Over on the World Trade Center, I worked on, the 102nd floor.

So peaceful looking out.

You know.

Growing up in the 60s.

Respecting law enforcement.

Supporting the troops.

That's how you grew up.

I grew up in Woodside, Queens, and we really were a blue collar community.

It was an incredible area to grow up.

I was born in the Bronx.

It was all basically a hodgepodge of working people.

It wasnt a wealthy neighborhood.

There was no rich people there.

The neighborhood I came from was Villa Avenue.

It was three blocks long.

It is all Italian.

Even if you werent Italian, you were Italian to us.

And I didn't even know there was other things besides that.

Bay Ridge was the quintessential working class neighborhood.

Everyone I knew their, their parents were either working on the docks or they were cops, firemen.

The people who were providing the services that kept the city alive.

All the jobs that keep the wheels going.

Those were the jobs held by people in these white ethnic communities.

And the struggle that they went through that most middle class people had no idea about.

Just to make ends meet.

What gave comfort to their lives was family and often church related community.

God and country.

Those are our values.

Those are our values and Im not going to apologize to anyone for those values.

Those are our values.

When there was church on Sundays, it was expected everybody went to mass.

There was the 6:30 mass, the 8:00 mass, the 11:00 mass, the 12:00 mass, and the final 1:00 mass was for the late sleepers.

And every mass would full.

I went to Catholic school from kindergarten, eighth grade, and my mother every year would say the same thing to sister so-and-so, whoever it may be.

If he gets out of line, just smack him around a little bit and I say, mom, you don't have to tell them that.

They do it automatically.

I was five years old when I went into first grade.

And when I was up there, they teach you the Pledge of Allegiance, you know, and the sister would tell us what to do, hold your hand to your heart and everything.

And as she's saying that the men and women that died for this flag, it just hit me.

And, you know, it just got to me when I started crying and everything.

And that was it.

That kind of cemented me with the flag.

I knew early on that I was going to go into the service.

I thought it was something that you're supposed to do.

And I was 17 years old.

I joined before I graduated high school.

My father was in World War II veteran.

My uncles were World War II veterans.

For that family, we had a pretty good number of us.

that went.

My brother was in the Korean War.

My stepdad was in World War II.

You know, we grew up that you support the United States of America.

Hard hat.

Hard is is the right word.

This is a tough industry to to work in.

Over on the World Trade Center.

You could trip and fall out, believe me, they had no barriers and they had no, safety lines for you.

You held on for dear life.

Youre working on cooling towers on a building thats fifty stories high and the winds blowing.

And its wintertime.

And its sleeting and youre working outside.

There was never any of this thoughts that you're going to be something beyond that sanitation worker, or that's what we lived.

The goal in our neighborhood was to get a city job.

Or construction, you know.

And my father, he was a laborer.

So I went towards the construction end of it.

The trades, all the trades were always father, son.

After this job is over, maybe, 15 years from now, I'll bring my children back here, my three sons, and I'll show them what we built here.

You know when you work hard and you finish up a day's work, it's nice to look up in the air, say, wow, we did a great job here.

I feel very proud of it.

I'll be honest with you.

We left our mark on New York City and the construction industry.

For more watch Hard Hat Riot, from American Experience.