RIAS New York guest speaker Gordon Huie visits RIAS group in Berlin
May 9, 2023
RIAS New York guest speaker Gordon Huie visits RIAS group in Berlin
Gordon Huie, who has told his moving personal story of survival on 9/11 in New York to RIAS groups for the last three years, had the chance to visit the RIAS Berlin headquarters on May 8 and talk about his harrowing experiences on September 11, 2001 and beyond to a group of 20 RIAS alumni members and RIAS supporters. Huie is the only known “triple” from 9/11: a survivor, a first responder and a victim who lost a loved one.
Huie’s talk was the latest in a series of RIAS Berlin Commission alumni talks and included members from German and US alumni programs (three Americans now living in Germany) dating from 1997 to 2023.
Huie, a former combat medic and off-duty orthopedic surgeon in New York, explained how he was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 on doing research for a project when the attacks began. When the first World Trade Center building collapsed, Huie was on a street nearby the burning building, looking to see if he could help somehow, and narrowly escaped the blast waves of debris from the imploding building by diving to the ground. Others around him who did not hit the ground did not survive.
Huie said after the blast passed over his head, he recalled thinking the world was over. He said he was struck by the deathly silence around him on what was until that day always a busy New York City street corner. After a moment, he dusted himself off and headed to a nearby hospital to see if he could offer his help as a medical professional. He ended up working all day treating injuries in a makeshift operating room set up in a hospital conference room.
Later that evening, he found out from his father that his sister Susan had been in the World Trade Center for a business meeting that day even though she did not work there. He spent months in vain after that in Lower Manhattan trying to find her or anything he could about her. Huie also talked about the toxic dust that has led to serious illness and premature deaths for more than 4,000 people over the last two decades. He talked about his work as a docent at the now-closed “9/11 Tribute Museum” where he and others told their stories to groups of visitors.
After the talk, Huie and his daughter Kelly joined the RIAS alumni group for a get-together at a nearby restaurant. He has become an avid fan of Germany’s May-time speciality “white asparagus”.
On Tuesday, Huie and his daughter were also able to visit the US Embassy in Berlin where there is a memorial in the embassy’s courtyard commemorating the thousands of victims of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. In 2011, on the 10th anniversary of the attack, a piece of one of the steel girders of the Twin Towers was inaugurated as a memorial, including 11 German victims.
