Then And Now...

On Thursday, survivors and relatives and friends of the victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center gathered again to remember and honor their loved ones.

Two years ago, Joanne Capestro walked down 87 flights of stairs and got outside, but barely made it to safety.

Elisabeth Lynch's husband, Bob, was a property manager for the Port Authority of New York And New Jersey, who chose to help others and, in the course of helping, lost his life.

James Waring, the father of Jessica Waring, 16, was one of the many Cantor Fitzgerald employees who lost their lives on Sept. 11. Jessica is one of 200 children who also lost a parent at the World Trade Center and have been selected to read the names of the victims of the attacks at the memorial service at Ground Zero, Thursday morning.

Capestro, 41, of Bayside, Brooklyn, worked on the 87th floor of the North Tower, the first building that was hit. She walked down most of those flights in her stocking feet. Every flight was really two sets of steps. "That's 87 times two that I really walked," she said. She will tell you about the difficulty that she and her co-workers had finding exits.

She said, "When we went to the 78th floor, there was no exit... Someone picked up a fire hose and suppressed a fire. We then went down to the 65th floor, and the firemen were going up. I saw the fear on their faces." She also described an abundance of smoke and the smell of jet fuel. At the 20th floor, she was somehow separated from her co-workers. She thought that all someone had to do was light a match and the place would explode.

"I proceeded to the 3rd floor concourse level and I saw a pregnant woman jump," she said. "I fainted and someone gave me smelling salt." She recalled seeing a dead dog and water coming from the ceiling. She fell again and a policeman carried her to the escalator.

When she got outside, she just took a few steps and turned around to see Tower 2 burning. Then she described hearing a loud noise, seeing the building beginning to fall and running for her life. "I got to the corner and a priest took me and threw me under a car," she said. "I thought I was going to die. I was cursing at the priest and asking him to save me." She fainted again and woke up thinking she was in heaven.

Pointing at Lynch and Warring, she tells co-anchor Harry Smith, "I'm very thankful for that priest because if it wasn't for that priest, I wouldn't be here today to be with these girls and to be with my family and with my friends."

Elisabeth Lynch met her husband, Robert, at the World Trade Center in 1991. She worked for the Port Authority of NY and NJ from 1989-94. She said that he witnessed the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and believed that after that. the towers could withstand any terror attack.

Lynch says on that fateful day her husband called her cell phone to let her know he was OK, when she was on her way to work. She recalls, "He told me he was outside on the area of the plaza when the two planes hit that it was bad, but he was OK and he went back in to help with the evacuation."

He was a management worker at the World Trade Center. Witnesses saw him literally with a fireman's oxygen case on, helping people get out of the building.

Lynch says, "He and the people that he worked with, many of them died that day - the people from the World Trade department at the Port Authority. I knew they would go back in and we all knew because in '93, they did the same thing. He went back in because he loved the building and he loved the customers that he had there and I know I look at people like Joanne and I feel good that he was there."

Lynch says she and her sons are very proud of her husband, although they have struggled emotionally. Recently, her 5-year-old son told her that he thinks it would have been better for them if his father had not gone back into the building. Lynch says, "Today is hard for them. It's hard to be in the spotlight. They live it every day and we try to keep life as normal as possible."

When Elisabeth Lynch worked at the World Trade Center, she worked on the 74th floor. She did not lose any former co-workers, but she does know several people who were killed.

Jessica Waring is also from Bayside, Brooklyn, N.Y. She says she is hanging in there. Her father worked at Cantor Fitzgerald.

She describes her father James Waring as "fun, outgoing and the life of the party," she says, "He was a very loving father. He did a lot with us, me and my sisters. So a lot of that sticks with me."

Jessica is the eldest of four girls in her family. Her sisters are 11, 13 and one will be 7 on Sept. 13.

Jessica has just started her junior year in high school at St. Francis Prep School and is involved in a mentoring program.

"Tuesday's Children" is a non-profit organization that was founded by family and friends of 9/11 victims. The organization has made an 18-year commitment to help every child who lost a parent on 9/11. One of the main things the group does is provide the children with mentors who are positive role models.

Her mentor is Mary Butler, a managing director in human resources for Bear Stearns. Several employees in the company are involved in the program.

Jessica says, "We go once a week to the city and hang out. It's another adult in my life because I only have my mother now and someone to speak to, and I feel comfortable speaking with adults. It's something I can lean on her, and she's always there for me."

Capestro says she still has nightmares about what happened. At the World Trade Center, Capestro worked for a company called the May Davis Group. She says, "I've recovered almost 100 percent. I still have my bad times, but I have more good times than bad times now."

She now as a new job as an executive secretary at Oppenheimer, the financial services firm. Capestro is engaged to be married.

Two years later, Lynch says, "It's the beginning of the future. I see a rainbow at the end. And I'm just going to keep going and doing what I'm doing, stay strong and stay positive and do positive things, because God kept me here for a reason."