Benfante, Michael

Michael Benfante, hailed as a hero after helping carry a wheelchair-bound woman from the sixty-eighth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, to the safety of a waiting ambulance, discusses his life in the days leading to the terrorist attack, the events of 9/11, and the emotional and psychological challenges he has faced since the tragedy.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Michael Benfante went to work on the eighty-first floor in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Moments after the plane struck the tower, Benfante organized his terrified employees moving them down the tower and out. But on his way down he and another co-worker encountered a woman in a wheelchair. They stayed to help her down and ninety-six minutes later they carried her out of the North Tower and into an ambulance that rushed her to safety just minutes before the tower imploded. A CBS video camera caught Benfante just as he got out of the building. A year later he got married and the woman in the wheelchair sat in the front row. But after all the media attention died down, he found that he was in a journey of wrenching personal challenges of critical emotional and psychological depth. A reluctant hero, Michael Benfante found that he would always be a survivor.