9/11 Profiles: Mike Veneziano

Berlin High School boys' basketball coach Mike Veneziano worked his way up from a clerk to a floor trader on Wall Street from 1992 to 2001.

On Sept. 11, 2001, his son RJ had just started kindergarten in Queens and he decided to take the day off from work and do some errands.

He was at the bank when he first heard a plane had hit the World Trade Centers but didn't think anything of it until he heard the second plane hit the second tower.

His father-in-law, Spencer Meyers, was working on Wall Street that day. He would not have a chance to call and say he was safe until about 1 p.m. that day.

"We knew something was wrong," he said. "When we saw the first tower fall we decided to go get RJ out of school. When we got to the school there was just chaos. You didn't have to sign anyone out, there was no order, and you just grabbed your kid and took off. We got in the car and drove to my in-laws in Long Island. We drove out on the Long Island Expressway and there were hardly any cars on the road, and it's always jammed. All we saw were emergency vehicles heading into the city."

Veneziano and his family moved back to his hometown of Berlin and lived with his parents for a month before moving into the house they live in now.

"Those attacks are 100 percent the reason we left. We liked it where we were but just thinking about working there and going back into the city gave us serious anxiety. My in-laws retired and moved up here from Long Island."

Veneziano's sister Roxanne lived in NYC at the time and stayed to volunteer, handing out water and giving aid to recovery workers in the days after the attacks.

"I drove back into the city to pick her up and I can't tell you the anxiety I had going back into the city," Veneziano said. "At that time and in the days after the attack you just didn't know what was going to come next. It was beyond scary."

Veneziano lost two good friends that day. He knows that one, for sure, jumped to his death because he had no other escape. It is an image that haunts him to this day.

Veneziano is now a sales rep and his territory includes New York state and New York City.

"I have to go there a lot so I can handle the city a little better now that it's been 10 years," he said. "I have never gone to Ground Zero and I don't plan on going there. It's too depressing."

He said his kids were too young to really remember anything, but every once in a while when the date appears on the calendar they will ask what their dad remembers.

"I'm glad they don't remember anything about it," Veneziano said. "It was life-changing for millions of people, and we were included in that. We would still probably be in New York. We were happy with where we were and happy with our life. My wife was from Long Island, so she loved it being close to home. Now she loves Berlin, probably more than I do. It 100 percent changed our lives."