George Willig Climbs World Trade Center – A milestone in the sport of Buildering
George Willig was born on June 11th, 1949 in New York. An enthusiastic mountain climber and a toy maker for Ideal Toy Co, his greatest moment of fame was on the 26th of May 1977 when he scaled the South Tower
of the World Trade Center.
He had designed a variation of a standard climbing aid called an ‘ascendeur’ specifically for climbing the tower. His ascendeur was a form of clamp designed to fit perfectly into the aluminum channels that ran up the sides of the
tower to hold in place the scaffolds used for window washing. They would lock into place when they were pulled down by his body weight and release again, once he decided to raise them.
Willig had decided to climb the Tower over a year before actually attempting it. He started designing the ascendeurs in a machine shop and later refined them at the Ideal Toy Co. office after working hours. Willig later said that
the greatest challenge was designing the ascendeurs while actually climbing the tower was a simple task as he had solid footing all the way up to the tower as well as having planned and memorised the route he would take to the top.
He tested his ascendeurs on the WTC building four times over the previous year, usually late at night and continued refining and improving them till his climb.
The night before the climb, Willig had slept uneasily. He left for the World Trade Center at 5 A.M, the next morning with his 22 year old brother Steve and a friend, Jery Hewitt. They reached the WTC at 6:20 A.M and George strapped
on his climbing harness in the plaza between the Twin Towers. The harness was to provide stability and the freedom to dangle his arms and legs whenever he needed to rest. He also wore a backpack which contained a duplicate of the ascendeurs he would use to
climb along with an older version of the ascendeurs, both were for backup safety purposes. However, he didn’t need to use the backups even once during his ascent. Willig wore an all weather parka to conceal his climbing equipment in order to avoid arousing
the suspicion of any passing guards or police.
He began his ascent at 6:30 A.M. He had only climbed a few feet when a security guard spotted him and rushed over to apprehend him. Willig told the guard that he was an architectural engineering student testing a safety device
for window washers.
After he had climbed 25 feet, he cast off the parka he had used to conceal his harness and backpack. Security guards noticed the parka as it floated down into the hands of Jery Hewitt. Suddenly, over 20 police officers gathered
at the base of the building and began to yell at George. When one of the policemen shouted at him to come down, George shouted back, “I’m not coming down. There’s only one way to go, and that’s up.”
Willig climbed at a slow and comfortable pace without exerting himself more then he needed to. Meanwhile, the crowd at the base of the building kept growing and news teams were broadcasting his climb live on television. The Port
Authority police asked Steve if George was sane or doing the stunt for any political purpose. Steve told them that George was completely sane and the only reason he was climbing the tower was to get the satisfaction of reaching the top.
Two police officers were lowered in a window washing basket from a window above Willig. One of them was a suicide expert who tried to talk Willig out of climbing the building and give up, thinking that Willig was insane and wanted
to kill himself by throwing himself off the building.
Willig swung away from them so they couldn’t grab him and talked with the officers in a reasonable and calm manner, assuring them of his sanity and lack of suicidal tendencies. After that the police stopped pestering him and he
was allowed to continue to the top. He reached the top, three and a half hours after starting the ascent. At the top, police pulled him into a tiny window hatch. The time was 10:05 A.M. He signed his name and the date on piece of metal on the observation deck
of the tower.
Willig was an overnight celebrity for a while, appearing on talk shows as well as getting jobs as a stuntman for various television shows. However, he dropped out of the limelight after a few years and went back to working in the
construction industry. After the WTC towers were destroyed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Willig publicly regretted having climbed the tower as he feared it might have brought the tower to the attention of terrorists, however he was still
glad to have climbed the tower.
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