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Greensboro company helping out at Ground Zero
NANCY H. MCLAUGHLIN, Staff Writer
taken from The Greensboro News & Record, March 10, 2002
GREENSBORO -- Rusty Griffin missed almost the entire schedule of his three sons' fall baseball games.
"They wanted me home but they knew what I was doing was really important," Griffin says.
The steel-and-bronze sculpture called "The Sphere," which weighed 5,000 pounds and is 15 feet in diameter, sits in front of where Tower 1 once stood. World Financial Towers 1 and 2 are in the background.
(Photo courtesy
David Griffin/©News & Record)
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David Griffin got the call from his wife as he was overseeing a particularly stubborn task at Ground Zero.
"She was hesitant, but finally said, 'David III took his first steps today,'" David Griffin says, recalling that January day, four months after he began working at the World Trade Center site, and shortly before David III's first birthday.
"Then she said, 'But he ain't really walking,'" David Griffin says. Griffin's wife tried to downplay yet another milestone missed while he was away from his three children.
David and Rusty Griffin had gone to New York in the days after the attacks to volunteer their demolition skills. March 11 is the six-month anniversary of terrorists flying hijacked commercial airplanes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, leaving thousands dead and reducing buildings to rubble. The Griffins are still at work.
"A project like that, you are married to it," David Griffin says. "It has to be a 100 percent commitment or nothing."
Their company, Greensboro-based D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co., one of the Southeast's largest demolition experts, has consulted over removal of the twisted concrete and metal from the tumbled towers, and the buildings left damaged in the attack. David Griffin is company vice president and Rusty Griffin is the regional project manager.
David Griffin, son of founder D.H. Griffin, kept a scrapbook of what he saw.
A bright red fire truck lies crumpled beneath twisted metal and crumbled concrete in one picture. In another, as an American flag flaps in the background, workers sift through debris, bucket by bucket, for clues -- and, possibly, human remains -- from the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
There are pictures of a huge cast-iron cross found beneath the debris of World Trade Center Building 6, the U.S. Customs House. It quickly became a symbol of renewal for many of the workers. There is the gray sea of paper, office equipment, dislodged steel and concrete; the charred engine of an airplane; and the word "morgue" and an arrow spray-painted in red on a huge piece of concrete.
And there are pictures of David Griffin and then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and celebrities ranging from Robert De Niro to Jamie Lee Curtis.
David Griffin has pictures he won't share out of respect for families or because the criminal investigation is still under way. Others he is keeping to himself because, although not gory, he finds them too psychologically disturbing to share, such as a photo of a section of one of the jetliners with several passenger windows visible.
"I hope these pictures help put perspective on the bravery of the firemen, the police officers, the Port Authority workers, the emergency response crews -- everyone who came to the site to help," he says.
The day-to-day experiences are forever seared in their minds, they say. David Griffin, whose father was recuperating from knee surgery, took with him 17 of his employees from company offices across the south.
"We couldn't have accomplished what we have done in New York without the team of professionals and their dedication to the project. We shared in the long hours and the emotional drain."
The work at Ground Zero was 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We'd be there from 6:30 in the morning until 11:30 at night," says Rusty Griffin, who worked 100-hour workweeks most of the time. "By the time you got back to your hotel you were so exhausted you'd collapse until the next morning when you had to do it all over again."
Along with other experts from fields such as demolition, engineering and construction, they have been turning America's Valley of the Shadow of Death into a site fit for a new beginning.
"Psalm 23 becomes real. You walk through that valley," Rusty Griffin says.
"Sorting through the debris and coming across a body was hard, but you had to tell yourself it was the job and it had to be done. It was when you saw the families, the little boy someone let in to lay flowers on a debris pile because his died had died there, that made it really tough."
Rusty Griffin, whose specialty is blowing up buildings, would be called upon to use his skills to make quick decisions that would have lasting effects. With debris burning nearby and damaged structures posing risks to rescue workers, there wouldn't be time for all the usual steps that went into his work.
In the weeks after the attacks, Rusty Griffin would find himself 250-feet in the air on a 500-ton crane, surveying weakened sections of a damaged 26-story metal exterior wall with binoculars. There were fears that the building could collapse. It would have been easy to blow it up -- but not practical. Time was running out.
Rusty Griffin's idea to attach cable to weakened points he found using the binoculars, and pulling it away, section by section, shaved the cost of bringing it down by $1 million.
People who did not know the Griffins but recognized them as Ground Zero workers by their work boots or the IDs they kept around their neck tried to make the often gruesome work easier, they say.
"We'd go out and eat and people would come up to us and say, 'Boys, this is on us,'" Rusty Griffin says.
The Griffin employees have helped oversee the removal of 1.25 million tons of debris; just a few weeks ago, they were working in rubble where the bodies of several Port Authority police officers were discovered.
David Griffin hopes to be home by the end of the month.
"In the end, this was the biggest demolition job in the world," David Griffin says. "Hopefully there will never, ever be a bigger one."
Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nmclaughlin@news-record.com
D.H. Griffin employees at the site:
Greensboro office
David Griffin, company vice president
Rusty Griffin, regional project manager
Foyle Perkins
Ray Coleman
Kenny Bates
Wanchese Trivette
Charles Vann
John Padgett
Jimmy Griffin
Atlanta office
Paul Ferguson
Gerald West
Frank Riner
Florida office
Lee Lewis
Jerry Hughes
Larry Ourso, Sr.
Nashville office
Steve Pettigrew
Raleigh office
Tony Stoneking
Charlotte office
Jeff Feeley