CTP (S3ESepSpecial3) Blind on 9/11: A Survivor's Tale

CTP (S3ESepSpecial3) Blind on 9/11: A Survivor's Tale
Exploring more of the fascinating intersection of Activism, Community Engagement, Faith / Religion, Human Nature, Politics, Social Issues, and beyond   
Michael Hingson shares his remarkable journey as a blind 9/11 survivor who escaped from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's Tower One and how this experience shaped his understanding of fear, preparation, and resilience.
• Born blind and told by doctors he would never contribute to society
• Earned a master's degree in physics despite 70% unemployment rate among blind people
• Opened an office in World Trade Center Tower One in August 2000
• Survived 9/11 by using his detailed knowledge of the building's layout and emergency procedures
• Published three books including NY Times bestseller "Thunderdog" with foreword by Larry King
• Advocates for true inclusion of people with disabilities in diversity conversations
• Teaches that fear can be controlled and used as a motivational tool rather than something that overwhelms us
• Suggests everyone has disabilities, but some are more visible or accommodated than others
• Hosts "Unstoppable Mindset" podcast about inclusion, diversity and the unexpected
Find Michael's books and speaking information at michaelhingson.com or email speaker@michaelhingson.com.

A Short Story: A Lasting Legacy? book Trailer

Transcript

Introducing Michael Hingson

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Constitutionalist Politics Podcast , aka CTP . I am your host , joseph M Leonard , and that's L-E-N-A-R-D . Ctp is your no-muss , no-fuss , just me , you and occasional guest-type podcast . Really appreciate you tuning in . As Graham Norton will say , let's get on with the show . Hello everyone , welcome to another episode of Christitutionalist Podcast . Joining me today is Michael Hingson , h-i-n-g-s-o-n . And , of course , for those viewing behind the scenes video that will be added in post on a sprawl at the bottom , so you won't have to oh , excuse me , won't have to remember it can see it on the screen . And for those of you watching behind the screens , I'm wearing my I Remember , never Forget 9-11 shirt because we are recording on August the 5th . But this show will air Thursday , september 11th , and it will become apparent why . Very shortly Now , with all that out of the way , why very shortly Now , with all that out of the way . Welcome to the show , michael Higson .

Speaker 2 1:30

Thank you , it's good to be here , yes .

Speaker 1 1:32

So before we get into a whole lot , let's do the proverbial usual first where were you born and raised and where are you now ? Kind of stuff .

Speaker 2 1:50

I was born in Chicago , illinois , and lived there for five years . And about four months after being born and I was born two months premature it was discovered that I was blind and the doctors told my parents that they ought to send me off to some home , because no blind child could ever grow up to be any kind of a contributor to society and I would just be a drain . And my parents said absolutely , you're wrong . And so they brought me up with that attitude .

Speaker 1 2:21

Yeah , no child would ever amount to anything if they had parents with the attitude they were trying to be convinced of .

Speaker 2 2:30

Absolutely . After college , including getting a master's degree in physics and a secondary teaching credential , I was fortunate enough to actually be able to join the workforce , which is something a lot of blind people don't have that opportunity to do because of the fact that most people don't think blind people can work , so we don't ever get the opportunity . I was hired by a blindness organization to be involved in some work and that led to other jobs that kept me in the workforce , which was great . But the bottom line is that I lived in an environment and it's still somewhat true today where the unemployment rate among employable blind people was close to 70% , that's 7-0% . And again , it's not that we can't work , it's that people don't think we can , and so we don't get the opportunity .

Speaker 1 3:29

Exactly . I mean , it depends on the job . Obviously , you're not going to be a welder .

Speaker 2 3:38

I don't know why that's obvious . I know blind people who are .

Speaker 1 3:42

Oh really , wow , Okay , well , totally blind . I mean , there's degrees of blindness .

Speaker 2 3:51

Sure , it comes down to the fact that people think eyesight's the only game in town , and it's not . There are other ways to do things , and so the bottom line is that most everything that sighted people can do blind people can do . We may not do it exactly the same way , but we can do it , and the fact of the matter is that people need to get over the fact of thinking that eyesight is the only way you do stuff .

Speaker 1 4:14

Yeah , I didn't have that thinking , but yet you caught me in a I didn't think they could do it thing .

Speaker 2 4:23

So anyway , I've been very fortunate . So today , after having lived in other parts of the United States and so on , I am actually back in Southern California , about 55 miles from where I grew up , in Palmdale . I now live in a town called Victorville and I'm having fun and then it's having fun good , so palmdale hasn't been completely destroyed , like whole other parts of california . Have we're , not we're ? We're far enough away from the fire areas .

