A twist of fate meant Michael Lomonaco hadn't yet arrived at work at Windows on the World when the first plane hit the twin towers.
Michael Lomonaco escaped with his life on Sept. 11, 2001 — all because of an unexpectedly easy commute to work and a pair of busted reading glasses.
It was also an extremely demanding job — the restaurant, spread across the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, was actually several dining and drinking spots rolled into one and served as many as 1,000 customers a day. That meant Lomonaco typically put in long hours, arriving at 8:30 a.m. and working through dinner. It also meant he had little time to attend to personal errands.
When the first plane hit at 8:46 a.m., Lomonaco was still at LensCrafters. “We were minutes away from being finished. … They were probably about to sell me new frames,” he said. Suddenly, he was jolted by the crash. “I just thought, ‘Could that be the subway?’ It turns out it was the impact of the first plane.” The lights flickered and then went out in the store. And within a minute or two, the building’s security team arrived and said that the concourse was being evacuated.
9:03 a.m.: The second plane hits the South Tower But Lomonaco didn’t make it back to the scene. Instead, he was one of many bewildered New Yorkers on the street when the second plane hit at 9:03 a.m. “I heard the roar of the jet engines. I looked up at the moment of impact,” Lomonaco recalled. And then he realized the full gravity of the situation: “This is an attack. We’re under attack.” Someone grabbed his arm and tried to pull him into a building.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Lomonaco helped set up the Windows of Hope fund to support the families of Windows employees and of other World Trade Center food-service workers who died. Eventually, he was able to realize a dream and open his own restaurant, the Porter House Bar and Grill, a steakhouse with an upscale, gourmet-centric approach. In many ways, the Midtown establishment is a continuation of Windows on the World, with Lomonaco continuing with some culinary ideas he had begun exploring at Wild Blue, the restaurant-within-a-restaurant at the World Trade Center dining spot. Lomonaco also brought aboard some key staff people he had worked with at Windows.
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