Remembering Sal - Salvatore J. Zisa

When I was a freshman in college in the 1970's, I took my very first job, as a "confection attendant" - aka candy girl - at the Hyway Theatre in Fair Lawn. Over the years we were employed there, I and my co-workers became a very tight-knit group that hung out together after work, at whatever places we could find that were open and served food after midnight. It wasn't a job for us. More like a place to get into the movies for free and to make some pocket change while goofing around with people we liked. Most of us got jobs for friends, or got our jobs there because we knew someone who also worked at the Hyway. (I got mine from a classmate of my sisters, Linda Wasserman.)

One of the ushers, (I think it was Carl Winter) got a girl he knew a job, and she had a friend named Sal who also hung out sometimes with her and with us. She lived on Pomona Ave, near the Fair Lawn - Hawthorne border, and he was from Hawthorne.

Ask me her name, and I can't remember, but I always remembered Sal. He was quiet and serious most of the time, maybe even a bit shy to hang out with what was a big group of strangers that had spent a few years working and being friends. He had a soft voice most of the the time, sitting quietly at the table when we went out to eat after work, sober-faced, just eating and listening to us clown around and unwind. But it always happened that at some point he would unexpectedly jump into the conversation and have everyone cracking up, as if he'd known all of us for years and years, too.

After a few weeks, he seemed to be one of the gang. We would try, but we could never talk him into taking a job with us. He had better ideas than spending his life making minimum wage to sweep up popcorn in the lobby. In that regard, he was a lot more mature than the rest of us. He was in school. He had plans. The biggest plans we all had was what weekend to go to the shore, and what movies were opening that we could get into for free.

At some point, his female friend got a better job and quit, and Sal stopped socializing with us, too. Eventually, we all moved on to other things, got real jobs that worked normal hours, and stopped hanging out late and driving home on empty streets in cars stuffed with as many as we could fit into them.

In other words, we grew up.

In that blur of a week in September five years ago, I remember seeing his name and hometown on a message board as I searched for the name of some of my husband's former co-workers at the WTC. The first time I saw his face, I recognized him.

Damn, damn, damn.

When the New York Times posted his profile, it said:

---

The Top Priority

When traveling on business, as he often did, Salvatore Zisa, 45, would almost invariably take the red-eye flight home from the West Coast. From the airport, he would then typically proceed directly into the office at Marsh Inc., where he was a senior vice president, arriving at his desk as though he had slept in a bed like everyone else. This pattern repeated itself again and again over the years.

Workaholic? Maybe. Or maybe just a father who wanted to make sure he could get home to Hawthorne, N.J., in time for a soccer game where his daughter Christina, 16, or his son Joseph, 12, would expect to look up and see him cheering.

"His priority was making sure he got to his kids' games on time, that he didn't miss anything," said his brother, Tony Zisa. "He traveled a lot, but he would work his schedule around making sure he was home for the important things. He was always there for our parents, and for his kids, and for his wife."

---

For all of us living in the suburbs of NYC, the events of 9/11/01 will forever remain in names on a list that were of neighbors, co-workers, faces we passed on the street or saw on a train, in a meeting, in a lobby, at the newstand or at the bagel shop nodding over a cup of coffee. Or a face from nearly thirty years in the past, a guy that made us all laugh over garlic bread and pizza at Barcelona's on Harrison Ave. in Garfield as we sat having dinner after work at midnight, too young, too full of life, to go home to sleep yet.

I will always remember Sal, and I am happy to remember him as I knew him. And I am sure there are a lot of others out there who he touched who are thinking of him, forever young, forever with that smile he was always sharing, too. Having him pass through our lives was a gift.

I am sorry that I never got to meet that guy he grew up to be.

---

More comments from Sal's coworkers at the Marsh memorial site. Or view the guest book dedicated to him at Legacy.com . His panel in the United in Memory Quilt is here.

There is a scholarship set up in his memory - for more information, look here.

Many groups have proposed alternative ways to honor the memory of victims of 9/11, most by volunteering or participating in community service projects. Sal's page on the USA initiative site, part of the movement known as One Day's Pay is here. I am proud to be a volunteer in my own community, something I did after my family's 9/11 experience, and hope that you will help turn this tragic day into something that helps make America a better place.

