Jim Owczarski

jowczarski@enquirer.com

The radio crackled deep beneath the concrete in Manhattan as Lemuel Rey guided his subway train to the Chamber Street station under the World Trade Center in New York, and the engineer tried to make out the commotion. Radio was the only way to communicate through the subterranean, and he struggled to make out what was happening above him.

It was 8:46 in the morning, and a plane had speared the steel and glass of the North Tower at One World Trade Center.

Rey eventually navigated his train from under the buildings to the next stop, continuing his morning commuter route.

About 20 miles away, sitting in the back of Mark Henock’s Biology class at Bayside High School in Queens, Vincent Rey looked out the window. Bayside sits on a hill, and on that clear, bright morning, the freshman could see the smoke. He had turned 14 just five days earlier.

**

In a small room just outside the Cincinnati Bengals locker room, sunk into a chair, the lenses in the black frames of Vincent Rey’s glasses reflected the water in his eyes. He tilted his head back and raised his arms over his head.

He was a teenager again, in Brooklyn Heights, on the pedestrian walkway called the Promenade, looking across the East River shortly after Sept. 11, 2001 at nothing but air. He remembers the park to play in, the trees over the benches to sit on to look over the financial district.

“The Twin Towers were huge right there,” he said. “The towers were so big, you know?”

“It was like the sky was empty.”

Fifteen years later, Rey can recount the day with such clarity that you can see him in Henock’s class, looking out the window, wondering if the United States was now at war.

Fifteen years to the date of being huddled in his parents bedroom watching the world as he knew it change, Rey will play football about 11 miles away from One World Trade Center at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey against the New York Jets.

Sunday will be the 26th career start in the 83rd game of Rey’s now seven-year career. On one hand it’s a business trip – even with high school friends, coaches and extended family watching him live for the first time.

But the date, the location, carries great weight and the most vivid of memories.

In his Bengals T-shirt, a striped helmet behind him, Rey is 14 again: Emptying his pockets into malfunctioning pay phones to reach his parents. Avoiding the subway. Would they bomb underground? Catching the Q31 bus to Jamaica Ave. with his student metro card, then standing helplessly by as packed Q113 bus after bus blew past his stop. People around him were looting, running. Running to where?

“Just kinda mayhem,” he said.

**

Throughout that day, underneath Manhattan, Lemuel Rey didn’t fully grasp what was happening above him until finished his route and came to the surface about 10 miles north at 168th St. and Amsterdam Ave. to make sense of the radio chatter. Even then the clarifications offered no such thing – how could a pilot not see the World Trade Center? – until he was told another plane had hit the South Tower.

He called his wife, Caldine, who could see the smoke. Lemuel then headed to a restaurant with co-workers to watch the events just south of him play out on television.

“It was nerve-wracking,” he said. “The questions start going to you: What’s happening? What’s going on here? Why is all this happening?

“It’s stunning for us. We said, ‘is this a war that’s going to start?’”

The trains had been shut down initially, and Lemuel helped bring them back to station. But then he was called upon to get people out. He was the last one home, at about 8 p.m.

The Rey family was grateful to be intact, with Lemuel, Caldine, Vincent and his younger brother Victor safe in Far Rockaway. Their older sister Chante Fortson-Greene was safe, too.

“This is going to change our lives and how we’re going to be doing things,” Lemuel Rey told his family later that night. “Look what’s happened.”

On Sunday, 200 members of Tuesday’s Children, the organization that supports youth, families, and communities impacted by terrorism and traumatic loss, will form the tunnel for player introductions, and 20 members of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation will hold a full-field American Flag during the National Anthem.

Rey, along with all of his Bengals teammates, coaches and those of the Jets will wear New York Police Department (NYPD), New York Fire Department (FDNY) and Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) hats. The players helmets will also have a memorial sticker, the coaches will have pins.

Members of the FDNY, NYPD, PAPD and representatives of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower Foundation will be honorary captains.

It’s a business trip. But running out of that tunnel? Bearing witness to clear skies and the memorial of that date?

“I have great respect for them and I’ll be excited to sing the national anthem and give all I have,” Vinny Rey said.

He was a teenager then. He has now lived more years in this world than he did in another. He’s a man now, a husband, a father.

“Man,” he said, trying to find the words for how that date shaped his life. “I just saw, at that time, you know how life is really like a vapor. It’s like a mist. It can really be gone that quickly. To be grateful for the time that you have, because you don’t know when your time will come.

“And also, number two, it made me grateful for the sacrifices people have made. My parents have made sacrifices for me in life. I’ve had coaches that have made sacrifices for me. Teachers. But to hear about some people who, some firefighters going down there you know, where America (is) under attack, right here in your city, and you’re a firefighter and you’re going down there to go help, you know? That’s courageous. The courage people had. And people lost their lives. There were firefighters who weren’t on duty who went down there and some of them lost their lives. To know how much people have given, how much they gave on that day, in that moment, it’s like … it wasn’t even a question. I’m going. It’s crazy when I think of that. And I’m just grateful for them. Thankful for their split second decision to go down there and help. And some of them at the cost of limbs, body parts, and some at the cost of their lives.

“I’m grateful for that.”