9/11 Spatial Computing Memories: Faith on the 81st Floor
To comprehend how an individual can function when a passenger jet crashes into his workplace while moving at nearly 500 miles per hour, it’s essential to grasp the premise that held him firmly in place even before the plane’s structure was compromised. Before I set foot on the 81st floor of the South Tower, my framework was already created in British Guyana. I was raised in an environment consisting of discipline, structure, and society, which were the main principles of my daily life. I worked as a teacher, and I was not aware of the physical and spiritual heights that the Lord was going to take me to.
My own turning point, or the moment when all life’s plans were embodied in my destiny, took place in 1982, when I accepted Jesus Christ. It was on Good Friday when I met Jennifer, the pastor’s daughter who would later become my wife, my partner, and the source of support in my life. Your inner vision changes once you choose to surrender yourself to God. The reality you see changes into a reality you have to complete.
When I moved to corporate banking and on to New York, I carried my approach to the trading floors of Fuji Bank, Limited. I quickly learned that corporate finance is a fast-paced, high-pressure business. My friends often ask me, “Stan, how do you stay so spiritual in an environment that focuses on profit?” The answer is simple: visibility and consistency.
My Bible was always on my desk on the 81st floor. I didn’t use it as a tool; it was my lifeline. Whenever my colleagues drove me to work, rather than chat, I encouraged them spiritually. When they tried to get me involved in the office lottery, I said no politely. I wanted everybody to know exactly where I stood, not out of pride, but for clarity. Young people like Matthew Wilson or John Menix started to call me Uncle Stan. They’d come to my desk for both money issues and advice on praying or living their lives. Even before we faced the challenges brought by events outside of our workplace, God had set the baseline for us on the 81st floor.
September 11, 2001, was an ordinary day. It was bright and sunny over Manhattan. I reached the World Trade Center and went to the 81st floor of the South Tower to start my day.
At 8:46 AM, everything changed. A large explosion shook the building. I looked outside my window and saw fireballs, black smoke, and debris falling from the North Tower. Since I had just experienced the bombing of 1993 at the World Trade Center, my instincts told me that this was dangerous. Without wasting any more time, I walked over to my co-worker, Delise, and advised her to leave the building immediately. Sending Delise home that day saved her life, and I am forever grateful that she listened.
I made my way down to the 78th floor for evacuation. As soon as we reached the lobby, security announcements came in through the loudspeakers: “The South Tower has been secured. Return to your offices, please.”
Following the instructions, I turned around and took the elevator back up to the 81st floor. When I got to my desk, I picked up the phone, and one of my colleagues from Chicago was calling me, sounding anxious: “Stan, turn on the television! The North Tower has been hit!”
The moment I was talking with him, I looked at the south-pointing window.
What I witnessed is indescribable. United Airlines Flight 175 came toward me, shifting very hard, its huge wings covering all horizon for me. More than 800 kilometers per hour—the plane was rushing directly toward me. At that moment, I had the chance to meet the plane with my eyes, and it stopped for me.
There was no panic but prayer. I let the phone slip from my hands, jumped under the huge table, and cried, “God, I surrender everything to you!”
The impact was destructive. The plane crashed into the floor from 77 to 85. The left wing passed through my office, and it was about 20 feet from me when it hit the wall. The weight of tons of iron, concrete, ceilings, and office equipment fell on me.
After that, I was in the middle of a pile of heavy pieces of things. I could not see anything at all. The air was full of jet fuel vapor, disintegrated plasterboard, and thick smoke. The fire was covering the walls around. I was badly injured; I could not see but was still alive beneath that desk, and God had created an altar of safety.
When I realized that I couldn’t get out on my own, I just started screaming in the darkness: “Help! Help! Somebody help me! I have a wife and two daughters! I can’t die here!”
On the other side, there was a ray of light coming from behind a wall of destruction. The light belonged to Brian Clark, a Euro Brokers manager on the 84th floor. He was moving in the dark with the flashlight. He heard my voice.
“I can hear you!” Brian shouted back to me. “Keep shouting so I can find you!”
When he reached the wall between us, he realized that he couldn’t cross it. He shouted, “Keep knocking on the wall so I understand where you are!” I took a heavy piece of debris and started hitting the wall. The sound that I produced coincided with the sound of Brian’s voice.
Even though I tried to climb the wall, I couldn’t do anything. With the adrenaline rushing in my bloodstream and believing in God, I punched the damaged wall with my bare hands. I felt a hole that I had punched into the wall. Brian took my hands and pulled me over the wall.
As I fell on the other side of the wall, I leaned on Brian and trembled. I said, “Thank you. My name is Stanley Praimnath.” He took my hand and said, “My name is Brian Clark. “You know, Stanley, I’ve always wanted a brother. ” In the middle of hell on earth, God didn’t just send a guardian angel; He gave me a brother.
