this is veterans chronicles i'm greg corumbus honored to be joined today by bill van scoyek who is not a veteran of the united states military but he's here to tell us about a very special one named rick ruskorla he's also here to tell us about his role in the harrowing events of 911 inside the world trade center rick thanks very much for being with us hey greg it's a pleasure to be here with all of you and honestly um i'm i'm just so appreciative of the fact that that we get to speak of of rick
and his heroism and what he did uh on 9 11. where were you born and raised so i was born and raised in yonkers new york westchester county and yonkers is about 20 minutes outside of manhattan and as you can probably tell by my accent i am an absolute new yorker through and through even though i live in florida now for the last nine years which is basically just southern new york so but uh but it's great i'm very proud of my heritage where i come from and uh nothing to me was uh more spectacular
than working in new york city okay for the years that i did and uh in particular working in the trade center uh which to me was the penny ultimate of my career uh from an ex experience standpoint just a wonderful place to be okay and uh very proud of the firm that i work for and uh and the presence that we had in that building how many employees did morgan stanley have at the trade center well i mean my memory was morgan stanley was the single largest tenant in that location uh with a presence in
in multiple buildings in the trade center and i believe we had somewhere in the vicinity of about 3 300 or 3 400 employees um in total um in the buildings there wow how did you meet rick or scorla well i mean interestingly enough i mean rick's personality gay and rick's presence were always known even for somebody new coming to to the location i remember just the initial fire drills and and some of the preparatory events that they would have in the trade center you know trade center was a great location and it was one of
the most amazing places i've ever set foot in in my life and it was just unbelievable and we would have safety and fire drills on a regular basis and rick would coordinate and run those drills and i didn't know who rick was honestly when i first uh knew him but his presence and his demeanor certainly defined him uh when i first met him and i could just tell i could sense his passion for making sure that everyone was secure and that he was protecting everyone in that building you mentioned his demeanor what was it like
a regular day he was great i mean you know rick was uh definitely and again i didn't find out until until after the fact but you know rick was a soldier i mean he was he was somebody that was inspiring somebody that you would see that that you would want to look up to and somebody was a true leader and someone that that you had confidence in that that would do the right thing at the right time so only after the fact did i even find out of his valor and his courage in vietnam and
what he did and um funny for a guy just coming there working in a building i never had more confidence and felt more secure gay working with someone than i did with rick i just thought he was fantastic wow how did he he talked a little bit about how he approached his job how he was his mission to protect everyone how did that manifest itself and how he interacted with you and everybody else there well what i think was great about rick is you know there was an open line of communication for where we worked
i mean obviously we were in an incredibly high profile building and folks would always talk about okay the bombing incident that happened back in the early 90s and that story was so prevalent and told so many different times that it almost became self-educational okay for for um what you needed to do to to hopefully or hopefully not ever encounter okay a similar situation such as that but i think rick did an unbelievable job of instilling in people the fact that you need to be quick you need to be decisive you need to listen and you
need to leave that building and that's exactly what he instilled because all i can think about is my own part in what happened and the decision was almost instantaneous it was from all of the training i remember people said it took two hours to get down the stairwell okay during the bombing and i remember saying man i i don't want to be in this location for two hours if something get really bad is going to happen and i certainly want to have anybody that i'm responsible for uh put in jeopardy for that period of time
so when the events happened um we made the decision just incredibly quickly to evacuate that building and i credit a lot of that to rick you know i really truly believe um just in the short period of time that i worked with him and the training that he gave us that um he played a big role in not only saving my life but but so many other people now you mentioned there's 3 300 people in different buildings in the world trade center complex uh so in the building you were in um where were most of
them concentrated what floors of the building or was it all over the place so my responsibility and where i worked um i worked with a great group of people on the 61st floor of tower 2. and that particular day we um we were on the second day of a three week training program where we had of course ironically the largest training class we've ever had of 276 people that really came in from all across the country and these folks were here on their second day of their first week of a three-week training program in new