Speaker 1 4:56

That know we're okay right now yeah , well , I I don't just mean that , I also mean

Growing Up Blind in America

Speaker 1 5:02

economically due to bad policy . But yeah , I didn't necessarily mean to go down that rabbit hole , but at any rate , indeed you . However , again why this will be airing on 9-11 , not strictly related to that , but you are a 9-11 survivor , related to that , but you are a 9-11 survivor . And before we get into that , I want to say 9-11 , people is not an anniversary . Anniversaries are for happy things , like if you're still married after 50 years . Well , you know , may not be happily married still after 50 years , but in general you get my point that would be considered a happy anniversary thing .

Speaker 1 5:52

9-11 is a somber remembrance day , like Memorial Day . Fourth of July is a mixed bag . We are celebratory of our independence , but yet it's a somber remembrance of those who gave their blood and treasure for us to be an independent nature . So I just want to get that . You know we've got to be a little more careful in our choice of language at time's point . But indeed , how in the world did you land up there on that day 24 years ago when we got a whole generation of kids born since then that don't know life before it ?

Speaker 2 6:40

I . One of the jobs that I had was selling products as a reseller for other companies that made them , and one of the companies that made products that we sold like what I was doing , and they asked me to go to work for them , which I did , and they wanted me to , among other things , open an office for them in New York City , and the reason they wanted the office was because Wall Street firms like to have actual manufacturers have a representation in the city , not just their reseller people . So , anyway , I was hired to open an office and , after looking and evaluating options , ended up opening the office on the 78th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center and we opened the office in August of 2000 . And so , after opening the office and we started moving in and so on , one of the things that I did as the leader of the office this gets back to doing things differently than sighted people do One of the things that I knew that I had to be able to do was to perform the same tasks that any leader of an office would . So I spent a lot of time learning all about the World Trade Center where things were what the emergency evacuation procedures were . Where the emergency exits were , what the emergency evacuation procedures were , where the emergency exits were , what all the rules and regulations were , as well as learning various things about offices and where restaurants were , and all that .

Speaker 2 8:13

And I did all that because if , for example , we were going to have somebody in the office talking with us about they're buying our product and we wanted to go to lunch , I couldn't say , oh , I can't get anywhere because I'm blind . I needed to be able to say where do you want to go ? Okay , well , I can take you there and take them , and take them . And if I couldn't do that and I said , well , I don't know how to get anywhere , I'm blind , someone's going to have to lead me . How's it going to work two hours later , when we're off negotiating a multimillion dollar contract ? No , I needed to do all of that . But the bottom line is , after doing all that , what that created in me although I never thought about it at the time was a mindset that said you know what to do if there's an emergency . You know what to do to get around the World Trade Center .

Speaker 1 9:06

And so , on September 11th , that mindset kicked in yeah , which was critical , more so than other standard buildings , as an exoskeletal building which was not traditional to most other buildings , which made the interior more open but indeed then therefore different in the way it operated to most other standard buildings .

Speaker 2 9:31

No , not really , because there were two very tall towers that were just like any other office building .

Speaker 1 9:37

Well , they still had elevators and stairs and yeah .

Speaker 2 9:42

And there was a major shopping mall on the first floor

Working at the World Trade Center

Speaker 2 9:44

between the towers . I've been there . Yeah , and there was a major shopping mall on the first floor between the towers .

Speaker 1 9:48

I've been there , yeah .

Speaker 2 9:50

It doesn't matter what the building was . It's all easy to learn and that's what I did .

Speaker 1 9:57

Yeah , I don't want to really go on much about 9-11 . I People either know or they don't know . Either they know or they don't want to know . Really .

Speaker 2 10:14

We have a whole new generation that doesn't know because they weren't around . So one of the things that happened to me after September 11th is the media got my story and we became pretty visible and then people started calling and saying , gee , would you come and talk to us ? When I hire you to come and tell us what we should learn about September 11th , the lessons we should learn , we want to hear your story , and so for the past 23 and a half years that's what I've been doing is talking about September 11th what happened , why it happened and why I was able to escape .

Speaker 1 11:14

And the reality of all that is that we now do live with a generation that has no knowledge of it directly , because they weren't alive then or they were too young to remember on TV again . But yeah , whether they've gone into the nitty gritty details of the hows , the whys and the whatnots and blah , blah , blah , yeah , is another thing . But I hope people learn from what you said . Our need to be awake , aware , alert of our surroundings and know things is not a blind or sighted thing . I , in my Terror Strikes Coming Soon to a City Near you book , talk about not wanting people to be paranoid , but far too many are foolishly ostriches and pay no attention to anything . You've got to at least ahead of time , recognize bad things happen at time to good people , so that fateful day , the stay in place , normal situational thing that made sense , actually cost lives .