While in the dark with my friend Brian, we were holding hands while smelling jet fuel and concrete powder; we both knew that we had to leave now. The floor that we were standing on was creaking, and there were fires spreading all around us. But finding a way down from the 81st floor of the building that had just been hit by the plane was not straightforward at all.
As we made our way to the center of the building, searching for an escape route, we came across a group of people disputing how we should proceed. Some people suggested going up to the roof, hoping that helicopters would rescue them, while others claimed that the stairs below us were blocked with debris, fire, and fallen sections of the building.
Brian and I glanced at one another. I was always taught that when God opens a door, you should walk through it, but you must test the road before leaving. Thus, we made up our minds to see with our own eyes if Stairwell A was totally blocked or not.
It is hard to say whether our decision not to follow the group to the roof was a matter of life or death. Among those who wanted to go to the roof of the building, there were only two survivors. The only man who went up and later changed his mind was Ron DiFrancesco. He survived.
Upon entering Stairwell A, Brian and I noticed that even though there was plenty of devastation, smoke, and debris present on the landing, the structure of the stair shaft itself was completely unharmed. That was indeed quite miraculous. From the three primary stairwells in the South Tower, Flight 175 destroyed two of them. Stairwell A was the one passage that was successfully intact, continuing from above the area where the plane hit the building down to the ground.
We started going down the stairs. The distance was quite perilous. We had to descend a total of 81 floors. The feeling of climbing each flight of stairs was similar to that of conquering a mountain. All we witnessed was darkness interrupted by the feeble light beam of Brian’s flashlight. Our journey downwards was riddled with many problems, such as injured individuals, people in shock, and some small fires burning on the way. We did our best to stimulate everybody around us by telling them to keep moving and not to stop.
Finally, as we reached the lower floors, we saw emergency services personnel, police, and firefighters on their way to the top of the building. They appeared to be determined, brave, and selfless heroes while moving towards risky situations to save people living below.
When Brian and I managed to leave the overhead plaza and walk onto the street level in lower Manhattan, the city appeared to have changed completely. The busy plaza had transformed into a battlefield, lying in ruins and shrouded in dark smoke.
We had moved several blocks from the South Tower and just stopped to turn around to look at it. All I was able to see was dark smoke coming out of the upper section of the building. I turned to Brian and said, “I think the building is going to collapse.”
Brian opened his mouth to say something. “It’s a steel structure, Stan. It can’t possibly—”
But he could not finish his statement.
Then there was a sound like an explosion, and suddenly the South Tower began to fall. The top part of the building fell, and all 110 floors of steel and concrete crumbled down to the ground. The ground trembled as we stood trying to hold onto a fence along the street while the building was pummeling down in a cloud of dust and debris.
Before one knew it, daytime turned into a dark abyss. Nothing could be seen—not even a hand. To breathe meant swallowing clouds of ashes, and the panic in that place must have been unbearable.
There, among the crowd, a stranger appeared—Albert de Leon, a senior counsel for a French bank. Amidst the confusion, Albert remained composed, drew upon his memory map of the streets, and led me through the dust cloud as we approached the Brooklyn Bridge.
One miracle after another, he had appeared on my path, from the moment when Delise instructed me to leave down to being resurrected by Brian right out of the wall, moving on to firemen climbing the stairs and finishing yet another encounter at the bridge with Albert leading me down.
Thanks to God, I reached the hospital, and that night, I returned home to Jennifer and my daughters. As I walked through the door after being banged up and covered with ashes, I hugged them and cried.
Many people think that my story ended on September 11. However, survival is not a moment; it is a part of the process. My ultimate fight against my body took place over the years. I survived the bombing of 1993 and survived the 9/11 attack, only to later be diagnosed with leukemia and require quadruple bypass heart surgery.
When one is lying on a hospital bed and facing cancer or a major heart surgery, the enemy will try to tempt you into thinking that your time has expired. However, every time I thought of my scars, I thought of the desk that was on the 81st floor. I thought of breaking the drywall. If God could stop an airplane wing from killing me on 9/11, then why would He not take me through surgery? My faith has not come from living in comfort; it has come from carrying around 100 tons of steel. God healed me, restored my body, and gave me many more years to see my daughters grow up and to meet my grandchildren.
Now, I am an associate pastor and men’s group leader. My pulpit is not just a platform but also an altar of gratitude. I tell about my life to promote the Great Physician and Savior who takes us from dark places.
With the passage of time, September 11th is becoming something that the upcoming generations read only in textbooks instead of something that they experienced. That is why I share my speech. The memory of that day must be preserved—not merely the tragedy, but also the faith, heroism, love, and unity that united strangers together. We need to instruct future generations that despite how dark the setting is, how thick the walls seem, and how unrealistic the barrier appears before you, the Almighty will carry you through.
