A note from a father changes the 9-11 account of his family
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
BY: John Breunig
Stamford Advocate
STAMFORD, Conn. -- The note is just five words and
two numbers.
Randy Scott scrawled these five words and two numbers on a piece
of paper on Sept. 11, 2001, while at work at Euro Brokers Inc. in
the World Trade Center.
But if a picture is worth a thousand words, these five words and
two numbers have changed the picture completely for Scott's family.
Family members refer to it simply as "the note." The note that
floated from the 84th floor of Two World Trade Center to chaotic
streets below, and was tenderly preserved as it traveled from hand
to hand and through time to reach them.
Denise Scott learned of her husband's message in August 2011,
just weeks before the calendar marked a decade since he died in the
World Trade Center's collapse.
For those 10 years, his family members believed he likely died
instantly when United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the tower at
9:03 a.m., near the floors containing Euro
Brokers offices.
The words of Denise and her children overlap as they consider
how the note changed their oral history of Randy's final moments.
Each delivers a piece of the agonizing account as though trying to
spare the others.
"I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn't trapped in that
building," Denise, 57, said Friday from a front room in her
Stamford home with two of her three daughters, Rebecca, 29, and
Alexandra, 22, at her side.
"I thought he was killed instantly,"
Rebecca interjected.
"It was so close to impact," Alexandra concluded.
Randy Scott's daughters fought tears as his message again
triggered new mental images.
In a steady tone, their mother explained the power of the note.
"You don't want them to suffer. They're trapped in a burning
building. It's just an unspeakable horror. And then you get this 10
years later. It just changes everything."
"84th floor
West Office
12 people trapped"
It is not these words alone that change the narrative of Randy
Scott's final moments. The other content on the note is a dark
spot, about the size of a thumbprint. It is Randy's blood, and the
clue that eventually enabled the medical examiner's office to trace
the source of the note through DNA tests and deliver it to his
family a decade after he apparently tossed it from the
84th floor.
Not long before writing the note, after the first plane hit One
World Trade Center, Randy, 48, called Denise at Springdale School.
She was in class with her first-grade students, so someone picked
up the school line and passed along the message. Thinking the first
crash was minor incident, he just wanted her to know he was fine.
The full news of the terrorist attacks would not reach Denise until
later that morning, when Rebecca called her from Ohio, where she
was attending college.
For the next few days, they considered Randy a missing person,
checking bars, restaurants and hospitals.
In the years to follow, Denise recorded key information in a
black notebook. On Friday, four days before another Sept. 11
anniversary, she consulted the notebook when needed to ensure she
was accurate in sharing details. She glibly refers to the space in
the front of the home as "the 9/11 room," since it is here that so
many friends and family members gathered nearly 11 years ago
waiting for news and consoling one another. Though Denise quickly
dismissed her own name for the room, it is accented by reminders of
one of the most famous days in U.S. history: The New York Times
book "Portraits: 9/11/01" on the coffee table, the faint names of
the victims weaved into an American flag on the wall over the
piano, photos of Randy with family members and at play.
The home, which they moved into two decades ago, is blue with
white trim. Red shutters were added to complete the color scheme
weeks before Sept. 11, 2001. Now they make an indelible reference
point. "We're the red, white and blue house," Rebecca says wryly
when offering directions.
After returning Friday from a day with her second-grade class at
Springdale, Denise tells the story of the note like a school
teacher. She avoids dramatic embellishments ("I try not to
personalize it; just the facts") and references her black notebook
when needed. Her account is punctuated by flashes of emotion,
pauses to ensure accuracy, and laughs when describing
her husband.
Denise was out of town visiting a friend in August 2011 when she
received a call from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of
New York. With the passage of time, and the evolution of DNA
technology, the office will sometimes call families with news that
something has been identified, most often fragments. This call,
though, came from Dr. Barbara Butcher, chief of staff and director
of Forensic Investigations at the ME's office.
"I said, `What kind of fragment?' " Denise recalled. "She said,
`No, it's not a fragment. It's something written.' And that's when
I just fell apart."