Speaker 1 12:20

And I've got an article called Fight , flight or Fade . Like the Ariana Grande concert I don't know if you're familiar right Commotion happening at one end of the arena . You have to think in fractions of a second , not just panic , because more people were injured and died in the stampede . Panic out than did because of the incident . You fight if you can and remotely trained well enough to do so or have a weapon to do so . Blight only if it's a realistic , good option that you're indeed not going to be in an idiotic sheeple stampede where people die because of that paid or the stay-in-place option is still a good option at times to hide from the threat and avoid both either the threat or , again , the bad part of panic . I would think that you're saying you understood that mindset ahead and would agree . Everyone needs to have a thinker versus a panicker mindset and at least pay attention to some things ahead of time , not wait till the shit hits the fan .

Speaker 2 13:53

Yes , In my most recent book , live Like a Guide Dog , which was published last year , we talk all about learning to control fear , because we can . Fear doesn't need to be something that overwhelms us or , as I put it , blinds us . Fear is something that we can learn to utilize as a very powerful tool and

Surviving the 9/11 Attacks

Speaker 2 14:14

motivator to help us function and deal with what's going on around us . Most of the people who perished on September 11th died because they wouldn't have been able to survive . They were above where the planes hit . Well over 90% of the people were above where the planes hit , and so they had no way to escape anyway , and the reality is that that is so unfortunate , but it nevertheless happened . But the fact is that when we were going down the stairs , I and a few other people did help people stay focused , so we didn't have panic on the stairs , because we knew , if we allowed panic to ensue on the stairs , that nobody would get out alive .

Speaker 2 15:02

Exactly , exactly , and so we kept everyone focused and we were able to get out .

Speaker 1 15:09

Yeah , and that's great . Thankfully as many did , because again the order of the day and the time was shelter in place .

Speaker 2 15:19

But given past precedent it would have normally made sense , but that day it did not Well , okay , but the shelter in place really was that the people in Tower 2 were told to stay in place because nothing happened to Tower 2 . It only happened to Tower 1 . And of course that worked until Tower 2 was struck and then that order was gone . But the shelter in place , nobody to my knowledge in Tower 1 was ever told to shelter in place . Nobody to my knowledge in tower one was ever told to shelter in place . Okay , because tower one was struck and then the order was okay , but that didn't affect tower two , you guys are okay , which worked until what ? 905 or so , right in the morning when Tower 2 was hit .

Speaker 1 16:09

Yeah , that's part of the fog of a war , part of fog of a disaster , right , it's . My understanding , which indeed could have very well been wrong in your telling me , is that even some in Tower 1 were told to shelter in place so as to not impede first responders getting in and then leading a careful , coordinated evacuation of floors not currently affected , because they certainly at that time still didn't expect the towers , because of the ectoskeletal design , to have been wedged out like someone chopping into a tree and them collapsing and pancaking down like a parking garage and no people . It is not the first time in history that a building has pancaked panicked .

Speaker 1 17:08

Well , tower One collapsed , not because directly that the airplane hit it , but because 26,000 pounds of jet fuel exploded and much more seriously , damaged the infrastructure of the building Of the ectoskeletal that has less internal support .

Speaker 2 17:24

Yes , If the plane had hit the building and had not been full of jet fuel , it wouldn't have collapsed , but the reality is that all that jet fuel caused it to do what it did , so it is an issue .

Speaker 1 17:43

And for the truthers out there that don't understand yes , you don't have to actually fully melt steel . You can heat it and weaken it and it therefore can collapse . You don't have to this notion the first time in history , steel in a building melted . That's not what happened . You don't have to melt it , you just have to weaken it . But again , I don't want to relitigate all that stuff . I wanted to just cover enough of it for people to understand . You are indeed primarily here , but this book wouldn't have occurred without the other book , which was Thunderdog . Right , but this book being I've lost track of it on my Live Like a Guide Dog , which I love the content . Somebody else wrote a book about business from their dog's perspective and when you read it and think about it it makes a lot of sense . As I believe this book makes a lot of sense , tell us a little bit more about the genesis of that . I take it it's the years of Doing 9-11 speaking kind of brought about the genesis . Christian show , pun intended . The genesis of this book , yes .

