Carolina On His Mind

Visitor Pass for 1 World Trade Center | David Paventi | September 11, 2001

Photo Credit:  David Paventi 

In September 2001, David Paventi lived in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.  He worked as a banker.  On September 10, 2001 he traveled to New York City for business meetings to be held in the World Trade Center's North Tower.  As you may recall, although September 11, 2001 was a crystal clear, sun-soaked day, its immediate predecessor was decidedly less so.  The  weather that day was so much less so that David Paventi had walked over to to the windows in the office in which he was standing in an effort to see anything.  He could not because of the fog.  The experience so unnerved one of his colleagues that he offhandedly asked aloud, "How do airplanes not hit this building?"  His question, given the state of the world as it existed on September 10, 2001, was met with laughter.    

At 8:46 am the very next morning, it was no longer a laughing matter.  

David Paventi was in an interior (windowless) conference room on the North Tower's 81st floor at 8:46 am on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when the murderous cowards who had hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 earlier that morning shortly after it had departed from Logan Airport in Boston, flew it into the North Tower's north face, cutting into the building between the 93rd and 99th floors.  The conference room shook.  By his own admission, David Paventi did not know what to make of what had just occurred, thinking it might have been an earthquake.  His colleagues who had lived through the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had no such hesitation.  They exited the room as quickly as they could and headed to the nearest stairwell.  Mr. Paventi followed suit.  

The traffic on the stairwell was intense and it seemed to take forever for those on it to make their way down.  David Paventi and his friend and colleague, Bob, toyed with the idea of trying to get out of the crowded stairwell and finding another escape route.  They ultimately opted against doing so - staying the course and staying in the stairwell in which they had begun their descent.  

Eventually, David Paventi and Bob made it out of the building.  When they reached the courtyard, a police officer told them to run as fast as they could and get as far away from the World Trade Center as they could.  They took her counsel to heart.  As they ran uptown, the two men heard the noise of the South Tower collapsing into the ground below.  The two men eventually made their way to the Queensboro Bridge and began walking across it.  Their goal was Long Island and Bob's brother's house.  They made it.  The following day, the two drove home to Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Several years after that terrible day, the NYPD telephoned David Paventi.  The call was to inform him that the NYPD had recovered his case.  Impossible, he thought, I am looking at my briefcase right now.  However, when he tried to tell the person on the other end of the phone he could not be the person to whom the briefcase in question belonged, he was told, "I'm not arguing, we have a case, and it has your name on it."  

Indeed it was.  It was the travel wallet David Paventi had brought with him to New York for his September 2001 meetings at the World Trade Center.  Its contents included his passport and his frequent flyer card.  Inside of it, someone had placed a note, "D. Paventi - assumed DOA."  

There is an old adage about the perils of making an assumption.  I suspect David Paventi did not waste a moment or a breath on uttering it when he read that note.  The proof is in the living after all, which is exactly what he is doing - and has one - every day for the past twenty-two years. 

-AK