LEHIGH VALLEY, PA. – For former Trans-Bridge bus driver Bob Dottery, one of his most vivid memories from the morning of September 11, 2001, began with something ordinary: a late passenger.<\/p>\n
Dottery was preparing to leave when he saw a car racing toward the terminal.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad one headlight. I\u2019ll never forget that,\u201d Dottery recalled. \u201cI knew it was Alan, so I waited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alan Merdinger, of South Whitehall Township, parked his car and ran toward the bus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for waiting, Bob,\u201d Dottery remembers him saying.<\/p>\n
Merdinger was one of the Cantor Fitzgerald employees who regularly rode Dottery\u2019s bus to the World Trade Center. Dottery dropped his passengers off in New York around 7:45 that morning.<\/p>\n
Merdinger and the other Cantor Fitzgerald employees aboard the bus that day died in the terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always keep thinking if I would have kept going, Alan would have made it,\u201d Dottery said. \u201cHe was such a nice guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bob Dottery Full Interview<\/p>\n
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Two days after the attacks, Trans-Bridge resumed service into New York and Dottery returned to his regular route.<\/p>\n
The difference was immediately apparent.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody was quiet,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
A passenger eventually told Dottery, \u201cDid you hear we lost Alan?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came more devastating news.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost everybody from Cantor Fitzgerald.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the weeks and months that followed, Dottery learned how small changes in routine could produce dramatically different outcomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH VALLEY, PA. – For former Trans-Bridge bus driver Bob Dottery, one of his most vivid memories from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,805],"class_list":["post-282610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}