Former tennis champ tells
of making narrow escape
By vincent todaro
Staff Writer

EAST BRUNSWICK — All the sports training in the world couldn’t have prepared him for this.

Robert Chess, 27, who as a student at East Brunswick High School was the state’s first-singles tennis champion, was at the start of a normal business day at the World Trade Center Sept. 11, and was getting ready to leave tower one to trade at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

He wound up leaving much sooner than he had anticipated.

Chess, now a Jersey City resident, was on the 85th floor around 8:45 a.m. when a hijacked plane struck the tower a couple floors above his office.

An employee of S&W Trading, Chess would normally spend about a half-hour each morning at the company’s World Trade Center offices. A natural gas options trader who spends most of his days at the New York Mercantile Exchange, he also paid afternoon visits to the towers, which served as his company’s offices.

"I was just sitting there in the morning, just drinking coffee and going over morning analyzers," he said. "My boss had just remarked that he saw a plane coming in really low. He said he saw the plane make a turn near the Empire State Building and bear near our building. I didn’t think much of it.

"The next thing, I heard him scream and he watched the plane just disappear over our heads."

Chess was with about 20 co-workers in the office when the plane struck. He, like many others, was not completely aware of what was happening, nor did he know that the crash was part of a terrorist attack. After hearing his boss, though, he did know a plane had struck — something many people did not know at the time.

"Obviously, there was a lot of damage done to the offices. The ceiling crumpled, and the walls did too. .... We just tried to get out as quickly as possible."

He and others from his office would soon discover, however, that the floor by the elevator bank had collapsed. The workers went scurrying for the stairwell, but it was pitch dark.

"The floor was on fire, pipes had burst, water was flowing all over the place, and there were fires in the walls. I grabbed a trading jacket to put over my mouth. It was pitch dark, but eventually we found the stairwell," Chess said.

It was probably best for the workers that they didn’t realize the extent of the damage, because it kept them fairly calm during their escape. In fact, it wasn’t until Chess was about 30 floors down the stairs when the real panic set in.

"The first 30 floors (down), it wasn’t bad," he said. "None of the floors above (the 85th floor) were getting out because there was no way down. That’s why people were jumping out windows."

Older people were having a hard time getting down the stairs, and firefighters were busy racing up the stairwells with full gear, he said.

"A lot of people thought it was a bomb. We were some of the few who knew it was a plane because we saw it. We still didn’t know it was a terrorist attack, though.

"It was more calm than you’d think. It was pretty civilized. No one was really panicking," he said.

About the time he reached the 50th floor, however, another hijacked plane struck the next tower, and they heard a loud explosion.

"We didn’t know what the second plane was. We didn’t know what anything was," he said.

He wasn’t sure what was causing the destruction, but the thought of terrorism did cross his mind because of the 1993 attack.

"It felt more likely that it was an accident," he said.

He finally made it to the ground floor, which he and other survivors described a horrifying scene with body parts and pieces of the plane.

As he stood at the base of the building, the other twin tower collapsed.

"I sprinted as fast as I could, and ran down a subway station stairwell to take cover from the falling debris," he said.

He was alive, but not safe. A large cloud of soot hovered over the station, and there was no light and no clean air to breathe.

"There was no way to breathe. There was no air. It was just ash and soot," he said.

He ran back the way he had come into the station, but the stairwell was blocked by debris.

"It was pitch black. I sat in the corner and felt my way around the wall. Another stairwell was open, so I went that way."

After getting out of the station, he walked away from the towers. A policeman helped him into an ambulance, and he was taken to the hospital to have his lungs checked.

Chess was OK, and he was fortunate enough to make it home that evening. He has since returned to the mercantile exchange.

He said he would prefer to put the events of Sept. 11 in the past and forget about them, but just as for so many others, they represented a life-changing occurrence.