As we continue our coverage marking 15 years since the September 11th attacks, Bronx reporter Erin Clarke shares the story of a man whose 9/11 experience has had a profound impact on his life.
September 11th 2001, Raymond Sanchez Junior was fresh out of college, working with the the Hispanic Federation to encourage Latinos to vote. After all, it was primary day.
"Get off the train, go up the stairs and people are talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. The most vivid memory I have of that morning. It was just the burning paper raining down on everyone," he recalls.
He took cover in a nearby building to dial his parents from a pay phone. That's when another plane hit the south tower.
Little did Sanchez know his father, Raymond Sanchez Senior, was in that building less than a half mile away.
"My dad was a carpenter. He was laying floors for an insurance company called Aon," Sanchez says.
Aon's offices were above United Flight 175's impact zone, however most of the company's employees and those of a carpeting company Sanchez Senior worked for were evacuated when the North Tower was hit.
But Sanchez Senior went back in.
"They couldn't locate the apprentice, so my dad actually went back up into the building," Sanchez says.
It was the next day when Sanchez Junior would learn his father's fate from a family friend.
"Tony's like 'Listen, I was talking with you dad the entire morning. He was up in the elevators and you know, I'm telling you right now he's gone and there's not going to be a body,'" he recalls.
It was like a wave hit the 22-year-old Sanchez while he stood in the apartment he spent Sundays watching "The Sopranos" with his father - a man who moved to New York from Puerto Rico as a boy, sported a big red afro in the 70s and was a die-hard "Terminator" fan.
"He had his DVD player where there was a little microchip that he installed so that he could see the Terminator pop up on the flat screen," Sanchez says.
During the years following the attacks, Sanchez Junior was tasked with handling his father's affairs. That experience inspired him to become a lawyer. He's now counsel to the Bronx Borough President.
Holidays without dad and every 9/11 can be tough, but Sanchez Junior has a positive outlook on life that he attributes to his father.
"Just that ability to take life one day at a time and each day is a gift," Sanchez says.
In 2007 some of Sanchez Senior's bone fragments were discovered and are now preserved at the 9/11 museum, along with pictures. Memories of Raymond Sanchez Senior that will live on forever.