Twins Who Lost Other Halves Sept. 11
N E W Y O R K, Dec. 6 -- On the morning of the day his twin died, Bob Bernstein woke up from the worst nightmare he had ever had, though he couldn't remember the details for his wife except that it was a "bad, black dream."
The day, Sept. 11, would get much worse. Later that morning, Bernstein stood near his downtown Manhattan office watching the second World Trade Center tower implode. He called his parents to see if they had heard from his twin brother, William Bernstein, a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of Tower One. Then he just hoped that any minute his brother, Billy, would come running down the street covered with debris.
"I said to a friend I was with, 'I think I just lost my twin brother,'" Bernstein said on Good Morning America. He, and his twin grew up hip to hip, attending the same camps and the same high school. They both attended Syracuse University, and later lived in the same co-op building in New York. The men, 44, both worked in downtown Manhattan and usually drove into work together, [though they went in separately that morning].
Among those who perished in the World Trade Center tragedy were at least 16 twins, who left behind their surviving twins to carry on alone. Experts say twins suffer a loss unlike any other and that it's hard for non-twins to understand.
The Last Morning Call
Pamela Bittner, 27, lost her twin brother Jeffrey Bittner, a research analyst for investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods on the 89th floor of Tower Two. They lived in different cities, but her overprotective sibling called, each morning, to make sure she arrived safely at work.
"We definitely had that bond. Every morning we would make our first phone calls to one another," she recalled. The morning of Sept. 11, her brother called at 8:48 a.m. and told her that the first tower had been hit, but that the people in his office in Tower Two were told to stay put, and that he would be OK. It was the last time they spoke and five minutes later the plane hit.
