So he got on the phone to the other firefighters, and they started to spread the word across the city. “I thought ‘Man, she’s going to Potter’s Field, if we don’t do something,” Jonas said. Her family didn’t have enough money to bury her. “She was an intensely private person,” Jonas said.įor days, her body lay uncollected at the city morgue. What neither he nor the other firefighters knew was that Harris was destitute. “It was like losing a member of your family, and she really was a member of the (Ladder 6) family,” he said. Jonas got the news in a telephone call from a firefighter. 12, 2011, Harris called 911 from her Brooklyn apartment.īy the time firefighters arrived, she had died of an apparent heart attack. “We would always tell her yes, and we’ll be there with you.” “If Josephine got a call to do an interview or an appearance, she would always call and make sure we were OK with it,” Jonas said. Their story resonated with many people post-September 11, and they made appearances together at parades and dedications. In the years that followed, Harris became known at the “Angel of Ladder Company 6,” and she and the firefighters stayed in contact. If we hadn’t stopped there, who knows? We probably wouldn’t have survived.” “… Nobody survived above the fifth floor or on the first floor. “She chose the fourth floor to stop, to fall to the floor,” he said. “She was definitely alive because of us,” Jonas said. Without orders from the captain, the firefighters took turns caring for Harris until hours later when the thick dust settled and they were able to see a way to get out and get help. “She said she was afraid, and she started to cry.” “There was only one time she lost her composure,” Jonas said. When it was over, Harris and the men of Ladder 6 were alive, entombed in the debris. Half-carrying Harris, the firefighters continued to make their way down, slowly.īy the time they made it to the fourth floor, Harris fell to the ground. “Hey Cap, what do you want us to do?” one of the firefighters asked. There she was, crying in the doorway, Jonas said. “It was an almost empty feeling that we couldn’t help anyone,” Jonas, now a deputy chief, said this week.Īs they were making their way down the stairwell, they found Harris. Jay Jonas got a call on the radio that the South Tower had collapsed and he needed to get his men out of the North Tower. The firefighters of Ladder Company 6 were on the 27th floor or so of the building and still climbing when then-Capt. She stopped on the 20th floor, physically unable to take another step on her own. Harris, like so many, was trying to make her way down the stairwell of the North Tower.įlight after flight, she descended. Her story of survival is wrapped up with six firefighters who say they made it through the collapse of the World Trade Center’s North Tower because they were trying to rescue her. “God had a purpose for me with the Beamer family,” she said. She has credited her faith with giving her the strength to offer comfort and care during that 15-minute call. That day, after she took over the call, she said she turned around to hand off the phone to someone else. “Every time I tell the story, it’s like the first time,” she said. The story of that conversation has been told and retold – in books and articles, in movies and television shows.īut during a recent interview, Jefferson asked that no details about her current job or employer be made public. Jefferson, I Understand Your Plane is Being Hijacked?” At the urging of others, she even told her story in the book “Called: Hello, My Name is Mrs. Sure, she’s talked about it in the years since. Most of her colleagues now don’t know that she was the calm, caring voice who prayed with Beamer in his final minutes. Jefferson, 57, no longer answers telephone calls at the call center. In the days that followed, she relayed Beamer’s message to his wife. The next thing he said, ‘Are you ready? OK, let’s roll,’” she told CNN in 2001. “… After we said ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ the plane took another dive. And he told me if I didn’t make it, would I please call her and let her know how much he loved her and his family,” she told CNN in 2002. He had hoped on landing that plane safely. He told me that he didn’t want me to put him through to her in case he didn’t have to. “I had asked him, did he want me to place his call through to his wife for him. He told Jefferson about his children and his wife, Lisa. Two had knives and had locked themselves in the cockpit, and one had a bomb strapped to his waist. The operator turned the call over to Jefferson, the supervisor on duty.īeamer was calm as he detailed how three men had taken over the flight. It was 9:45 a.m., when Beamer placed a call to an operator at a Verizon Airfone call center in Chicago and relayed that the airplane bound for San Francisco had been hijacked.
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