The following new article is courtesy of the Hondo Anvil Herald

Former FDNY captain relates 9/11 experience
By Diane Cosgrove
Anvil Herald Staff

Retired FDNY Captain William “Bill” Groneman, addressed Hondo-D’Hanis Rotarians last week during their lunchtime meeting at Hermann Sons Steak House. The former firefighter is now a Kerrville Rotarian and published author of several books, including one related to his experience on 9/11.
“We just commemorated the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” Groneman said. “It affected all of us in ways that we’ll never forget. Some of us, by circumstance, were a bit closer to the epicenter than others, but it affected us all as Americans. 
“I wrote a book about my memories of that day, and the weeks and months afterwards,” he said.
In 2001, Groneman was a captain with the City of New York Fire Department’s Engine Co. 308, in the Borough of Queens, about two miles north of Kennedy (JFK) Airport. That fateful Tuesday morning, a day on which virtually every American over the age of 15 now can instantly recall where they were and what they were doing, Groneman was 25 miles away from what is now called Ground Zero. He had the day off and was aimlessly walking along the shoreline at Jones Beach on Long Island, until he reached a point where he was virtually alone on the beach. 
As he was walking west, he looked up and saw smoke encircling the World Trade Center tower. “I looked toward the west, toward New York City, and I see on the horizon what looked like a mushroom cloud. 
“I’ve seen the (WTC) from that spot scores of times,” the New Yorker explained, “and it (always) looked like one monolith. Because you’re so far way, you can’t distinguish two buildings. From the shape of it, it was obviously the World Trade Center. 
“I didn’t realize what I was looking at,” he recalled, adding, “I was looking at the World Trade Center for the last time. It had this big cloud of smoke at the top. I must have seen it within minutes, if not seconds, of when the first plane hit it, because the smoke was still all around the top… it hadn’t trailed off in the wind yet.”
Groneman said he turned around and walked back to the parking lot, still unaware of what had happened, but with a vague sense that something wasn’t quite right. “I got this sense that I’m taking too long … I’ve been too long at the beach. It’s literally like a clamp on the back of my neck, something’s nagging me.”
When he got back to the parking lot, he heard five words on a nearby radio that snapped him into awareness – ‘disaster,’ ‘Mayor Guiliani’ and ‘thousands dead.’ He immediately thought, ‘terrorists,’ but assumed it was a subway disaster.
After getting in his car and turning on the radio, he learned the terrible news and rushed home to get his gear to join the emergency efforts. He compared the vision of the disaster, as he approached, to newsreels of the attack on Pearl Harbor, smoking devastation and havoc all around him. A writer and historian, he recalls feeling compelled to remember everything that happened that day, everything that he saw and experienced, so that he could record the events. “I’m a participant, but I’m also an observer; I’m a firefighter, but I’m also a historian,” he said. He called it a “Pearl Harbor” moment, as, “when you are involved in a monumental, historical, world-changing event.”
Groneman said that he’d been with the fire department for 24 years and had seen pretty much every kind of fire imaginable – car wrecks, airplane crashes, riots, tenement fires – but he knew that somehow, this was going to be “way out of the ordinary.” 
He drove home as fast as he could to change, so that he could assist. He looked up and saw that Manhattan was now engulfed in a cloud of smoke and debris. Once he identified himself at a roadblock as a firefighter, he was allowed into the closed city. 
“My (fire) company didn’t go to the World Trade Center as a company–we were too far away,” he said. Groneman explained that, because of a special assignment from the fire commissioner, he was working out of another firehouse which was why he had the day off.
That Tuesday, he reflected, if he had been at fire department headquarters in downtown Brooklyn where he was temporarily working, he added, “I probably would have hitched a ride with one of the chiefs going down to the scene and probably would have been killed.”
He arrived at his firehouse and assembled five firefighters who were coming in off duty, and, with them, went to a staging area. He said that a common feeling was that everybody wanted to be put to work doing something. Many were rushing in, not knowing that they were – in fact – rushing to their deaths.
His first impression was that all of New York City was under attack and that they would be fighting fires all night. He wasn’t sure where they would go. From the staging area, they were bused to lower Manhattan, where they were in a holding pattern, kind of a “hurry up and wait” situation, he said. 
“We went west on Chambers Street, then directly south on Church Street, toward the World Trade Center, which – all you could see from our perspective – was this giant, roiling cloud of smoke. All firemen were walking resolutely down to the (WTC). (None of us) had any tools … we had our equipment … we had no idea what we were going to do … just walk into the middle of it and start searching for people.”
Eventually, they ended up at a command post at Broadway and Ann Street, a block away from the northeast side of the (WTC) property. He said that a company lieutenant who responded there told him, that when he got to the area with his company, every vehicle on the street was on fire, and the street was littered with human arms and legs. Groneman said he was grateful to have been spared the sight. 
