Frantic Phone Calls to His Mother From Tower One

By Olivia Winslow | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

Arline Nussbaum holding photo of her son, Jeffrey

Arline Nussbaum, Oceanside, holding photo of her son, Jeffrey Nussbaum, one of missing in World Trade Center disaster. (Newsday / Jim Peppler)

Jeffrey Nussbaum, 37, of Oceanside was working on the 92nd floor of Tower One when the first plane struck.

"My phone rings and I ask him 'Are you all right?' and he said, 'No, we can't breathe,'" his mother, Arline Nussbaum, recalled. "He says, 'The room is filling up with smoke and water, call 911. I'm on the 92nd floor.' And he hung up."

She didn't have the chance to tell him that a hijacked jetliner had struck the tower where he worked as a senior currency trader with Carr Futures, she said.

She has a record of the morning's cell phone calls her son made in those frantic moments after the attack. "He called his brother at 8:49 and left a message on his machine," she said. "The first call to me was 8:56. At 9:03, he called 911. At 9:06 he called 911. Then he called me back at 9:12. At 9:55, he called 911. 9:57, 911.

"His third phone call to me is not on here," Nussbaum continued. "I don't know whether he called me at 10 o'clock or 10:05, and that's when I told him. . .the other tower went down" and that the Pentagon had been attacked.

Finally, he understood. "He said, 'Oh my God. I love you, Mom,' and hung up.'"

Arline Nussbaum, who shared a home with her son, described him as a friendly, gregarious man, the sort who drew people to him. "If he went into a club and there were 350 people, 300 of them came over to say, 'Hi, Jeff.' By the time he left he knew the other 50," she said, allowing a bit of joy to creep into her voice.

Friends of her middle child, people she didn't know, have called and offered assistance in innumerable ways and have consoled her with tales of his caring nature.

Reason tells Nussbaum that her son has most likely perished. Yet she hopes. It is why she has so far declined a request for a visit from her rabbi.

"I'm hoping he's laying in a hospital in a coma [or] with amnesia... He's there as a John Doe," she said of her son. "But if the rabbi came, it means my son is 100 percent dead, and I can't think that way."