WHY AM I ALIVE?

        “The Lord saw fit for me to live,” says Stanley Praimnath, who was working in Tower 2 on 9/11/01. His story of survival is found in Plucked from the Fire (Rosedog Books) co-authored by Wm. Hennessey. Stan is the only known survivor from a direct hit by a plane at the World Trade Center that day.            In his native Guyana, Stan’s mother had insisted he attend church, but he drifted away when he came to America. In New York, a friend invited him to church. “The more I went there, the more I liked what I saw,” Praimnath says. After receiving Jesus as his Lord, Stan married a pastor’s daughter and helped his father-in-law plant a new church in Queens. He always kept a Bible on his work desk and read from it during lunch.

        On the morning of 9/11/01, Tower One was hit first, but Stan didn’t realize something was wrong until he saw fiery debris falling outside his window. Then came the phone call, “Stan, get out of the building!” He looked out of his office window and saw a huge gray plane flying straight at him at eye-level, so close he could read the plane’s letters. Momentarily frozen in his steps, he cried out, “Lord, I can’t do this – You take over!” and then jumped under his desk, leaving his Bible on top. The plane sliced his office in half, a wing missing him by a few feet, and the impact killed every other person around him. Stan was injured but alive.

        Stan firmly believes the Lord answered his prayer by sending him under his desk and bringing a helper from an office a floor above his. Together they were somehow able to walk down the stairwells 80 floors and out of the building. They ran through the falling debris outside, “And not one piece touched us,” he said. They just made it inside Trinity Church just as Tower 2 collapsed. The clouds of dust and ash separated them for the rest of the day, but they were reunited later, “We became blood brothers,” he said.

        “If you look at the video [of the plane hitting Tower 2],” he writes, “the plane is coming straight at me in the building, but at the last minute it makes a tilt.” He believes God made the plane do that, thereby saving his life.

        For weeks he struggled with survivor’s guilt, asking, “Why am I alive?” But then he heard a commentator speak of the significance of the numbers 9-1-1. He grabbed his Bible and found Psalm 91:1, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” It was God’s answer to the only known survivor of a direct plane hit at the World Trade Center.

        “My survival is all about God and His grace,” Praimnath says. “If you call on Him with all your heart and soul, He will intervene on your behalf and deliver you.” I can add nothing to Stan’s words except,

“Thank You, God, for Your grace for us in Jesus.”

Rev. Bob Tasler, www.bobtasler.com