york city and as a native new yorker i can tell you um wholeheartedly you know new york is that's the greatest place in the world but you know what if you're not accustomed to it it can be pretty intimidating place uh so you know um you know these people were just trying to get used to okay and accommodated to being in new york city which you know for a lot of them was just an overwhelming experience to begin with and um certainly and of course no one would have ever anticipated what what was what was
to kind of happen moving forward and and that was you know something that just came and um you know was quite unexpected how did you learn about the first plane hitting tower one and what was the reaction well what i remember from that night day i should say is you know walking in and going to my job and being there at 7 a.m and getting things prepared and fortunately the first speaker that we had that day actually showed up 15 minutes early which you don't think about certain things until they matter and i i thought
that was fantastic getting him on early having him speak and kind of getting the class ready and and have everybody be attentive for that time and when he finished speaking he finished speaking about 15 minutes early and ironically he never realized how important that time would be because what i did is put everybody on break okay for an extended period of time and told him hey you can go and you know go downstairs and relax go to the cafeteria get yourself coffee and you got a half hour now instead of 15 minutes on a break
which is great but literally maybe about five or or ten minutes after he had finished speaking someone came running up to me and they said um you know there's there's some structural damage in one of the offices and i said what do you mean and i actually walked back there and i saw a crack in the glass of one of the rooms that we used um uh to to house all the people that we had and i knew something was wrong because it just didn't seem right and i remember looking out the window and you
know as a big new york yankee fan i remember when the yankees beat the mets in 2000 we had a ticker tape parade down there and it was great there was all these wonderful things flying outside because people were celebrating this was kind of like a more horrific version of that there was debris there was things that were on fire and there were there were just you knew something was wrong so my first instinct was go back into the center room okay try to get my hands around all the folks that were still up there
trying to organize it and wait for instruction and that's exactly what we did and uh after the second plane hit tower two they were still telling the building management was still telling people not to leave the building right well i remember this vividly we decided because of security and the folks kind of instructing us and saying might not be a bad idea to leave the building i remember making the decision because it was my class that let's let's leave you know um i i just thought it was prudent decision thought it was the right thing
to do and we can always come back into the building but again after all the stories and all the education that rick gave us and and the team put in our heads you know you can't always leave the building you know it can take time to get downstairs and i certainly want to see anybody jeopardized uh or any lives put in danger so um we actually evacuated went down the stairwell and got to about the 50th floor and the 50th floor was a re-entry floor and right before we got to the 50th floor it actually
had come across the intercom system that you know building one was hit by an aircraft building two is secure go back to your desks and i remember i had a small group of people with me and they actually said well what do you think we should do i said oh well i'm just thinking we should just leave because you know what i mean i don't know what's going on in the other building and if there's a fire um you know smoke can certainly be uh dangerous and uh not something that that we want to encounter
and let's just go downstairs and we'll regroup and we'll figure it out and i would say literally within two or three minutes of that decision um well then we got hit and what floor did the plane hit in your building to this day i don't know exactly where it was but um yeah it was above us i i think it was somewhere in the in probably in the low 90s or high 80s and all i can tell you is we felt the impact of the building you know if you worked in the world trade center
that building was so tall and it was such an incredible structure that it would actually sway with the wind so you know sometimes you'd be in there and you'd actually feel like you were moving in the building which was great it was just such a structural marvel and it was just an incredible place to be um when we got impacted by a plane it literally felt like like we were on a pendulum just swinging back and forth and and actually you know could could i felt like i was going to fall out of the building
and what amazed me was just how incredibly well composed the folks were um as we evacuated the building and all i could think about that day was um you know i usually talk to my mom early in the morning at all times before i went to work she'd always call me and uh that particular day i was just so busy i didn't get a chance to do it and i was just kind of kind of regretful i didn't have a conversation with her because i don't know if i was gonna get out of there or
