For Two 'Buddies,' the Ultimate Act of Friendship

By Kathryn Wellin | STAFF WRITER

September 18, 2001

Diane Urban, missing in the World Trade Center attack.

For 31 years, Diane Urban and Dianne Gladstone were close friends as well as co-workers. For the past three years, they worked for New York State on the 86th floor of Tower Two. Last Tuesday, one of them tried to save the other.

Urban nearly escaped down a staircase, when she changed course to help her friend, who had injured her leg. Now both women are missing.

"I know my sister - she never could have lived with herself if she ran for those stairs," said Terry Corio of Manhasset. "It's like buddies in the war."

The story of how Diane Urban, 50, of Malverne tried to save Dianne Gladstone, 55, of Forest Hills was told to Corio and Gladstone's husband, Herbert, by co-workers of the missing women.

Shortly after the first tower was hit, Urban and Gladstone ran hand in hand, following colleagues to a concourse area on the 78th floor. There, hundreds of people waited for elevators to take them down to safety. Then the second plane crashed into their tower, unleashing a tidal wave of reverberations.

Gladstone was hurled away.

From the staircase, Urban spotted her friend. Her leg seemed broken.

"I'm going to help Dianne," Urban said to co-workers on the stairs. By the time she reached Gladstone, fireballs were spewing paralyzing smoke and heat. As they ran down the stairs, the co-workers saw Diane and Dianne huddling with two male colleagues - all of them shielding their faces with their hands.

"I don't think they ever made it to the stairs," Corio said. "And then the building collapsed. They probably suffocated very quickly.

"I think Diane could have gotten out," Corio said. "She was quick on her feet. I guess she thought she had time enough to carry her friend out."

If the blast hadn't broken his wife's leg, she might have survived, said Gladstone's husband.

"She wasn't a typical 55-year-old woman," he said. "She could keep up with most people in aerobics class."

His wife loved the view from her 86th-floor office, he said. Both women worked for the state Department of Taxation & Finance. They were working in the same office in Queens three years ago when they accepted promotions that transferred them to the Twin Towers. Gladstone planned to retire in April after 37 years of service to the state.

Eight months ago, Urban moved to Malverne after a lifetime in Queens. The house was "like her toy," said Corio's husband, Ray. She spent her free time "dolling it up" and planned to retire there in five years.

"My sister just felt that she had picked the most wonderful place for herself," Terry Corio said. "She was looking forward to the holiday season, the tree lighting in Malverne."

She added that her sister was proud to live in Steven McDonald's hometown, referring to the New York City police officer paralyzed by a gunshot 15 years ago who now makes public appearances espousing a message of forgiveness.

For many days, Herbert Gladstone, a crane operator, hoped for the best at ground zero as he watched fellow operators clear the rubble. By Sunday, he was "pretty well cried out."

"I cannot imagine that anybody is going to get out of there solid in a whole piece," he said.

Although the Corios initially harbored a "window of hope," they are "down to a peephole," Ray Corio said.

For Terry Corio, the co-workers' story is a gift, a "wonderful thing they can tell us," she said. "It gives me a picture."

It is a picture, Corio said, that proves the terrorists did not prevail.

"You can kill some of us, but you cannot conquer us. The goodness in people will go on."