Speaker 2 19:22

Well , what happened was when the pandemic occurred in 2020 , I realized that I had been talking for

Lessons from Guide Dogs

Speaker 2 19:32

quite a while about what happened and how I was able to get out , but I never taught people how they could learn to control fear and be able to function when something unexpected happened and sort of made references to it , like in Thunderdog , talking about the fact that we ought to learn not to worry about the things that we can't control . Focus on the things that we can and the rest will take care of it .

Speaker 1 20:00

People on the behind-the-scenes video see me vociferously shaking my head . Yes , to your comment .

Speaker 2 20:10

So focusing on what you can control and leaving the rest alone , well , anyway , so I decided we needed to deal with that and kind of the book came out of that , and I collaborated with another person , carrie Wyatt Kent . The two of us wrote it together . I love collaborations and Live Like a Guide Dog . True stories from a blind man and his dogs about being Brave , Overcoming Adversity and Moving Forward in Faith was published last August by Tyndale House , and so it is out there for people to read as well as , as you said , thunderdog . And then we also wrote a children's book along the way called Running with Roselle , which is more for kids , teaching them about me growing up and Roselle growing up and how we met much more than September 11th . So there are three books all together .

Speaker 1 21:00

Good . Thank you for adding that in , and this won't mean much to most in the audience and I'm glad you and I both know Mickey , which is how we've made our connection so that we could have this discussion today . Do you have a next project you're planning ?

Speaker 2 21:23

No other books . At the moment I am continuing to travel and speak and so looking for speaking engagements . So if anybody needs a speaker to come and speak at an event and motivate people , I would love to speak with them . I'm easy to reach , it's michaelhingsoncom , m-i-c-h-a-e-l-h-i-n-g-s-o-ncom or email . Speaker at michaelhingsoncom . But right now , primarily speaking , and also I do a podcast called Unstoppable Mindset , where inclusion , diversity and the unexpected meet , and it's worded that way very deliberately , because if you talk to the average person who talks about diversity and so on , they never deal with disabilities and so they're not as inclusive as they ought to be . I've had some of them say well , disabilities don't really come under diversity , because it's more a social justice thing , and that's a crock of bunk .

Speaker 1 22:15

I agree with you .

Speaker 2 22:17

Disabilities is one of the top . You know it's a large minority . According to the Center for Disease Control , 25% of all people have a disability . Now , I disagree with that . I think 100% of people have a disability . The difference between you and me is that I happen to be light independent and you're light dependent . If the lights go out , you're in a world of hurt until you get another light source . Thomas Edison created light on demand for you light dependent people but it doesn't change the fact that , even though your disability is mostly covered up , it is still there .

Speaker 1 22:51

Yeah , and for the record , because sadly we don't teach history . No , Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb , he perfected it .

Speaker 2 23:03

Yeah , there's always that discussion . Just like , henry .

Speaker 1 23:06

Ford didn't invent the car Mercedes did ?

Speaker 2 23:12

He created the assembly line . But , the reality is that you know and there are those who say the Wright brothers didn't invent the airplane . Well , it's okay , it doesn't matter . The bottom line is that you guys have a mechanism that we have focused a lot of time perfecting so that you have light on demand , but it doesn't change the fact that you still have a disability and change the fact that you still have a disability .

Speaker 1 23:42

Yeah well , I myself have several other health ailments that prevent me from working a normal job , so I myself am no longer in the IT career job that I used to have and wish I still did . So , yeah , I mean , not all disabilities are created equal , obviously , but , as you said , anyone and everyone with a disability is capable of things . We've got to stop trying to hold them back . Right , absolutely , right , absolutely . And , of course , time flies . Of course , although we got started , you came on early , but we got started a little later because my machine decided to freeze up and I had to reboot .

Speaker 2 24:33

Ah tech .

Speaker 1 24:35

Yeah , a former IT guy Microsoft WingSlow 11 . Oh , horrible , horrible . They fired most of the people who actually knew how to code and knew their code , and now every time they pretend to fix one thing , they break 10 other things . Windows 10 worked great for me . I was dumb enough to let them talk me into upgrading to Windows 11 . Now , if you buy a computer with Windows 11 preloaded , it probably works fine also , but don't ever upgrade to

Controlling Fear, Not Being Controlled

Speaker 1 25:12

Windows 11 , is my advice to people . I've got another machine that's got Windows 10 perfectly fine , no issues with it whatsoever . But at any rate , yeah , another rabbit hole . Certainly didn't intend to go down , but you answered the obvious in closing question . If people want to find you , where can they , and you've already said speaker at michaelhingstoncom or Michael Hingson , michael spelled traditionally Hingson , h-i-g-s-o-n .