Please take a moment to leave your comments and view some of the others memorialized by the participating bloggers of the 2996 project

(My husband is a 9/11 WTC survivior. I wrote a little bit about his experiences back in April. The link is posted below.)

Comments about the movie about Flight 93

(I originally posted this in April, 2006. This is a repost.)

People are falling all over themselves to discuss the trailers for the movie that have taken unsuspecting people by surprise with footage of the events of 9/11. Imagine you are from the area, like I am, and you go to see a nice, relaxing film, and find yourself confronted with the worst thing you have ever witnessed - and the idea that someone is making a piece of fiction out of it, to entertain, of all things.

My husband worked for Dean Witter Discover in 1993, was there when the first bombing took place and evacuated down 86 floors, through the fire and smoke. He will tell you that after that day, whenever he was there, it was always in the back of his mind that the WTC - and Manhattan - was a target.

He was born in Queens, and up until our marriage, a life-long NYC-er. He would never consider working any where else. We bought our house to be near the train to Manhattan, in fact, because that's where he wants to be.

By 9/11/01, he had left the job at the WTC, for a job as an internet architect in a building at the corner of John and Water Streets. On Monday, 9/10, he spent the day in a training seminar in the South Tower, preparing for meetings the following day at Windows on the World with co-workers for the computer expo that was being held there. He owes his life partly to a decision to get breakfast before going up from his office to the meeting - he and his office mates were crossing back from a bagel store and standing in John Street when the first plane hit, and still standing there, trying to get in touch with the big boss and their families to tell them where they were when the second plane struck.

For most of that morning, until his floor secretary's fiancee got a call out to me that he'd heard from her and my husband, I thought he was at Windows on the World and, after the tower fell, that he was dead.

Living in Bergen County, there is not one day that has gone by that the events of that day are not fresh in my mind and reflected in daily life. To think of someone using the deaths of my neighbors, anyone's neighbors as a means to make money makes me want to throw up. My husband had PTS afterwards, and still can not talk about things that he saw that day as he stupidly nearly got killed when the first tower collapsed and he was walking/running to try to get to the ferry only two blocks away. Only a stranger that pulled him to his feet when he fell over the decorative fence around the little park, and the people at the Battery Park City condo office that opened up their door to people fleeing the falling tower helped him get home - so he was incredibly fortunate that day in many ways. I can not even begin to fathom the pain of the family members of those on both airplanes - and, unfortunately, I know all too well the pain of friends and family members of those that died in the towers; both my husband and I lost neighbors, friends and acquaintances.

I got involved in volunteering in my community as a direct response to 9/11, and have spent much of my free time since fundraising for a memorial to victims of that day and other acts of terrorism in my town. So here I am, asking people to purchase bricks or donate for plantings in memory of people I lived around - and someone is going to make more money for their own pockets in one movie showing than we have raised in five years from the community.

Would I censor the movie, or demand it be pulled, or stop it - no. This is still America, and the rights of idiots to exploit the pain and suffering of others has to be weighed as part of the price we pay for the right to express our own thoughts. Would I spend a penny to see it, or willingly watch it - no. And I will not have kind thoughts for the values of those that do walk into a theatre or pay to own such exploitation. It takes a level of obliviousness and crassness that diminshes us all to do that. Something is definately skewed in priorities in this country if this picture has more than a handful of interest - supporting a work of absolute fiction and imaginary storytelling based upon a horrible tragedy. I would much rather see people take the nine or ten bucks and donate it to a charity or hurricane relief or to someplace where it will make the world a more compassionate place than dwell upon the pain of others for a cheap thrill. That is sick in a way I do not want to think about human beings as being.

I prefer to think about those that engaged in the small acts that made a difference, and those that went up the stairs when others were fleeing down - the countless people that helped others, the ones that sheltered strangers, supported the police and fire in the weeks afterwards, all of those of us that lived 9/11 up close and all of those who felt the pain in their hearts and did whatever they could. That is the story to be told. Not the explotation of death, but the affirmation of lives lived with compassion for others. Not the vicarious thrill of fiction, but the very real best of human nature that saved my husband, extended hands out to strangers, and wrapped all of us touched by this event with a human connection that no terrorist can ever break.