Ridgely Ochs, Newsday
Myron Finegold said he would have “no qualms” about visiting the National September 11 Memorial Museum at some point but, in truth, he has moved on.
To Arizona.
The former Plainview resident helped lead about 60 people out of the north tower to safety the day the planes struck the World Trade Center. A manager of office spaces for the Port Authority, Finegold, 62, lost 84 colleagues that day.
Former Plainview resident Myron Finegold was working for the Port Authority on the 82nd floor of One World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001. Here, he poses with a piece of steel from the world Trade Center that is the centerpiece of Plainview’s 9/11 Memorial Park on Aug. 15, 2011. (Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas)
Four years later, he, his wife and son, then a freshman at Tulane University in New Orleans, survived Hurricane Katrina after being locked for days inside a hotel.
When superstorm Sandy struck in October 2012, Finegold was in Arizona, but his wife, Susan, was still in Plainview, without power for days.
“When I finally walked back in the door,” Finegold said, “She said to me: ‘We are done. We are moving. You’re going to retire.’ ”
And so he did — last May, to Sun City West, where he embraces with gusto the perpetual sunshine and brilliant blue skies, and said he is busier than he ever was when he worked full time.
He has been in touch with a former boss who works for the 9/11 museum, set to open to the public Wednesday. And before his move west, he said he had seen some of the artifacts when they were stored in a hangar at Kennedy Airport.
His wife and son, Jared, who now lives in Miami, visited the 9/11 memorial several weeks ago when they were back in New York.
And while Finegold said he will talk about what happened if it comes up, he is not consumed with past horrors.
“Life is good,” he said. “I wake up every day and say ‘thank you’ to whoever I am saying thank you to. You just move on.”