not but all i could tell you um is that folks were just incredible and amazingly focused and just um everybody was pitching in to help everybody else just just get out of the building were you in contact with rick at any point during the morning no i mean just the security team that that rick was in charge of and entrusted to and i remember coming down when we when we finally got down the stairwell there was the uh observatory deck which i believe was on the eighth floor and i was actually with a senior member
of management from morgan stanley who was helping me get some of the the folks moved downstairs and i can remember as we went down the escalator from the 84 i could hear rick because rick had a voice you never forget you know with his accent and just his authoritative demeanor which was again as a soldier as as somebody to respect as a leader you certainly make note of when you hear it and um i could hear him instructing us you know to come down and to exit the building and i didn't actually see him run
up the stairs but i heard the stories of him coaching and helping and singing and doing anything he could to help people feel better for for for the chaos that was in suing us and trying to relieve and soothe us but also trying to do what rick did best which was protect and get people out of the building you mentioned that folks had said it took two hours to get downstairs back in the 93 bombing how long did it take you and the folks you were responsible for to get down there that day amazingly fast
i never walked down 61 flights of stairs faster and actually at one point i was carrying a couple people with me that we're having a hard time getting down 61 flight stairs the old story i like to tell is you know i was probably about 30 pounds lighter back then probably in the shape of my life and it actually was helpful because um it allowed me to help some other folks that that maybe weren't quite uh as physically adept in walking down 61 flights of stairs to get down there and i'd say we got down
the stairwell and out of the building in probably less than 12 minutes 12 minutes so then did you find the people you had sent downstairs earlier did you reconvene with them somewhere outside or inside or well i mean everybody just kind of scattered at that point well when we were outside i remember i had a group of people with me and someone else from morgan stanley senior management and quite frankly we didn't know what to do and what was going on but i remember going up to a police officer that was there and i said
yeah i've got some folks i'm responsible for what do i do and he said honestly he goes get out of downtown he goes because we heard there's another plane coming and at that point i said all right um you know what we we would house all the folks that would come in for this three week training program um in three different locations there was a wonderful hotel called the south gate right across the madison square garden um the east gate which was located right near there and the hotel surrey so i just basically said to
to the folks i was with just go back to the south gate i'll get my way up there eventually and and you know we'll begin to try to piece this together and um i remember making that walk from downtown manhattan uh to to the southgate hotel and i was desperately trying to call my mom and my dad because um you know my dad was a former world war ii veteran and unfortunately was incapacitated back then in a wheelchair um you know my parents were elderly and i just wanted to make sure that they knew that
i was okay but there was just no cell phone service at all and i think i found one pain phone where there wasn't a line of 20 people on and i was able to call my parents and let them know and they asked me they really requested that i come home just walk back to yonkers for a little bit of a long one but i said look i said i've got responsibility here i said i've got people that i'm responsible for that are going to need my help and i i don't know quite frankly what
i can do for them but but just to have somebody there that can help them um i thought would be the right thing to do so what did you do with him well i went and walked back to to the uh southgate hotel and you know all i can tell you is the people and the staff at the southgate hotel were so amazing in helping me identify myself i told i told them who i was and i said i have no lists i have nothing that's going to be able to be a roster for for
accountability for the folks that we had and they set me up in the back of the hotel and really in my own command center and provided me every resource i needed to try to piece this together and try to see out of the 276 people we had um who who we had and who was in the hotel and how we can find people that weren't and really just account for everybody and it was a long long process and um you know we actually figured out a system where we had the other two hotels faxing the
registry for people that had checked in and i had actually spoken to the people that that and checked in went out to the streets of manhattan at one point walked around and it was amazing after only a day and a half how many people are recognized from the class and i think a lot of folks were in shock as you can imagine and just trying to get them back into the hotel and try to help them and make sure that their well-being was taken care where were you when the tower came down this was when
i was walking from downtown new york and interestingly enough i had walked east and i think i was somewhere probably around canal street or i remember being near jnr music world which was a okay place that i knew very well on the electronics store and i just felt this rumble and it was like nothing else i ever felt i thought it was an earthquake and i remember running under an awning and looking and just seeing what looked like a house cards just come down and see this giant billowing um smoke coming out and i remember
