Text size:

The stories of 9/11 told by the man who knows

BY HERBERT LOWE | STAFF WRITER

September 12, 2005

Two dozen people were crowded around Harry John Roland at the World Trade Center site yesterday, mesmerized as he told all he knew about what happened there on Sept. 11, 2001.

"History! Don't let it be a mystery. Grab a map. Learn the facts," Roland, 51, of Jersey City, bellowed.

Everyone leaned in to hear above the Church Street traffic and public address system. It was early afternoon and, as part of the official fourth anniversary ceremonies marking the terrorist attacks, relatives were still reciting names of loved ones who died.

"There ain't anything you can [ask] me about this place that I won't be able to tell you what's going on," said Roland, a tour guide and concessionaire at the trade center before its demise.

Armed with photos and maps of the site, Roland engaged his momentary history students on everything from how and why the buildings imploded to where the first of the victims' bodies were moved after the smoke had cleared.

Roland said in an interview last week that he comes to the site several days a week to help tourists better know what occurred on 9/11, free of charge, although on most days he does accept tips.

He estimates that he talks to tens of thousands of people who come each week to the site to see, even if just for a moment, the devastation and restoration for themselves.

Of course, Roland, a freelance photographer and part-time security guard, is by no means an official recordkeeper.

But while no agency seems to keep official tallies, it's clear that more and more people are visiting the site.

A spokeswoman for the city's tourism agency, NYC & Co., said it no longer tallies just how many people do so. The agency can say, however, that more than a million people bought tickets to cross the platform that overlooked the site between December 2001 and June 2002, said the spokeswoman, Arlene Kropf.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. keeps track only of those people who stop by its information kiosk, just off the train entrance at the site, to ask questions. The number nearly doubled between January 2004, when it was 18,325, and January 2005, when it totaled 30,052, said Sara Banda, a spokeswoman for the corporation. In July, 57,735 people stopped by. Last month, 63,724 did so.

Banda said, however, that the corporation's numbers also include people asking, for example, where to catch the subway.

Even so, a quick survey of people stopping by the site one day last week, whether alone, as couples, or with their families and friends, showed that there's no question that people come to the trade center site from as far away as California and England.