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The Afternoon of 9/11
On the afternoon of 9/11, three firefighters hoisted an American flag above the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center. Unbeknownst to them, about 30 feet beneath the ash-coated rubble, was a tiny, coffin-like space where a Port Authority cop named John McLoughlin was trapped. He would become the last rescue worker pulled alive from the collapsed towers.For his new film, World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone chose Nicolas Cage to portray McLoughlin, 53. The resemblance between actor and real-life character is all in the eyes: sorrowful, hangdog, burdened.
McLoughlin, an even-tempered, reserved man, had been on the Port Authority police force for 22 years -- 12 assigned to the World Trade Center -- when he got word of the attack that September morning. "A plane just flew into the towers," his commanding officer shouted. "Get a group of cops. We're going down."
Within minutes, McLoughlin and a four-man team were at the complex, crossing its underground concourse level, making their way toward Tower One. Then, Tower Two fell.
"There was nothing but a brown wall rolling toward us," McLoughlin remembers. "We weren't going to survive if we stayed where we were. I told the guys to take cover in an elevator vestibule around the corner."
They were still running when the full weight of the tower crashed onto the ground-level plaza above them, slamming into the concourse and plunging McLoughlin and his men into a chaotic world of dust and concrete.
John McLoughlin met his wife, Donna, on a blind date in 1973. He was working as a banker and volunteer firefighter in Massapequa, Long Island. "I was instantly attracted," says Donna. "He's got a tough exterior, but would bend over backward to help people. He was someone I wanted to spend my life with." The two have four children; in 2001, they ranged in age from 4 to 15.
Everything in the life of the McLoughlin family is divided into a pre-9/11 and post-9/11 time period. Pre-9/11, John juggled the demands of his work, while Donna stayed home with the kids. They filled their scarce free time with T-ball, soccer, Boy Scouts, and with barbecues on their lawn in a village north of New York City. It was a quiet, American Dream existence.
For Donna, being a police officer's wife was never easy. "You learn to assume the best until you hear otherwise," she says. So on 9/11, when hours went by with no word from her husband, she didn't panic. But when John's brother Patrick, himself a Port Authority veteran, pulled into the driveway and walked toward her, she momentarily lost it. "Do you have something to tell me?" she screamed. "Because if you do, you can get out!" What Patrick had to tell her was that her husband had gone into the Trade Center, and was now missing.
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