9/11: TRUTH, LIES AND CONSPIRACY
9/11: TRUTH, LIES AND CONSPIRACY
INTERVIEW: BOB MCILVAINE
August 30, 2006
CBC News: Sunday's Evan Solomon interviews Bob McIlvaine, a former schoolteacher from Philadelphia, whose son Bobby was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001.
Evan Solomon: Bob, first of all, thanks for talking to us today. Obviously as we come up to the Memorial of 9/11, there’s a day that suddenly the world is paying more attention to it, but for you it’s an everyday event. Can you tell me what your experience was like and what happened to your son, Bobby?
Bob Mcllvaine: I was working at Courage of Chester hospital and I worked with adolescents and teenagers and we had a community meeting every morning and someone came into the room and said there was an accident at the North Tower. And I really wasn’t that overly concerned because Bobby had just started working at Merrill-Lynch which is directly across the street from the North Tower, and the South Tower, but right across on West Street.
So I just, you know, I was certainly concerned and I sat there, watched it because I knew he worked in that area. So I guess about 15, 20 minutes and my wife called me, did you see what happened, but we haven’t heard from Bobby. So that’s when we decided - … I’m going to get upset. (starts crying)
Amazing, just like that. Excuse me.
Solomon: It just comes back.
McIlvaine: It’s amazing. It just hits you that day. I mean, try to forget that day.
Well anyway, she calls me and she says, look I’ll be there to pick you up. So we get home, we still weren’t that concerned. But, the main concern, knowing Bobby, well I wanted to tell you, he’d just gotten hired as assistant vice-president media relations for Merrill-Lynch. He had worked at a PR firm, and that was his only job, to work with Merrill-Lynch, and Merrill-Lynch just loved him so much they hired him. Just for that position. Because he’s such a gifted writer.
So anyway, we get home and we haven’t heard from him and of course Bobby being the way he is, and certainly being in New York he would have called us immediately to let us know that something happened in New York and that he was OK.
So then, we sat around here all day, and we got a call from Merrill-Lynch saying, look he was supposed to be up on the 106th floor they had a seminar up there someone from Merrill-Lynch was talking at a symposium on the floor. And Bobby was supposed to set up everything for the symposium. We’ve haven’t heard from him, we’ve made calls to him but we haven’t gotten any calls. So immediately you just, like I came out here and just puttered around the lawn for hours.
It is tough.
But anyway, I forget if Jeff was in college, but Jeff was here, and he was so optimistic, he says, I know everything’s Ok. But down deep I just thought that, because he hadn’t called us you know we just but of course you had hope. You just figure, well he didn’t have his phone, maybe he didn’t get to the 106th floor, there’s the scenario and of course everybody there… when I finally got to New York the following day, but I’ll talk about that.
So anyway, then we just got calls all day long. So I think the shock of it is just so great, like I speak especially of my wife. It wasn’t like she was despondent; she wasn’t crying, phones calls, people were stopping by so it just sort of insulates you from what was really happening.
But we kept our hopes up. It wasn’t really as traumatic as you think the first day. It wasn’t like, I cry more now than I cried the first couple days.
Solomon: Because it’s implausible.
Mcllvaine: Yeah, well, you just couldn’t believe that he was dead. Down deep I was trying to put all the pieces together but the fact is you just couldn’t think of him as being dead. And of course he was, we know he didn’t work on the 92nd floor, or 86th or 96th, where the plane hit, so you had to have that hope. You never got that definite notice that your son just died from the plane crash, or in that crash and so forth and so on.
And my son Jeff was just so, I know he’s ok, I’m not worried at all, he was so optimistic, I wasn’t about to break down and said, I think you’re wrong, I know he’s dead. And of course I wasn’t sure. I felt horrible but I certainly didn’t show it, I just walked around, trimmed shrubs, did anything, cut the lawn, I just kept moving all day.
Waiting for the call, something was wrong, but of course we never got the call, and we kept in touch with Merrill-Lynch, but they said we can’t get in a hold of him, and we knew he was supposedly on the 106th floor. But the fact he never called them, he never called us, was a good thing also.