at that point i thought to myself i i can't believe what you saw and the folks and the people that were in there were the only thing at the forefront of my mind and it was devastating did you head back to the hotel then what did you how did you respond in terms of making decisions after that i just decided to go back to the hotel and do everything i could whatever help i could provide and whatever i could do to help that's what i want to do and um you know look i always think
about 9 11 and i always i always say you saw the best in people and the worst in people on the same day which is something that uh you don't frequently see but i can't really look back on it with any positive memories except for one thing you know people lost their families they lost their husbands their wives children it'll never be a positive experience for me but the inspiration is seeing people bond and work together the greatest thing i've ever seen and people truly wanted to help each other that day and people truly wanted
to work together and together we all overcame something we never thought we'd have to experience but we worked together through it what are some examples of what you saw people who perhaps didn't even really know each other because they were all coming together for this training session how did they work together you talked about how you were pretty much carrying two people down the stairs well what i'll always remember when we were in the southgate hotel uh probably about an hour and a half after everything happened someone had come up to me and said you
know you probably should dress or have a meeting with the people that are here and again by no means was i an expert in dealing with um situations such as this so i was kind of piecing it together myself but they said they need to hear from somebody in leadership or management here some type of reassurance that there's going to be support and help for them and um really addressing them on on what's going on so i had a meeting and i remember saying to myself you know a lot of folks left there a lot
of the ladies left their pocket books and gentlemen left their their jackets with their wallets in it and there were people that needed money and they needed some help and support so i actually passed the cardboard box around the meeting room and i said you know look we'll get this straightened out and the firm will come in and support us i know that for fact because it's just a great place to be i said but in the interim people need food and you know just need some help and i passed around a cardboard box and
i would say within less than five minutes i had thirty six hundred dollars in there and i remember looking at that saying to myself that reaffirms my my faith in humanity because again as i stated people cared more about other folks than they cared about themselves and they wanted to help and donate any way they can i remember having a meeting and again not knowing what to say but all i did was say that i'm going to give you the best effort i have to work this through and um i know this great firm that
we work for will certainly support us and help us and i'm gonna get you home and back to your families i don't know how yet but i'm going to just just give it some time have some faith that got a little complicated since they grounded all the flights well it certainly wasn't easy um you know what i remember vividly was we we had actually begun to get a little bit of a sense of normalcy within the first let's say day or so and you know for me i just wanted to to make people feel good
so i remember taking them to to we had a restaurant lounge bar uh in in the in the southgate hotel where i just told everybody to come and just meet and we had a whole huge group of people and it was great and i really felt like you know what we're getting people in a better place this has been an incredibly traumatizing event but we're getting people in a better place and you know lo and behold we have the bomb scare at the empire state building and that was kind of difficult because um after that
you know parents were driving up from all over the country to come and pick their children up they just did not want to wait um for us to get them back and um we i actually really felt that oh boy you know we i think we kind of had it under control but it went a little chaotic after that event now you mentioned as you were exiting tower 2 you could hear rick ruskorla encouraging folks singing to them and obviously you cleared the tower by a number of minutes before it came down um why didn't
rick ultimately get out in time i understand he went back up what do you know about the sequence of events there you know i read about rick um after everything happened and what's so inspiring about him was not only his actions that day but his actions prior to that day um in vietnam and rick had always been asked did you ever see the movie we were soldiers and did you ever juicy and at least from what i read i don't think he did and rick's opinion was always you know what the heroes aren't the folks
that are still here the few of the heroes are the folks that are that are no longer here and again just in my interactions with him that's exactly how he came off which to me meant he would rather sacrifice himself to save save someone um rather than then provide for his own security and you just knew he was going to get people out of that building as many as he could and his own safety and his own thought of of himself um it was it was not the number one priority for him how does your