Speaker 2 25:52

H-I-N-G-S-O-N .

Speaker 1 25:54

What did I say you ?

Speaker 2 25:55

said H-I-G . You had H-I-G , h-i-n-g-s-o-ncom .

Speaker 1 26:00

Thank you for the correction . Yeah , I'll be sure to type it right on the screen when that time comes . That'll be the important part For the benefit of the transcript . Those who may read it and or those listening on audio-only 25 platforms , won't see the scrawl at the bottom of the video . That is M-I-C-H-A-E-L-H-I-N-G-S-O-Ncom . There you go .

Speaker 1 26:34

I'll say it slower so I don't screw it up . Thank you , michael , for coming by . You know I will say I'm sorry for all that you landed to have to go through that day , but of course I had nothing to do with it . It doesn't make me any less sad that it happened to you and so many others , but it's the reality we have to deal with now . Yes , yeah .

Speaker 2 27:10

You know we all deal with what we have to deal with to deal with .

Speaker 1 27:15

Yeah , and as you said , as I try to preach people , be awake and not paranoid , but awake and alert . Bad things are always going to occasionally happen to good people and you have to at least resolve in advance to be a thinker , not a panicker , or you take yourself from the frying pan into the fire , sometimes of your own lack of thinking . Thank you again , michael . Say hello to Mickey for me . Next time you talk to him and I'm sure you're on to other broadcasts Give the three books again . I want you to look them up .

Speaker 2 28:06

So Thunderdog , the True Story of a Blind man and His Guide Dog and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero , was published in 2011 . It actually was a New York Times bestseller . The foreword was written by Larry King , which was a great honor .

Speaker 1 28:22

Oh wow , that's a nice tidbit yeah .

Speaker 2 28:25

And late 2013, . Running with Roselle . Roselle was the guide dog who was with me in the World Trade Center . That was published , and then last August , now a year ago my gosh , just well , not quite a year ago It'll be a year on the 21st . Anyway , live Like a Guide Dog . True Stories from a Blind man and His Dogs About being Brave , overcoming Adversity and Moving Forward in Faith was published .

Speaker 2 28:52

So those are the three books and we really appreciate people reading them and if you do read any of them , go back to Amazon , if you would , and give them a review . We really appreciate reviews and people who are interested in the books are more interested when they see good reviews , so we hope that people will do that .

Speaker 1 29:11

As an author myself and I wrote how to Write a Book and Get it Pub published . One of the things I talk about is , sadly , a lot of people may buy your book , may like your book , but don't ever come people , but people that like your stuff don't often sadly think to indeed give us those good reviews that we need on Amazon and Goodreads and Barnes , noble and books . In the weird it's a small world six degrees of separation thing . You mentioned Larry King . I met him too in real life in Vegas at a Don Rickles show where , of course , rickles laid into him . I was only

Disabilities and True Inclusion

Speaker 1 30:10

a few seats over from Larry King . So it's weird how the six degrees of separation thing works on a trillions of people planet . Oh yeah , all right , thank you , michael . Take care , god bless .

Speaker 2 30:27

God bless you be well .

Speaker 1 30:31

Wait , wait , wait , wait . I made an error . Good thing . Wait , wait , I made an error . Good thing . I was lucky enough to catch what I said almost immediately after I said it incorrectly . For those of you viewing behind the scenes , quick reference , so I could get what they more or less officially say . I knew after saying trillions of people on the planet was way incorrect , that it was only in the billions , and indeed Google AI reports about 8.2 billion-ish in the billions , 8.2 billion-ish people . But I made the mistake . I figured I should correct the mistake while I'm thinking about it . Take care all , god bless . See you around . Please check out the book of Kennedy Bye-bye .

Speaker 1 31:49

Thank you for having tuned in for Chris D'Attussion's Politics Show . If you haven't already , please check out my primary internationally available book , terror Strikes , coming soon to a city near you , available anywhere , books are sold . If you have locally run bookstores still near you , they can order it for you . And let me remind , over time the fancy high production items will come . But for now , for starters , it's just you as a very appreciated listener by me . All substance , no fluff , just straight to key discussion points . A show that looks at a variety of topics , mostly politics , through

Episode Wrap-up and Resources

Speaker 1 32:35

a Christian US constitutionalist lens . So again , thank you from the bottom of my heart . Take care , god bless , like and subscribe to Constitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes . We need your help .