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The day the World Trade Center fell Deacon Fernando Vazquez was “born again.” He was on the 24th floor of the North Tower where he was working for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield as a security officer in the electronics unit when the first plane slammed into the building.
“The way the building moved. We knew the building swayed because of the wind but not like that,” recalled Deacon Vazquez, 51, who now serves at St. Raymond’s parish in the Bronx.
“We looked out the window and saw the debris coming down and I thought this was it. My supervisor at the time told me he never saw me so scared.”
With his co-workers he made his way down the darkened stairwell as acrid smoke began to pour out of the air conditioning vents, emerging into the brilliant sunlight on the plaza just as the second plane hit the other tower. He broke into a sprint heading north.
He didn’t know it at the time but his brother Luis had been entering the building when the first plane hit. He too had turned and ran for his life. Out of contact with family, the two separately began the long trek north from Battery Park. Much later in the afternoon, Vazquez finally made it to his mother’s house in the Bronx. He remembers he was greeted with applause as he walked though the door.
“I don’t remember who opened the door. But when they saw me they all started clapping” he recalled. “Of course I got a big hug and a kiss from my wife and my mom. Then my brother looked at me and said, ‘Happy irthday, brother.’ Because that day we were born again!”
Not long before that, his pastor at St. Athanasius, Msgr. William Smith, had tapped Vazquez on the shoulder and asked him when he was going to start studying for the permanent diaconate. Vazquez had twice before been asked if he was interested in serving as a deacon by other priests but had literally laughed off the suggestion. This time had been different.
“Basically, he was giving me an order,” said Vazquez with a laugh. “He could give you an order with a smile on his face and you could not say no.”
In fact, Deacon Vazquez and his wife, Elizabeth, who coincidentally had been in the World Trade Center where she worked for Morgan Stanley during the initial truck bomb attack in 1993, had been thinking about cutting back their involvement at the parish. With two young daughters, Monica, now 16, and Veronica, now 20 (and a third daughter, Sofia, now 7, still to come), and the pressures of work and home, they were beginning to feel a little burned out. She was a catechist and he was a Eucharistic minister.
On 9/11he was still exploring the idea of becoming a deacon.
“The process had already begun,” he said. “And I’ll never forget that it crossed my mind. I thought if I got out of there it’s because of a reason. The Big Guy up there, he’s got plans for me.”
So with Elizabeth’s blessing he entered the diaconate formation program at St. Joseph’s Seminary in 2003 and was ordained in 2007.
“The biggest challenge for me was hitting the books again,” he said. “Oh Lord, it was tough. You have to have the theology and the philosophy. I knew it wasn’t going to be like the levels they ask the seminarians because they are deep into it. But at the same time they expect us to know something. Because you don’t want to ordain a deacon and he doesn’t have the knowledge, doesn’t know about the history of the Church or has little theology.”
At least Deacon Vazquez had a leg up on his classmates. His vocation story goes much further than when he was first approached for the diaconate. As a child growing up in Puerto Rico he had always been drawn to the priesthood and had even entered the seminary as a teenager. Economic difficulties had necessitated his family’s move to the U.S. mainland, and he put his priestly dreams aside to enter the Air Force.
In a way, becoming a deacon brought him almost full circle. It is about as close to the priesthood as a married man with children and a full time job can get. He works at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in facilities management.
“I see him in his dealings with the priests at St. Raymond’s and he’s at home,” Elizabeth said. “That’s where he’s the most comfortable. Yes, he’s a great husband, a great father, but he’s definitely in his element when he’s there with the priests.”
As a deacon, his duties are many. He visits the sick, brings Communion to the homebound, takes part in the liturgy, teaches RCIA and a course in Hispanic culture at the seminary and generally acts as kind of ecclesiastical gofer. At times, his service can seem thankless, but there are many high points as well.
“The most gratifying duty I’ve found is when I baptize kids. It is unbelievable because you are opening the doors. You are welcoming them into the Church,” he said. “God is using me as a tool and that makes me very happy.”