People do ask me what the exact moment was when Brian Clark reached out through shattered drywall to grasp my hands. In an instant of total frustration, when your skin is covered with ashes, and your lungs are filled with jet fuel, the touching of a human becomes something bigger than mere touch.
When Brian took me over that barrier and held my hand tightly, he did not let me go anymore. In the midst of the hell, he exclaimed, “I have always wished to have a brother.” That was not merely a comforting phrase; this was a promise made during the hot period of disaster. We did not know each other’s political views, background, or financial status. We became only two men, in God’s image, holding each other for survival in the hallways of the dark place.
Even after decades, it has been a long time since the morning we first met, but our bond has remained intact. Since then, Brian and I have been in contact with one another on a regular basis. We have traveled together around the globe, featured on multiple television networks, participated in documentaries, and contributed at various conferences in front of many people. Each time I hugged him or talked to him on the phone, we experienced the same sensation of being on that landing again. He still refers to me as his brother, while I still describe him as my savior on earth.
My relationship with Brian exemplifies the true essence of what human togetherness should signify. In a world that is constantly divided by various insignificant things, the example of the 81st floor shows that we are responsible for one another. When we see others captured against a wall, like it can be a wall of grief or trauma, we don’t just walk past it. Instead, we stop to hear the voice of those trapped people, help them make noise, and come to the rescue.
It is not easy to narrate this story as an example. The moment I close my eyes and think about the sound of Flight 175, the smell of the ground where the plane landed, or the faces of the rescuers going in Staircase, I come back to the spot. It is an exhausting experience mentally and physically. The experience of that fateful day cannot simply disappear because time has passed. It leaves a trace in your soul.
Nonetheless, I accept the burden placed on me because I believe it is a right duty. I am the guardian of the testimony of those thousands who were unable to get out that day. Out of the hundreds of people above the impact zone in South Tower, only 18 survived. Why was I saved? Why did my desk protect me when the offices located 20 feet away were blown up? I cannot answer the questions of destiny, but I can honor the gift of life I received.
As we move deeper into the 21st century, we enter the period when September 11 has transformed from a real-life experience into a digital archive. The modern-day boys and girls studying at schools and universities were not even born on the day when the towers fell. They get acquainted with September 11 from textbooks or video clips.
When restoring the events that occurred, we should do more than just create a visual representation of buildings. We should preserve the importance of that day from the human perspective. The 3D model can show you the place where the plane crashed, but it cannot express the feeling of hope that filled this room now that I was hiding under the desk. The wireframe project can reconstruct the stairs, but it cannot give the feeling of warmth of Brian Clark’s hand. The digital preservation must serve as a reminder of human sacrifice and bravery.
From my trip from British Guyana to the 81st floor and my way into the ministry, I have learned to look for true leadership in conditions of zero visibility. Anyone can manage a ship when the seas are calm, and the weather is fine. Only true leadership, spiritual, organizational, or personal, shows up when the ground disappears under your feet, and you see smoke in the room.
When flight number 11 hit the North Tower, the first thing I thought about was the safety of my partner, Delise. This is the first law of leadership: people come before processes. Before the operational decisions are made, one should take care of the people whose safety is in his or her hands.
By the time Brian and I were going down the A staircase, our role as leaders meant encouraging. We weren’t panicking; we were giving instructions to the people who were afraid on their landings. In a moment of crisis, a person does not need to hear a loud emotional reaction; a person needs clarity and calmness. One must have an internal balance, which makes one certain, independent of the chaos around.
These days, as I teach young practitioners and leaders of different organizations in my congregation at Bethel Church NYC, I tell everyone that their lives will face impact zones. You may have troubles with your job, learn about a serious illness, or experience the loss of a dear one. That is when the structure you built may shatter in a blink. However, if your life is based on faith, prayer, and honesty, then whatever happens, the ground will not fall from under your feet at once.
Reflecting on my life—having survived the bombing in 1993, the attack that transpired in 2001, being treated for leukemia, and undergoing heart surgery—fills me with deep appreciation. Each day, as I lie next to my female companion Jennifer, as I hug my girls Stephanie and Caitlin, or as I play with my grandchildren, I remember that my life is a miracle.
If there is one vital truth I would like every leader, student, and upcoming generation to embrace from my life, it is that God continues to work miracles. No throne is too far for God’s hands. No night is too dark for God’s light. No fence is too stiff for God’s mercy.
When the environment around you is shaky and history seems volatile, do not lose hope. Stand solid in your thoughts. Place your Bible on your table. Treat others with respect and care. Stretch your hands to everyone in distress, always remembering that nothing happens to you alone. The Lord is a faithful assistant in trouble. The truth, which was current on September 11th, remains so now and in the future.