company respond you mentioned you knew that they would take care of the people who had left their wallets and so forth but their offices were gone for thousands of people so how did the company recover from that after 24 years of working for this firm it's not even it's not even a company i work for it's part of my life and what they did to help people and to to make this um unbelievable horrible event even somewhat palatable to people was extraordinary to me you know morgan stanley actually set up business contingency areas for folks
to work out of and morgan stanley helped and provided counseling and services to people that were affected by by what we saw and morgan stanley never forgets the events of that day and you know look with all the folks we had we still had 12 people that didn't make it out of that building that that were part of our family and every year we honor them and every year we talk about rick and every year we provide whatever support we need for people um to help them because 18 years later i can only tell you
um it's part of my life it'll be a part of my life and it'll be something that will always be in my memory and i'm grateful for the firm i work with because of what they did from a support standpoint the help they gave people the continued support that they give them um i think it speaks volumes about this firm you mentioned 12 people didn't make it out rick being one of them if rick hadn't worked for you hadn't been there hadn't been helping people out it's obvious it's impossible to know how many more would
have lost their lives but the fact that out of 3 300 the toll wasn't higher how much credit does rick deserve for that an unbelievably enormous amount of credit again for someone that only worked in the building for a year um i really felt that i was trained to make the right decision and i give a hundred percent of the credit to rick and and his team and to me i can't even fathom how many lives could have been lost bad enough the lives that we did lose but i can't even fathom the lives we
could have lost if we didn't have someone like him who not only was a hero but a leader and an incredible one like you said we're talking here in 2019. it's been 18 years and obviously the first few anniversaries of 911 got wall-to-wall media coverage and attention and unless it's a 10 or a 15 it doesn't seem to get as much now i assume that's not the case with you and morgan stanley so when that day comes around and it seems like it's almost inevitable that it's a crisp day with not a cloud and sky
just like it was that day what do you what goes through your mind first i think about 9 10 and being with my family and being my friends and going to a yankee red sox game that never happened because it got rained down and then hanging out with my friends watching the giant bronco game the night before getting home early in the evening getting ready for the next day couldn't wait and just so excited about my job and what i did with folks and i remember walking across the street because i lived in battery park
city at that time and it was a beautiful day it was it was a perfect day and i remember thinking like man this could be a good day we're going to get so many things done it's going to be just great and you know obviously we didn't know what was going to happen but you know the the memories um the folks that didn't get out of the building the lives that were irreparably changed um they're always going to be part of it but the inspiration that i found that day seeing people work together and uniting
is really what i try to put at the the forefront of my mind for for that day evil didn't win that day good did and it came at a very very very costly price but it um they prevail last question you said earlier that you live in florida now we're talking here in washington and the reason you're here is because rick rascorlo is being honored this week at the american veterans center conference what does it mean to you that he is being honored and that you are part of the opportunity to honor him i couldn't
be more honored to be with the people i'm going to be with um you know as the proud son of a world war ii veteran um as the proud nephew of an uncle who i never met who also unfortunately died in world war ii um there's an american legion post named after him to have a whole family that was so focused and centered in the military nothing to me is of greater value than to be surrounded by the people that i really feel are the true heroes and someone like rick to me is a hero
with no limitations for how you think of him for what he did the lives he saved and everything that he accomplished to be associated in any way shape or form to keep his memory alive and to see him get the uh recognition that he deserves to me is it's priceless and if i could have a conversation with him today i would just say thank you because i've got great family great kids and i couldn't be happier in my life and i think he had a big part in helping to make sure that i experienced that
and for him he came at the ultimate cost i can't make that up to him but i certainly would love to to see him honored and have his memory be um be in the front of everybody's mind well that will happen this week and uh billy i know that you've been very humble in talking about how the other people worked well together and the heroism of rick that day but i'm pretty sure those 276 people are really grateful for your leadership that day as well and so thank you for that and thank you very much
for being with us today thank you bill van scayek is with morgan stanley and as was a former colleague of rick ruskorla who is being honored at the 2019 american veterans center conference i'm greg corumbus this is veterans chronicles [Music]