Denise did not know the contents of the note, or how it had been
linked to Randy. The uncertainty made her grateful that she was
able to process the news away from her daughters, for fear of
upsetting them.
"I was a mess. Because I didn't know what it was,"
she said.
She slowed her cadence for emphasis, a heartbeat between each
word. "It ... was ... 10 ... years ... later. It was the 10th
anniversary, and they started replaying everything. It was hard
enough anyway, and to get a phone call 10 years later. It's not
even (a call) 10 years later to learn there are more remains, more
fragments. They call them fragments. It's 10 years, and now it's
something else again. And it's something I had no
idea existed."
Her sole confidante was Steve Ernst, Randy's best friend. When
they went to New York to see the note, she took a substitute for
her traditional notebook.
"She leaves the house with this (black) book, we know
something's up," Rebecca said.
Denise also brought a sample of Randy's handwriting, thinking
she would need it for identification.
"The minute I saw it I didn't need to see the DNA test," she
said. "I saw the handwriting. It's Randy's handwriting."
Butcher retraced the note's path through the years. Someone on
the street found it immediately and handed it to a guard at the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Just then, the
world changed.
"He went to radio, and the building was gone. The building
collapsed," Denise said.
The Federal Reserve kept the note safe, eventually turning it
over to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The museum
worked with the medical examiner's office, which traced it to Randy
in summer 2011. "I'm speechless that they actually were able to
identify it," Denise said. "This note was written on September 11.
It came out of a window. Somebody had it. People had their hands
all over it."
Butcher posed a question for her to consider. The museum wanted
to exhibit the letter, with Denise's permission. She agreed, asking
only that they embargo it until she told her daughters.
Jan Ramirez, chief curator of the museum, said the note is
"exceptionally rare. I don't know of anything else
like it."
"There have been other pieces of paper that came out of the
towers that day, to which we have been able to attach some powerful
stories, but none have been quite as rare and unusual and inspiring
and sad and touching as this particular one. It really is in a
class by itself," she said Saturday.
Denise's decision on the exhibit came easily; choosing the right
time to share the news with her daughters became a tortured
process. The 10th anniversary passed; Alexandra had started her
fall semester; holidays came and went.
In January, Denise's father died. She decided the time was right
to bring her three daughters -- Rebecca, Alexandra, and Jessica --
into the family room and share the news.
"I was bawling, because I recognized his handwriting,"
Rebecca recalled.
They knew it had changed not just their father's narrative, but
that of the 11 other people referenced in the note.
"Everyone hoped that it was right on impact. That he didn't
suffer," Alexandra said. "Because not only to know that he was
trapped but what he was going through? And we knew the guys in his
office too. And they had kids and they had families, and to think
that they were terrified."
Rebecca, Alexandra, and Jessica dismissed their mother's anxiety
about her decision to delay delivering the news. The Scotts also
knew they had to widen the circle, reaching out to other relatives
and to the families of Randy's co-workers. The five words and two
numbers had written a new narrative for them as well, a narrative
Denise found herself repeating in the months to come, "again, and
again, and again, and again, and again."
In March, Denise and Rebecca took a hardhat tour of the museum,
which is not yet open to the public. They were shown the area where
Randy's note will be displayed as part of an exhibit to document
the final moments inside the World Trade Center.
"It's so amazing to think that Randy Scott wrote it and it
eventually ended up with his wife and three daughters, which is an
amazing arc of a day," said Ramirez, the museum's curator. "We are
incredibly proud to be able to show it and I think it will be one
of the most powerful artifacts in the museum."
The Scotts are aware that if not for the spot of Randy's blood,
they and other families could have one day seen the letter in the
museum without knowing its origins. Over the past 11 years, some
families have chosen not to be notified by the medical examiner's
office when fragments are found.
"I can't do that. I can't do that," Denise repeated. "The last
notification of remains I got was in 2008. And I can't do that. I
can't leave him there. I cannot leave him there."
Better to know the truth, even when it comes in the form of a
message that took a decade to be delivered.
"It tells people the story of the day," Denise said.
In just five words and two numbers.