On occasion, he even accompanied them to therapy sessions. “People thought I could tell them how their loved ones died and whether or not it was long and agonizing,” says Robertson. “I couldn't.”

He recalls one woman who came to see him who wasn't even able to talk. “We hugged and cried a little,” he says. “I got her calmed down a bit, and we parted.”

The steel frames of the twin towers survived the initial impacts of the hijacked airplanes long enough to allow more than 20,000 people to evacuate the complex. Of the 1,000 letters Robertson received almost immediately after the attacks, “all but one or two were supportive about how the towers behaved,” he says. Nevertheless, Robertson says, in the days following 9/11, he thought his career as a structural engineer was over.

“I've learned to talk about the WTC. I've learned to look at the site,” he says, adding that he has toured parts of it. “I don't voluntarily go to the office window, but I will show someone the view.”

Though the founder of Leslie E. Robertson Associates elects to remain aloof during the rebuild, LERA is the structural engineer for the 72-story 4 WTC. Framed to floor 50, it is set to open in 2013.

Emotionally Charged

Nearly every New Yorker can recount an experience of the events of 9/11. Many of the most poignant tales are told by the thousands of design and construction professionals involved in the WTC's 16-acre replacement. These individuals have committed themselves, in many ways for many reasons, to one of the most complicated, scrutinized, demanding, exhausting, frustrating and emotionally charged projects in history (ENR 8/15 p. 34).

“This project is the most challenging one of my career,” says Lynda Tollner, the port authority's project director for the future 1,776-ft-tall 1 WTC, formerly called the Freedom Tower.

After a start, stop, redesign and restart, the high-rise—its frame currently 986 ft tall—is finally on course to become the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere when it opens in 2013. The work on 1 WTC “is stressful but great,” says Tollner.

Steven Plate, a 26-year port-authority veteran and director of WTC construction, says, “Engineering is my passion, but this is not about me or about individuals. It's about ordinary people doing extraordinary things” to rebuild a complex that is even better than the original.

In the 1970s, Michael J. Mennella, a Tishman executive vice president, worked on the destroyed 5 WTC for Tishman, which was the WTC's original general contractor. Mennella, who has worked for Tishman since 1975, then worked on the original 7 WTC and its replacement, which opened in 2006. He is currently overseeing 1 WTC, 3 WTC, 4 WTC and the transportation hub. He calls the work “the culmination of a long career.” Fighting back emotion, he says, “It's great to be able to have all the people I have here.”

For some, the job is about sacrificing something in the present. For others, it is about putting back something better than the original to show that the terrorists cannot ultimately win. For those overcome by loss, the rebuild is cathartic. “When it is actually done, it will be hard for me, but it will bring it to full closure,” says Bonacci.

All involved in the rebuild have different stories, but they share the awareness that they are part of history in the making. The attacks were “an American tragedy,” says Ira A. Levy, an executive vice president in the local office of AECOM and co-principal of the hub's Downtown Design Partnership, a joint venture with STV Inc. “I remember walking on sacred ground. You shake and you cry.”