The lieutenant said he split the company into two teams and, each with a hose, began to battle their way up the street, extinguishing every fire, with the assistance of police and citizens along the way. He said that it was then that he realized they “came together as New Yorkers, and we came together as Americans. Everybody was helping out. We had the feeling that everybody in the country was behind us, and the whole country would have been there, if they could have been.” 
He recalled one of his men calling to him saying, “Hey, Captain, look at that.” 
“I looked to the left and there, on a New York City street corner, was a jet engine – a crushed jet engine,” Groneman said, in wonderment. “It was such an incongruous sight, that, after that, I unfocused my eyes, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to see, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see things.” 
Groneman said he felt a rising panic inside, worried that they would be wading waist-deep through bodies. He pushed the thought down and mentally closed it up so that he wouldn’t think about that again. He said, “Luckily, that didn’t happen.”  
Groneman described how, as they walked down the street, each raised a debris cloud up to his waist. He compared what he saw to an image from Dante’s “Inferno”: “Every block we went, things got worse,” he said, verbally replaying the images those of us who watched the disaster unfold on television remember vividly. 
“We never actually made it to the (WTC),” he said, “because out of the dust, a stampede of police and firemen came to us and yelled, ‘Run! Run!’ We back-pedaled for about a block. They were afraid of building seven of the (WTC) coming down. It didn’t come down at that time; it lasted a few hours longer.”
Groneman’s brother, Michael, worked a half-mile from the WTC complex. He later told him that he and some co-workers rushed to the roof of their building after hearing of the first plane hitting the tower. Just as they arrived on the roof, they watched in horror as the second plane flew into the south tower. Groneman said Michael told him that the heat from the explosion was so intense that, even from half a mile away, they were driven from the roof by the heat wave. He said that now, when watching video from that crash, he imagines the intensity of the heat that was in the WTC tower after the impact. 
Groneman and his men took shelter in the Woolworth Building, a half-block from the WTC. The Woolworth Building, he noted, had been the tallest building in NY until the Empire State Building was built, and that was later overshadowed by the WTC towers. The collapse of Tower 7 shook the Woolworth Building. After a while, Groneman and his men emerged from the building and relieved a team working the east side of the disaster site, taking over their apparatus. It was just about dark, and conditions were “hellish,” he said. “All the lights were flashing from fire apparatus; the smoke and dust were heavy. There was steel all over the sidewalks … buildings were burning … your nose, throat and mouth burned constantly.” He later learned he had carbon-monoxide poisoning.
A particularly stark experience he had was turning his eyes from a sheet-shrouded body in the street, then focusing on the Brooks Brothers storefront and seeing headless mannequins inside. He was startled for a moment. “It was like a nightmare scene,” he explained.
“You know how these fancy clothes stores (display) these nice, pastel men’s shirts, all lined up neatly, folded on shelves. Everything was a consistent gray color, from the dust.” He said he later saw the same image reproduced in a magazine, adding that it was exactly like what he remembered.
 Although he and his men didn’t have their communication devices with them, due to the rush in which they assembled and got down there, they overheard a transmission from Chief Jimmy Esposito: “Bring all the fire extinguishers you can to ‘the pit,’ we have a rescue in operation.” He said they were handed a few extinguishers liberated from a nearby McDonalds restaurant and made their way to the pit. 
He described what he remembers to be like a hill of debris at the pit. “You had to climb over everything; there was steel, pipes, wire – you just hoped you didn’t fall into a hole. You didn’t see anything in the rubble that told you that you were looking at the remains of office buildings, you didn’t recognize anything – (no) desks, computers, telephones.”
There was a line of guys there, and we just passed everything up in a bucket-brigade fashion. “Somebody up at the top would yell, ‘More water… more hose… more air cylinders. They’d pass the message down and we’d get stuff from the street and pass it back up.” This rescue was the one depicted in the Oliver Stone movie about the two Port Authority police officers caught in the rubble, he explained.
He said he and his men didn’t get up to the site where the rescue was taking place; they worked the line, but he remembers when the word came down that they were passing the rescued men down the line. They formed two lines and passed the pair on Stokes basket stretchers all the way to the street. The scene in the movie in which Nicholas Cage’s character is thanking everybody for rescuing him as they passed him down the line is true, Groneman affirmed. 
Groneman’s family mourned the personal loss of many of the firefighters that day, as his father had also been a firefighter for 27 years, and they knew some of the high-ranking firefighters who perished in the rescue efforts. As he shared his memories of that day, his voice periodically shook with emotion as he recollected the terrible things he saw. “Everything that happened that day made it seem as thought it was a whole new world,” he said. He was right, it is.

