When he was well into his 80s, George Mironis would take the bus three days a week from his North Bergen home into New York and then a subway down to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum as a volunteer, to help visitors navigate the exhibits.
Mironis would speak in such vivid detail about 9/11 that visitors soon realized they were being guided by an actual survivor of the attacks.
"It would come up naturally in conversation," Mironis said. "They were usually surprised. But I was happy to share my story."
Mironis was an office manager at a Japanese bank on the 48th floor of the north tower when American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the building 45 stories above him.
Debris began showering outside his window. Mironis went to a stairwell and began his descent. He soon encountered firefighters with hoses strapped across their shoulders walking up the stairs. One patted Mironis on the shoulder. "Everything is going to be OK," the firefighter told him.
When Mironis finally made it to the lobby after an hour, the sprinklers were spraying water everywhere. Broken glass was all over the floor.
He made it out and staggered uptown to a Greek Orthodox church, where he prayed on its stairs. He waited more than three hours to take a ferry back across the Hudson to Weehawken, where thousands of people were evacuated off Manhattan.
About a week later, Mironis returned to Ground Zero. He went to nearby St. Paul's Chapel, where hundreds of photos of the missing hung. There he saw a photo of the firefighter who had reassured him on the stairwell. He broke down and cried.
Years later, Mironis would learn the identity of the firefighter: Thomas Gerard Schoales, 27 years old.
"He was just a kid," Mironis said. "And he was the one telling me everything was going to be OK, walking up all those stairs, carrying all that equipment. I'll never forget him."
Mironis carries a picture of Schoales in his wallet along with a list of 39 friends and co-workers who died in the attacks. He would often show them to visitors as a reminder of how much loss was suffered that day.
"They were sometimes shocked when I told them," Mironis said. "It made it real. It wasn't just history to them anymore. We were there to educate people, and the best education is learning it from someone who lived it."
In November, after eight years and more than 3,000 hours of volunteer service at the memorial, Mironis "retired" from his role at age 86. But he still visits regularly to help his friends.
The memorial is a solemn, sacred place to Mironis. He had little tolerance during his volunteer days for visitors who failed to treat it as such.
Like most victims of large-scale trauma, such as the Holocaust or Pearl Harbor, Mironis wanted to make sure no one forgot about the horror and heroics of the attacks, especially younger generations born after 9/11.
"People need to know," Mironis said. "Young people. Foreign people. Everyone needs to know what happened here."
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Why firefighter's words haunt this 9/11 Memorial & Museum tour guide