Griffin -- vice president of DH Griffin Wrecking Co. Inc -- was asked by the New York City Department of Design and Construction to be the lead consultant for demolition at the World Trade Center site. As lead consultant, Griffin oversaw and approved all demolition activities associated with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City.
But he began his service at Ground Zero as a volunteer.
"I told my wife I was going to go to New York to see if I could help," Griffin said. "She said, 'Well, if you're going, I'm going with you.' So I loaded up my wife and three kids on Sept. 13 and headed toward New York City."
Griffin, after settling into a hotel, made his way to Ground Zero. What he found when he got there was a swarm of police barricades, rescue workers and volunteers like himself.
While Griffin was working on Tower Two, he met up with representatives from Bovis-Lend Lease, a contracting firm in Charlotte working on Tower Two and the Vista International hotel.
Bovis hired Griffin as its demolition consultant. As Bovis's consultant, Griffin successfully helped bring down the high curtain wall -- the 27-story remnants from Tower Two -- on Sept. 25.
Soon Griffin's work became too hard for New York City officials to ignore. Three days later, they approached Griffin, asking him to take on the role of lead demolition consultant, overseeing all the contractors working at Ground Zero.
Griffin, with only two coworkers in tow, was hesitant to accept what was possibly the largest demolition project in the world.
"I told him I needed to think about it," Griffin said. "They told me I had two hours. Potentially one of the biggest opportunities of our company's career, and we had two hours to decide."
But he took it.
"I don't regret it," he said. "It was an honor to be there. It was a challenge -- a lot of hard work and a lot of long days."
Griffin and his family were uprooted and forced to live out of a hotel for the first 40 days in New York. Eventually, he bought an apartment about 1 1/2 blocks from the World Trade Center site, where he could see the Statue of Liberty from his window.
Under Griffin's supervision, debris from 17 million square feet of office space was removed from the site -- a project made more difficult by the search and recovery of the 2,800 victims.
"We had no training for anything like that," he said. "Even professional rescuers aren't prepared for a loss of life of that magnitude."
Griffin admitted that working at Ground Zero was as emotionally taxing as one would expect.
"It was an emotional roller coaster," he said.
The project was physically exhausting, filled with 16-hour work days. Griffin said the site was busy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We just felt the need to be there and put in a lot more hours than a normal job," he said.
Griffin stayed in New York until March 7, keeping in contact with the DHG workers still in the city until DHG finished the project six months ahead of schedule and $4 million under budget. "At the end of the day, we were proud about what we achieved when we truly worked together as a team -- it wasn't white or black or Hispanic," he said.
Griffin said he could feel the spirit of New York and the United States firsthand while working at Ground Zero. "I think New York came together," he said. "America will never be the same. What happened at the World Trade Center affected everybody in a different way. But New York felt the brunt of it. I think it humbled the city."
But Griffin is open about his disappointment with the decrease in outward signs of patriotism.
"You don't see the same patriotism you saw the first month or two," he said. "A lot of people honestly don't want to think about it."
Griffin said he does not want the nation to forget what happened and what can happen.
"Your life can end at any time, just like those people that died in New York that day who were doing nothing different from what (I was) doing -- they were doing their job," he said.
But Griffin says it is time for New York to move ahead with plans to rebuild. "If you don't, you're admitting that you're beaten, and you really are beaten," he said. As the song suggests, he said, "Brush yourself off and start all over again."
Once home, Griffin spent time with his family and resumed his role as vice president of DHG, but he will not forget what Sept. 11 taught him.
He said, "You appreciate each and every thing -- spending that extra five minutes with your family or getting that extra hug before you leave the house in the morning -- and just taking time."
By Emma Burgin, Assistant State & National Editor
