They were on duty the day airplanes were used to attack America. This is how they remember it 25 years later | CNN

Crumbs of a vanilla ice cream sandwich covered Michael McCormick’s 6-year-old son’s mouth as the two sat on the edge of the fountain between the North and South towers of the World Trade Center.

McCormick was celebrating his 45th birthday with his family on a warm, late summer Sunday in Manhattan in 2001.

He pointed out the North Tower to his son, “I have a friend who’s starting work there on Monday.”

The father and son washed the ice cream off their hands in the fountain. McCormick took his family inside the shopping mall underneath the World Trade Center and purchased a Harry Potter blanket, his son’s favorite.

After the long weekend with his family, McCormick returned to work on Tuesday as an air traffic manager for the Federal Aviation Administration’s New York Air Route Traffic Control Center near Long Island, responsible for tens of thousands of square miles of airspace in the Northeast.