9/11 remembered: Last memories of my hero Rick

Susan Rescorla broke down as she told how she said goodbye to her husband Rick, 62, for the last time before he died in the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Cornish-born Vietnam veteran Rick, who was in charge of security for investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in the Twin Towers, died after going back for stragglers after he had already helped 2,700 people evacuate the building safely. His body has never been found.

Mrs Rescorla said: “He said to me so calmly, ‘You have to stop crying. I have to get everyone out’.

“He was so calm and reassuring, he told me, ‘You made my life’, but I knew at that moment that it was all over.”

She said a few minutes later she was watching events on television and talking to a family friend on the telephone when she saw the second plane strike the building her husband was in.

“I hung up and ran out of the house screaming,” she said.

Mr Rescorla, who was born in Hayle, near St Ives, foresaw the terrorist attacks, with his warnings featuring in a Channel 4 documentary in 2005, entitled The Man Who Predicted 9/11. He made staff at the bank regularly practise escape drills which later saved their lives.

Born Cyril Richard Rescorla, he served with the British Army – where he changed his name to Rick – and as a police officer before emigrating to the United States in the 1960s.

As Second Lieutenant Rescorla of the 7th Cavalry he saw action in the battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam in 1965, earning the nickname “Hard Core” and being decorated with medals including the Silver Star for bravery.

On returning to civilian life he went to university and had a number of jobs before joining Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, living with second wife Susan in New Jersey but often coming back to his native Cornwall to visit friends and family.

He survived the 1993 car bomb attack on the World Trade Center.