Spot News
‘Give Me Rewrite’
In a more innocent time, the World Trade Center made headlines for a different kind of assault—daredevil George Willig scaling one of the twin towers. Many New Yorkers were still asleep—and authorities asleep at the wheel—when the first edition of the New York Post hit the streets with this front-page account.
This is an example of “give-me-rewrite” breaking news: I was the reporter on the scene at dawn, feeding information to rewriteman Michael Hectman. Others in the Post's City Room helped flesh out the story for late editions.
MAIN ARTICLE
He's Climbing the Trade Center
By RICHARD SCHWARTZ and MICHAEL HECHTMAN
A Queens man using grappling hooks and suction cups today tried to climb the outside of the World Trade Center’s south tower.
Police said he was George Willig, 28, of 88-19 193rd St., Hollis.
His brother, Steven, who was at the scene and was taken into custody by police, said George was an amateur mountain climber.
Asked why his brother was attempting to scale the 1,350-foot tower, Steven Willig said: “Because it’s there.”
George began to climb at 6:30 a.m. and had reached the 70th of the building’s 110 floors by 8. Then he took a break. Three and a half hours later the highest of New York’s canyons belonged to him.
He was attempting to scale the northeast corner of the south tower, visible from Church St. He was planting the hooks alternately into notches in the corner of the building.
Hundreds of people gathered on the sidewalks and plaza to watch the spectacular attempt.
George Burkoski, an electrician at the Trade Center, said that Willig arrived at the building around 6:30 a.m., “said a few words to his buddy, then walked over to the building as calm as he could be, put on his suction cups and began climbing.”
Today’s feat came nearly three years after French tightrope walker Phillipe Petit electrified hordes of downtown office workers on the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, by walking a 131-foot cable strung between the roofs of the Trade Center’s twin towers.
Finally, after perhaps 45 minutes of knee bends and other mid-wire stunts, Petit, balancing pole in hand, ended his act.
LATE EDITIONS
[Additional reporting by Larry Kleinman, Hope MacLeoad and Cynthia Fagen]Willig, a Queens toy designer, used special equipment he had been working on for about a year to help him climb the sheer, cliff-like 110-story building.
His nonchalance matched his daring. Seventy-five stories up on the south tower, he paused, munched on a donut, and gave his autograph "I suppose he'll climb this paused, munched on a donut, one, to two police officers who had been lowered down from the roof on an enclosed platform used by window workers.
DAD NOTIFIED
When he was finished, and had been nabbed by police waiting on the roof, Willig, echoing the classic motive for wanting to climb Mt. Everest, proclaimed his reason:
"Because it's there."
Later, in handcuffs, he added "it was a very appealing wall."
Willig climbed up the northeast corner of the building, where there are horizontal indentations for window cleaning apparatus.
Willig’s father, also named George, was reached by phone when his son was half way up.
“He’s climbed a lot of mountains,” said the elder Willig, a stereotyper who lives at 85-32 252nd St., Bellrose, Queens. “I suppose he’ll climb this one, too.”
“Anyway,” he added, when asked if he had tried to dissuade his son, “he’s 28. What do you say to someone who is 28.”
TOLD YESTERDAY
He said his son had told him yesterday he would make the precedent-setting attempt today and had been talking about the climb for a year.
He designed the equipment himself,” Willig’s father said. “He knows what he is doing.”
The police agreed. DeWitt Allen of the Emergency Service Squad went down on a platform after 8 a.m. with a Port Authority cop. Their mission: try to coax Willig to join them on it, and failing that, try to rescue him should he slip.
‘FELT SAFER’
Police had inflated an air balloon on the street below but no-one could be sure that Willig would land anyway near it if he fell.
Allen said that when they reached Willig, then about half-way, they asked him to get on the enclosed platform with them.” He said he felt “safer” where he was, Allen said.
They said he joked with them during the rest of the climb, and on a stop at the 75th floor got the climber’s autograph.
Allen said that five or six times, Willig was confronted with the problem that the track he was used for his hooks was bent out of shape.
Each time, he said, the intrepid climber calmly took out a hammer from a small rucksack on his back and knocked back into shape.
‘NOT IN DANGER’
Allen said if Willig had fallen, “the only thing I could have given him was a line.”“But,” he said, “I don’t think he was in danger at any point.”
SIDEBAR
Cheered to the Skies
By RICHARD SCHWARTZ and JAMES NORMAN
Thousands of earth-bound people trained their eyes toward the top of the World Trade Center’s south tower today as George Willig moved steadily upward.
Traffic was at a standstill at the corner of Church and Vesey Sts. as drivers got out of their cars and trucks to gape in awe.
God bless him,” said a moving van driver, apparently oblivious to the honking behind him as he stood on the running board of his truck. “They ought to leave him alone; he knows what he’s doing.”
“I prayed for him until-we reached the top,” said Rose Buonocore, a switchboard operator who watched him from her 21st floor office window several blocks away. “I’ve never seen anybody with so much nerve. I was so happy when he made it.”
Phil Subey, 20, a clerk for a brokerage firm in the area, came to work an hour early to watch the drama.
“People eat this up,” he said. “If he did this at lunch time, it’d be even greater. Things like this make it in this town.”
Willig’s feat attracted many Photographers—professionals and shutterbugs hospital worker who heard alike.
Steven Stein, 30, a professional photographer from Yonkers watched the climber through the viewfinder of his tripod-mounted camera and 400 millimeter telephoto lens.
TAKES PICTURES
Dutch Sotti, a 22-year-old trucker, pulled over to take pictures with his own camera. “It’ll add a little more pizzaz to the photo album,” he said.
“He deserves something, don’t you think?” asked an¬other watcher. “That’s what makes the world go round—people taking chances.”
CALLED STUPID
“This guy should go down in history, because it has never been done before. This man deserves a medal,” said William Green, a Brooklyn hospital workers who heard about the climber and rushed to the scene to watch.
It’s pretty stupid, but he’s through the viewfinder of entertaining the crowd, said Robert Helfand, 27, an assistant Manhattan District Attorney.
“Who’d he think he was?” demanded Cornell Gaines, a Queens auto mechanic who watched Willig clear the top or the tower, “King Kong?”
After it was all over, a crowd of about 100 gathered outside the Port Authority police station in the basement level of the World Trade Center.
They booed and jeered when it was learned the city had decided to file suit to recover costs of men and equipment against the climber.