SEPTEMBER 2011

CECIL ATKISSION MOTORS EARNS AWARD FROM CHEVROLET

Kerrville - Chevrolet continues to recognize superior performance and takes great pride in rewarding dealerships for their hard work and dedication. That’s why Chevrolet is proud to announce that Cecil Atkission Motors has been named the recipient of the Mark of Excellence 2010 Dealer Recognition Award.  This is an accomplishment reserved for only a select few outstanding Chevrolet dealerships and is a symbol of exceptional performance for sales and customer satisfaction excellence.

Cecil Atkission Motors has received a plaque to honor their accomplishment in receiving this special recognition from Chevrolet.

“We are honored to receive this award and thank our staff and customers for all their help and services throughout the year,” Tate Richburg of Cecil Atkission Motors, Kerrville.

The Cecil Atkission Automotive Group is headquartered in Kerrville, Texas, and includes cecilmotors.com, Cecil Atkission Motors–Burnet (Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep), Cecil Atkission Ford in Hondo, Cecil Atkission Motors–Kerrville (Buick, Cadillac and  Chevrolet), Cecil Atkission Motors–Orange (Toyota), Cecil Atkission Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep–Orange, and Cecil Atkission Motors–Uvalde (Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep).

Tate Richburg (General Manager), Lonnie Brandon (Parts Manager), Frank Mousser (General Sales Manager), Trey Atkission (Used Car Manager), Christina Bolin (Used Car Manager), Cecil Atkission (President), Hunter Klop (District Sales Manager of General Motors), Fonda Ricks (Business Manager), Kevin Lutz (Service Manager).

August, 2011

Trey Atkission Returns to Kerrville as new used-car manager at Cecil Atkission Motors

Kerrville – Trey Atkission and his wife Carly have recently moved home to Kerrville to pursue their careers and be close to family. After five years of selling airplanes for general aviation dealer, Premier Jet, Atkission is excited to be back in Kerrville working in the car business.

As a Tivy student, Atkission worked his summers helping out at Cecil Atkission Motors in the parts department and new and used car sales. “I really developed a passion for sales, and learned a lot during that time,” said Atkission. After graduating high school, Atkission attended Baylor University graduating with degrees in Accounting and Professional Selling in 2006.

After college Atkission moved to San Antonio to sell airplanes for Premier Jet. After two years in San Antonio Atkission moved to Houston where he continued selling planes. While living in Houston Atkission married Texas A&M graduate Carly Kitchens, and they stayed there while she finished her Law degree at South Texas College of Law. After Carly’s completion of the Texas Bar Exam in July, the couple moved back to Kerrville.
As of August 8, Atkission has been working as used car manager at Cecil Atkission Motors. His responsibilities include buying used car inventory, evaluating trade-ins, and disposing of unwanted vehicles. “We’re really happy to have Trey back,” said Tate Richburg, general manager. “His past experience with us has made his transition to used car manager a smooth process.”

Atkission is looking forward to getting into the swing of things and making a big contribution to the family business.

“A lot of people don’t realize the importance of used cars to Cecile Atkission Motors,” said Atkission. “In fact, between 40% and 60% of our monthly sales are used cars. If I can help increase efficiency of getting used cars in and out, I’ll feel like I’m doing my part in making this company successful.”

Carly and Trey Atkission are both Tivy High School graduates and are excited to be back in Kerrville. Trey is looking forward to continuing his career in sales, while Carly looks forward to practicing law.

Sept. 4, 11

Former FDNY Captain pens memoir on Sept. 11 tragedy

By Bonnie Arnold

Staff Writer

Bill Gronemen
Former NYC Fire Captain and current Shuttle Driver at Cecil Atkission Motors - www.wgroneman.com

William “Bill” Groneman III of Kerrville has written a book titled “September 11, a Memoir” from his perspective as a captain of the New York City Fire Department, describing his experiences during the dark days on and after Sept. 11, 2001.
He will appear at Wolfmueller’s Books downtown on Thursday, Sept. 15, from 5-7 p.m. and give a short talk, answer questions and sign copies of his book.

Groneman also has written about Davy Crockett, the Alamo and other Texas topics.
He moved to Kerrville in August of 2002, after 24 years service with the Fire Department of New York City.
His wife Kelly is a preschool teacher here and they have two children. Daughter Katie is a sophomore majoring in criminal justice at Sam Houston State University. Son William IV is a New York City Police sergeant.

