One World Tradewe might just say that its a 1,776-foot building in downtown Manhattan, and we might remark on its iconic status, and we might drill into the tragedy of two towers that stood before it, and we might talk about the political shitstorm that surrounded its makingthe wait and the waste and the wastrelsor we might talk about it as a cathedral of greed, and we might even unwrap a patriotic lozenge to soothe the curious tinge of sorrow in our throat, or we might go even furtherthe way Scott Raab and Joe Woolhead have donenot just into the building itself, but into the steel of it, the bones of it, the liver of it, the cranium of it, and beyond that, into the full thumping heart of it, the lives of the ironworkers and the architects and the cement truck drivers and the city hall suits, and, most poignantly, beyond that again, into the souls of the 2,977 victims who are remembered there, those souls to whom we are inextricably linked, because like it or not, this is everyones story, yours and mine, too. And even though we seldom acknowledge it, we last, through our stories, so much longer than our buildings.

A concussion is a blunt-force injury that changes the way our brain functions. Its all there in Newtons Laws of Motion. When the skull is stopped, the brain, surrounded by cerebral-spinal fluid, continues its original motion andboom!the brain strikes the hard inside surface of the skull, leading to a bruising and swelling, a tearing of blood vessels, and a profound injury to the nerves, resulting then in a possible loss of consciousness, dizziness, blurred vision, memory problems, fatigue, and sometimes death.

Americaand much of the worldwas immediately concussed when the attacks occurred in 2001. We were sent reeling. Twenty years on, it doesnt take too much hindsight to see that the punch-drunk boxer came out in us afterward. We were still on for the fight, still on for the payday, still on for the press conference, still wrapping the white towels around our necks. Come on pay TV, follow me jogging the dawn roads, throwing my fists at the sky. This is going to be one hell of a brawl. Were going to take on Iraq and Afghanistan and whoever the hell else comes our way. But behind it all there was something else going on. Not many people were talking about it. America was feeling the sweats, the dizziness, the dropped forks, the dodgy moments on the stairs, the changes in mood and behavior. The promoter was in one ear, and the doctor was in the other.

Union Square. September 15, 2001.

Even two decades on, were still in the middle of the fightbut one of the things about a severe concussion is that if its managed properly, the patient can learn to recover.