'Robert, There's Another Plane Coming'

By Joe Haberstroh | STAFF WRITER

September 13, 2001

Robert DeAngelis, with his wife, Denise, in their 1998 wedding photo; he was on the phone with his wife when Tower Two was hit.

Moments before 9 on Tuesday morning, Denise DeAngelis picked up the ringing telephone at the brick house on Peach Grove Drive in West Hempstead.

"Denise, honey, I can't believe what my eyes are seeing!" her husband, Robert DeAngelis, 48, said from his office on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center, Tower Two. "I can't believe what's going on."

"What's wrong, Robert? What's wrong?"

"Denise, my God, they're jumping out the windows; they're jumping out the windows."

"Robert?"

"Go and turn on the TV, Denise!"

She turned on the TV in their living room. The sky was a brilliant blue over the Manhattan skyline, but a noose of black smoke swirled around the first tower that had been hit minutes earlier.

"Denise! My God, three people right in front of me just jumped out of the window of that building."

She watched the TV and saw the second jet speed left-to-right across the screen.

She screamed into the phone.

"Robert, there's another plane coming. Get out of the building. Get out of the building!"

There was no answer as the skyscraper erupted into flames.

"I love you," she said.

Denise is still awaiting word from her husband, who had left their home early Tuesday morning for his job with Washington Group International, an engineering and construction firm. He has not been confirmed dead and remains officially missing.

She beeps him every hour on the hour because she thinks that may help rescuers locate him.

Family and friends are with her, in the brick house. They wonder if Robert, a West Hempstead Fire District commissioner, got into trouble by helping others. That seemed like something he would do, they agreed.

He had evacuated to the 78th floor with the others after the first jet hit, but then he had gone back up to the 91st floor when Port Authority officials said everything was clear.

When he got back, he answered the phones. He took a call from the elderly mother of his secretary, Maureen Cunningham.

"Don't worry," he told Dorothy Cunningham, of Glendale, Queens. "Maureen's out. Everyone's out."

"But, what about you?"

"I'm all right," he said. "I'm answering the phones so people can call to see if people are OK."

In Manhattan, Bob DeAngelis bought the massive equipment and materials needed for construction projects managed around the world by the Washington Group. His latest assignment is a $705-million hydro- electric project in the Philippines. He was superbly fit and never ate junk, but he always kept a dish of candy on his desk for others, said his colleague Robert Resch of Dix Hills.

In West Hempstead, he was the local boy who attended St. Thomas the Apostle school, then West Hempstead High, then the New York Institute of Technology. A former altar boy, he remained a devout Roman Catholic. He attended 7 a.m. mass on most weekday mornings.

Sometimes, he arrived so early the priest let him open the church doors.

His first wife, Diane, had died of breast cancer in 1994, but then, three years ago, he and Denise married. They were the same height - 5-foot-5 - and everyone was glad he had found someone again. It was Denise's first marriage. Friends agreed it seemed good for Robert's two children, a boy, 14, and an 18-year-old daughter in college. The couple stayed at the Red Rose Inn on Cape Cod for their honeymoon. Last week, they celebrated their wedding anniversary in Montauk.

"He was a small man, but with such a big, big character," Denise said. "My husband is a sweet, sweet man."

Nothing unusual happened early Tuesday. Robert ran his usual five miles through the leafy neighborhood. It was such a clear day. Then he left home, attended the 7 a.m. mass at St. Thomas, got on a bus for Jamaica and boarded the train into Manhattan.

An hour or so later, in the brick house on Peach Grove Drive, the telephone rang.