CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It was a clear, sunny, late summer morning when Jim Samuel went to work at the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
Samuel thought about calling out sick after he got home late from a Michael Jackson concert the night before.
“He said he wasn’t going to go because he was tired, but then he decided to go and come home early,” said Samuel’s friend Brian Martin.
But Samuel never returned home from work that day.
At 8:46 a.m., a hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower where Samuel worked as an assistant commodities broker for Carr Futures. He was killed on the 92nd floor.
“That was about right where it happened,” Martin said. “I just kept calling and calling, but I never got an answer.”
Martin, a 1994 graduate of West Virginia University, met Samuel while the two were on the Morgantown campus. Samuel graduated the year before that in 1993 and then moved back home to New Jersey.
The pair shared a love for Mountaineer sports.
“We drove all the way to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl the year we went undefeated. We went to pretty much every home game — basketball, football — whatever it was,” Martin said.
While attending WVU, Martin and Samuel both worked at Lakeview Golf Resort & Spa outside Morgantown. Martin worked with banquet services while Samuel was a chef there. After graduation, Martin moved to Maryland. They stayed in touch and often met up to play golf.
Martin said Samuel was a “numbers guy” who could remember sports statistics and phone numbers.
“He would never forget it, ever. He knew stats of the all the West Virginia football, basketball, college football. He knew everything,” Martin said.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Martin recalled Samuel mentioning things were getting pretty serious with his girlfriend Jackie.
“I remember him telling me ‘yeah, man, this is the one.’ He sent me pictures of some rings, so he was definitely heading toward an engagement with Jackie,” Martin said.
A seal of WVU is currently located in the circular drive at the Erickson Alumni Center in memory of Samuel. Martin’s son and Samuel’s niece both graduated from WVU in 2020.
West Virginia Wesleyan College alumni John William Farrell, known by his close friends as “Huck,” was also killed on Sept. 11. Farrell was in the South Tower where he was working as a trader for Sandler O’Neil & Partners. At 9:03 a.m., a second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into floors 75-85.
“Huck was on the 104th floor of the tower that day,” said friend Jim Strawn.
Strawn also graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan and met Farrell in the summer of 1979 while pledging the Theta Chi fraternity.
“We called him ‘Huck’ because he looked like Huckleberry Hound,” Strawn jokingly told MetroNews.
Farrell, 41, lived with his wife, Maryanne, and four kids in New Jersey at the time of the attacks. He previously told Strawn he planned to retire early to be with his family.
“He said I have a five year plan and I’m going to retire at age 44,” Strawn said. “He said I’m just going to spend more time with my wife and my children and be there for them to watch them grow up. That was the last time I talked to him.”
Strawn said “Huck had a plan,” but sometimes life doesn’t go as expected.
“Why were they spared?” Strawn asked of the thousands of American workers who were late to the office or decided not to go to work that day, but his friend did.
“Why was Huck not? We can’t answer that. What I’ve learned from that is where ever we are, that’s just where you’re supposed to be,” he said.
Learning that a close friend’s life was taken too soon, along with the nearly 3,000 other lives, felt like “a stomach punch,” Strawn said.
“It’s still not easy, but time does help,” he said. “I think of Huck every day and I thank him for what he’s taught me even when he’s not here.”
It’s been two decades since Strawn and Martin each saw their college buddies, and even though time has passed, Martin said it doesn’t take away the enormous amount of pain and heartache.
“It’s like we never really had closure,” Martin said. “Even 20 years later, it was a horrific day that just never stopped.”
Read more about the lives of other West Virginia 9/11 victims HERE.
This story is part of a MetroNews series to honor the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.