Because maybe if he was on the 106th floor he would have called and said, “I’m on the 106 floor,” so we didn’t know where he was. He could have been hit in the head, or he could have been knocked out. So you had millions of things you thought of and so we went through I that the whole day, then first thing in the morning Jeff and I went up to New York City, we took the train up. continued →
INTERVIEW: BOB MCILVAINE
August 30, 2006
CBC News: Sunday's Evan Solomon interviews Bob McIlvaine, a former schoolteacher from Philadelphia, whose son Bobby was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001.
Evan Solomon: Bob, first of all, thanks for talking to us today. Obviously as we come up to the Memorial of 9/11, there’s a day that suddenly the world is paying more attention to it, but for you it’s an everyday event. Can you tell me what your experience was like and what happened to your son, Bobby?
Bob Mcllvaine: I was working at Courage of Chester hospital and I worked with adolescents and teenagers and we had a community meeting every morning and someone came into the room and said there was an accident at the North Tower. And I really wasn’t that overly concerned because Bobby had just started working at Merrill-Lynch which is directly across the street from the North Tower, and the South Tower, but right across on West Street.
So I just, you know, I was certainly concerned and I sat there, watched it because I knew he worked in that area. So I guess about 15, 20 minutes and my wife called me, did you see what happened, but we haven’t heard from Bobby. So that’s when we decided - … I’m going to get upset. (starts crying)
Amazing, just like that. Excuse me.
Solomon: It just comes back.
McIlvaine: It’s amazing. It just hits you that day. I mean, try to forget that day.
Well anyway, she calls me and she says, look I’ll be there to pick you up. So we get home, we still weren’t that concerned. But, the main concern, knowing Bobby, well I wanted to tell you, he’d just gotten hired as assistant vice-president media relations for Merrill-Lynch. He had worked at a PR firm, and that was his only job, to work with Merrill-Lynch, and Merrill-Lynch just loved him so much they hired him. Just for that position. Because he’s such a gifted writer.
So anyway, we get home and we haven’t heard from him and of course Bobby being the way he is, and certainly being in New York he would have called us immediately to let us know that something happened in New York and that he was OK.
So then, we sat around here all day, and we got a call from Merrill-Lynch saying, look he was supposed to be up on the 106th floor they had a seminar up there someone from Merrill-Lynch was talking at a symposium on the floor. And Bobby was supposed to set up everything for the symposium. We’ve haven’t heard from him, we’ve made calls to him but we haven’t gotten any calls. So immediately you just, like I came out here and just puttered around the lawn for hours.
It is tough.
But anyway, I forget if Jeff was in college, but Jeff was here, and he was so optimistic, he says, I know everything’s Ok. But down deep I just thought that, because he hadn’t called us you know we just but of course you had hope. You just figure, well he didn’t have his phone, maybe he didn’t get to the 106th floor, there’s the scenario and of course everybody there… when I finally got to New York the following day, but I’ll talk about that.
So anyway, then we just got calls all day long. So I think the shock of it is just so great, like I speak especially of my wife. It wasn’t like she was despondent; she wasn’t crying, phones calls, people were stopping by so it just sort of insulates you from what was really happening.
But we kept our hopes up. It wasn’t really as traumatic as you think the first day. It wasn’t like, I cry more now than I cried the first couple days.
Solomon: Because it’s implausible.
Mcllvaine: Yeah, well, you just couldn’t believe that he was dead. Down deep I was trying to put all the pieces together but the fact is you just couldn’t think of him as being dead. And of course he was, we know he didn’t work on the 92nd floor, or 86th or 96th, where the plane hit, so you had to have that hope. You never got that definite notice that your son just died from the plane crash, or in that crash and so forth and so on.
And my son Jeff was just so, I know he’s ok, I’m not worried at all, he was so optimistic, I wasn’t about to break down and said, I think you’re wrong, I know he’s dead. And of course I wasn’t sure. I felt horrible but I certainly didn’t show it, I just walked around, trimmed shrubs, did anything, cut the lawn, I just kept moving all day.
Waiting for the call, something was wrong, but of course we never got the call, and we kept in touch with Merrill-Lynch, but they said we can’t get in a hold of him, and we knew he was supposedly on the 106th floor. But the fact he never called them, he never called us, was a good thing also.
Because maybe if he was on the 106th floor he would have called and said, “I’m on the 106 floor,” so we didn’t know where he was. He could have been hit in the head, or he could have been knocked out. So you had millions of things you thought of and so we went through I that the whole day, then first thing in the morning Jeff and I went up to New York City, we took the train up. continued →
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