Man recalls father’s words before second tower was struck

By Jean Reid Norman

Friday, Sept. 11, 2009 | 9:21 a.m.

Andrew Levine doesn’t cry when he tells the story of his father’s death in the second of the Twin Towers to fall on Sept. 11, 2001.

He’s told it 10,000 times, he says, and he will tell it 10,000 times more. With each telling, “I become less attached and less emotional. It’s more a fact of life for me,” he says.

But there are moments when he is recalling the morning that he listened on the telephone while his father stared down a United Airlines flight heading into the South Tower. There are moments when his voice catches a little. When the memory touches a place that is still tender.

He expects to tell the story many times today during the third annual Robert Michael Levine Foundation Golf Tournament at the Boulder City Golf Club. The event, named for his father, is to keep the memory alive, to help with his healing and to raise money for local police and firefighter causes.

People will ask, and he will tell the story something like this:

The general manager of a sports bar in Alabama, he was awakened after working a night shift by a call from his grandmother. Have you talked to your father, she asked. He had the night before, but not that morning. It was 7:53 a.m. in Alabama. He had been in bed.

His grandmother had received a call from Robert Levine from his office in the Twin Towers. Andrew turned on the television. A minute later, Andrew Levine’s phone rang. It was his father calling while he was evacuating.

“He was on the 78th floor. It’s one-half sky lobby, one-half offices,” Andrew Levine says. “Employees were going to the express elevator. My understanding is they were holding hands in a line and my father was the last in line.

“Dad broke off and went back to his office for some personal effects and company stuff. The Port Authority was telling people it was OK to go back into the South Tower, that it was stable.

“I told him it was time to get out. I said, ‘I’m watching people jumping out of the building.’ He said, ‘I am too.’

“He turned and looked at the Statue of Liberty and saw United Flight 175 make that hard left turn into the South Tower, and he stared it down.

“He said, ‘Oh my God, Andrew, take care of the family.’

“Then I heard the roar of motors and windows shattering. At 9:01 in New York, my father died.

“And that seven-second time delay — seven seconds later, I watched it on TV.”

Andrew Levine has come a long way since the moment he fell to the floor and curled up into a ball. That moment when a Desert Storm veteran had to call his friends and ask them to rescue him from his grief.

He would rather tell the story of how eight years later, he has moved to Boulder City and at the age of 39, with an MBA already under his belt, he is preparing to go back to school to become a firefighter. He would rather talk about a future where he sees healing in the act of helping others day in and day out. He would rather talk about how, in the tournament’s first year in Boulder City, it has gained enough community support to almost sell out.

“People care about causes and rally around community here,” he says.

But today is a day for remembering, and not enough people are doing that.

“Nobody is talking about 9/11 now,” he says. “I watch the news, and all people are wondering about now is whether they will get fined for not having health coverage.”

He knows that when he tells his story, it touches people in a way the news never could. It reduces the 3,000 miles that separate Manhattan and Boulder City.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says Minddie Lloyd, executive director of the Injured Police Officers Fund, one of the charities that will benefit from the tournament. “It makes it a little bit more personal. It makes me very grateful for the family I have.”

“It’s gut-wrenching. I don’t know how he could ever get over it,” said Mark Sugden, a retired Metro police officer whose son is a firefighter. “It brought it home for me. I have two sons, and I can’t imagine being in his shoes.”

Today is a day to revisit the pain, and in doing so maybe gain another bit of healing.

Today he will tell his story as often as people ask. And he will raise money for the Injured Police Officers Fund and the Firefighters of Southern Nevada Burn Fund.

Today, he heads for the links to honor his father. To help others remember what he cannot forget.