Still in One Peace – October 7, 2026

Still in One Peace – October 7, 2026 – Blog

Weekly Conversations with Pastor Jeff

I have always had a great appreciation for journalists. As I mentioned on Easter Day in my sermon, I really respect the work of Natasha Zouves who, most recently, worked for News Nation. She is currently pursuing other opportunities but hasn’t revealed what her next position will be.

I appreciate a journalist who works hard to find human interest stories. She wrote a column shortly after the 25^th anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 titled, “The Man Who Saved 2,700 People on 9/11.”  Please click here to read this excellent article.

A Vietnam veteran singlehandedly saved nearly 2,700 people on September 11th.

He did it, in part, by directly defying orders.

Most Americans have never heard his name.

His name was Rick Rescorla, and the interview I did with his widow will stay with me forever.

Months before September 11th, Rick had begun trying to prepare his wife Susan for the possibility that something terrible was coming.

Susan told me: “In the last months of his life with me, he was absolutely trying to tell me that he thought something would happen. Even in the car, he’d say, ‘you’ll remember me in the petal of a flower, in the leaf of a tree.’”

Susan and Rick Rescorla. Susan told me she will love her husband forever: “I know that someday I will be with him, and that’s what I look forward to.”

She would feel a pit in her stomach at those words and would try to put a stop to that kind of talk, but said this almost premonition-type feeling only grew stronger in the span leading up to that day, “he definitely had a feeling, even the last week of his life it kept getting more intense.”

Rick had been worried about the World Trade Center for a long time.

He was not generally a man given to vague fears. He was 62, the head of security for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower, and a decorated Vietnam veteran. After the bombing beneath the World Trade Center killed six people back in 1993, he became convinced terrorists would attack it again. And convinced that security-wise, they were woefully underprepared.

We spoke to Morgan Stanley employee Bill McMahon as part of this reporting, he recalled, “[Rick] was convinced that this was going to happen again. He just didn’t know how, but he knew something was going to happen.”

So Rick prepared.

He pushed for stronger security. He worried about the vulnerability of the towers. And he made Morgan Stanley employees practice getting out of the building.

Over and over again.

Find the stairwell.

Go down.

Don’t stop.

Help each other.

Stay calm.

Get out.

I will never forget speaking with Susan about her husband, Rick Rescorla. Watch the interview at the bottom of the page.

There are three things that still strike me about this story. One is how frankly annoying the employees found his relentless drilling.

“They were getting very annoyed with him, because he kept making them drill,” recalled Susan.

Employee Bill McMahon remembered Rick’s insistence despite the heavy sighs from some participants.

“Rick had this kind of laser-like focus on making sure everybody knew what to do if something happened,” McMahon said. “Simply go to the fire escape stairwells, get out of the building, period. That’s it. Just get out.”

Then came the morning when those drills became life and death.

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, the first plane hit the North Tower.

In the South Tower, people were told their building was secure, they were initially instructed to remain where they were.

Rick looked out the window, he could see the burning North Tower from his office. He made a judgment call that I still find astonishing.

It’s the second thing that stays with me most; I think about how difficult it is to override authority in a moment of chaos.

Rick trusted what he knew. He had spent months increasingly worrying about this possibility, years thinking about the fact that the towers were still a target, timing the interminable seconds of how long it would take to successfully evacuate thousands from a building, and he met his moment. He was not going to leave thousands of lives to an announcement he believed was wrong.

So, he calmly directed his people to begin evacuating, just as they’d practiced.

Then, at 9:03, United Airlines Flight 175 hit their tower – the South Tower.

It’s one thing to see the horrifying images on television, it’s another to hear from people who felt the sheer force and terror of that moment of impact.

McMahon was on the 44th floor when it hit.

“It blew out all the elevator banks,” he said. “All the doors blew off and knocked us all over. The building kind of tips and comes back. It doesn’t seem that much when you watch it on TV, but when you were in the building, it literally moved back and forth.”

And in that moment, thousands of Morgan Stanley employees did not need to invent a plan.

Rick had already given them one. He’d been drilling them, again and again. It was muscle memory.

Rick picked up his bullhorn.

As Rick Rescorla evacuated thousands of people from the South Tower, he sang songs from his childhood and native Cornwall to keep employees calm.

He directed people toward the stairs.

And then, he started to sing. As people began to panic, he got on his bullhorn and he sang songs from his childhood, from his native Cornwall, the same kinds of songs he had once used to steady frightened soldiers in Vietnam. Between the songs he gave instructions: Keep moving, stay calm, keep going.

Nearly 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees made it out of the World Trade Center alive. Which means, Rick cut the death toll from that terrible day nearly in half.

Nearly 2,700 people alive, because of him.

Because he worried when others thought he worried too much. Because he insisted on drills even when others rolled their eyes. Because when authority told him not to move, he relied on his own judgment and got his people out.

This is the third thing that stays with me.

Rick could have left.

He had done what he had spent years preparing to do, his evacuation plan had worked, thousands of his people were pouring out onto the streets of lower Manhattan. But Rick knew there were still people above him, so he turned around and went back in.

Susan told me: “He followed the firemen up, he got to the top, he wanted to make sure everyone on that top floor was out of there.”

Think about the direction of that sentence.

Everyone else was trying to get down.

Rick was going up.

And somewhere in those final minutes, he called his wife.

“Right before the towers came down,” Susan told me, “he said, ‘if something happens to me, I want you to know, you made my life.’”

You made my life.

Of all the things Susan told me during our interview, I think that is the sentence I will carry forever.

She told me Rick’s best friend called her shortly afterward and told her to turn on the television.

“And that’s when I saw everything come down.”

Rick never came home.

Susan told me she will spend the rest of her life loving him.

I didn’t know Rick Rescorla’s name before I had the privilege of covering this story.

I have never forgotten it since.