Groneman was company commander of Engine Co. 308, FDNY, in charge of three lieutenants and 25 firefighters when the World Trade Center twin towers were attacked.
Part I of the book is the events of Sept. 11, 2001, to 4 a.m. on Sept. 12. Part II tells the events of the weeks and months afterward, ending with Groneman’s retirement on Feb. 28, 2002.
The book includes 16 color photographs.

During his career, he was a firefighter, arson detective and lieutenant before being named a captain. “I grew up on the west side of the John F. Kennedy Airport. The twin towers were on the west side of downtown Manhattan, and actually were part of a larger seven-building complex,” Groneman said.
“I knew I had a responsibility as a fire captain, and as a writer I knew I had a responsibility to tell the story as factually as possible. The book started as a personal thing so my family would have it,” he said. “Starting that first day, I had taken some notes in a notebook. I started to write the first part of the book as soon after the events as Sept. 11, 2003. It took most of a year to get Part I into legible form.
“In 2010, I wrote all of Part II. I belong to the Western Writers of America, and they inspired me to continue it,” he said.

Sept. 11, 2001

“I was off duty that day, and went in when I heard what happened,” Groneman said.
He said he went for a run that morning in a park near his home on Long Island, and saw one of the twin towers with a black cloud of smoke around the top, but didn’t recognize which building it was at first.

He went first to his fire station after arriving in Manhattan.
“I collected five guys and we went to one of the staging areas, in a park. One of the guys wanted to stop and buy disposable cameras, but we didn’t do that. They put us on a bus and we were taken downtown,” Groneman said.

“I went down there not knowing exactly what I’d be doing. The bus was filled with firefighters from my division. We had our bunker gear – our pants, coats, helmets and boots. The only thing we didn’t have was breathing apparatus, but nobody thought about it at the time. We just wanted to get to work,” he said.

“We got off the buses in lower Manhattan, in the middle of Church Street, and started walking about a quarter-mile toward the roiling cloud. Most civilians had been evacuated and the street was deserted by then, with wrecked cars and emergency equipment piled up on both sides. We walked down the center of the street. Some police officers gave us those painters’ masks. That’s all we had, for breathing.”

Groneman said he got to that site about 90 minutes after the collapse of the second tower.
“It struck me it was like Dante’s Inferno. Every block got a little worse,” he said. “Before we arrived at the site, police and other responders came running back toward us and warned us to back off, that they feared the possible collapse of Building 7. It didn’t collapse until later that night.

“We were sent to Broadway to wait for an assignment and spent hours there,” he said.
Groneman said his brother Michael was a court clerk in the Criminal Justice Building about one-half mile north of the World Trade Center, in a building about 12 stories tall.
“He went with a group to the roof of his building when they heard the news, and he saw the second plane hit the second tower. He said the heat of the fireball drove them back from the roof,” Groneman said. “I was worried about him and was looking for him. People would say, ‘I saw him a little while ago,’ so I knew he was okay. I think we got within about a half-block of each other but just didn’t see each other. He wouldn’t have recognized me in those lines of firefighters, in all my fire gear.”

He said he finally got onto the rubble pile after dark on Sept. 11.
“You didn’t step onto it, you climbed it, the broken steel beams, cables, wires. And you just didn’t get the whole scope of the destruction at night, because it covered 16 acres. I looked at it in the daylight and thought, ‘we’re going to lose 16 guys on the cleanup.’ But thank God, we didn’t,” he said.

The World Trade Center complex included two towers of 110 stories, three other buildings, and the World Trade Center Building 7 of about 50 stories.
“People forget the twin towers went down underground seven stories, for the parking garages, the machinery to run the buildings, the subway and the stores,” Groneman said.
“The whole time you couldn’t tell from the debris it was office buildings. I never recognized things like desks or file cabinets. Once I looked down and saw one wheel from an office chair. At one point, I saw the seat of an office chair impaled on a broken street sign. I tried to imagine the force that took, that it didn’t bounce off,” Groneman said.

10^th Anniversary

For the 10^th anniversary of the tragedy, Groneman is in New York City for some of events of the memorial celebration.
“They asked first responders to attend, but not as part of the main ceremony. Some have complained about that. I don’t see it as an insult. Most of us would give our seats to victims’ families at the ceremony or on a bus or wherever,” he said.

“I’m going with my brother Michael, and I don’t need to be right at the ceremony. The whole area was a battleground that day. I’m okay to stand on Broadway again where I waited for hours for my assignment on Sept. 11,” Groneman said.