Well, here's another 'how is it possbile' that the years have passed so fast since a milestone, anniversary or blessed event. Moving towards Geezer-hood, it's becoming all too familiar. And in the case of really tall buildings being scaled, as of this year, it'll be 40 years since George Willig scaled the south tower of the World Trade Center 'Twin Towers' on May 26th, 1977.
At 6:29 AM that day, George started up the northeast corner of the south tower. Three and a half hours later, after signing a few autographs for ascending policemen in a window-washing gondola he had reached the top. As he gestured and waved towards the crowds below, George was arrested by Port Authority police. George was initially slapped with a $250,000.00 fine...later reduced to $1.10. One penny for every story he climbed.
He had been planning the climb for more than a year, and had designed and manufactured unique window washing channel clamping devices that operated much like brake shoes. He also devised a special harness that would allow all four limbs to work independently to step into, release and hoist his way up the south tower.
George, at the time of the climb, had just moved to an apartment in Queens, where he later asked me to take it over when he moved to California. I had done an interview with George shortly after the climb and found we had some common interests and we became friends. With a little experience at talent agenting, I started getting George some TV appearances on Letterman...the ABC Network SuperStar Show.
As the years passed, my friend Bob Brown, the AD on the interview and I put together a timeline video containing still shots against the interviews audio track.
WTC UnClimbable is the result. We ran it on the 35th year anniversary on Youtube.
This year, we slapped on '40 Year Anniversary' of George's climbing inventiveness and balls-of-steel that gripped NY and the rest of the World for (3 1/2) hours of heroic history.
George paid a visit to TC & Company's studio September 11, 2014. That's more literal..as he picked up the lunch tab over at Trattoria Lucia. We caught up on old & new times. Showed him his platform bed we've kept in our garage rafters if he wanted to make use of it again. George is seen here against a video inset of himself in 1977 on Top-of-the-World, while visiting from California.
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