Philip Tsambazis

Ten years ago, I was a small business owner. The U.S was strong, and the world was good. I heard of the on-and-off wars in the Middle East on the |6 o’clock news and then went back to being a free American. My good friends were cooks in the World Trade Center and were always trying to get me there for lunch, but the hike was too much from Long Island. You could say I had my head buried in the sand.

I lost my friends that day.

I sold my business and joined the Transportation Security Administration to ensure nothing like that ever happens again. I also own a consulting business for the training of private security companies.

Tsambazis is a Transportation Security Administration supervisor and training instructor at Newark Liberty International Airport, N.J., the departure point of United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. He is president of the Federal Managers Association Chapter 400, the first at TSA.