IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Tower one worker recalls evacuation

BY JENNIFER SMITH | Newsday Staff Writer

On Sept. 11, Rose Parascandola, of Bensonhurst, was in Tower One, on the 51st floor, working for TradeWeb. Today, she remains with TradeWeb, an online trading company, as an administrative assistant.

I had left everything in my office -- I thought, 'I'll come back and get it later.'

"Once we were outside . . . I turned around, and I saw somebody jumping and I said, 'I've got to get out of here.'

"My brother, he and his then-wife met me and we walked over the Williamsburg Bridge . . . We stopped in this little grocery store and I bought a pack of Band-aids and a pack of cigarettes for the first time in 22 years.

"I was glued to the television for days, even weeks, trying to absorb everything about what had happened . . . That's basically what I did until I had to get up and go back to work.

"I felt very guilty for a long time . . . I didn't lose a person, I have no physical scars. People lost parents, sisters, brothers, wives . . . I am so thankful that my family didn't have to go through burying me or begging for a piece of my hair or a piece of my bone.

"Travel is what I want to do, but it will never be to the Middle East . . . I don't believe that all Islamic people or all Middle Eastern people are bad. Unfortunately we were exposed to the worst of the worst.

"My choice was taken away that day. They controlled that scenario. That's one for them. They're not going to get another from me. That's what made me put the cigarettes down."