Roger Eisenbarth was the only 9/11 survivor treated at a Trenton hospital.
TRENTON -- Roger Eisenbarth travels to New York City for business about every other week these days.
The September 11, 2001 survivor does not go to the World Trade Center though, and has yet to visit the 9/11 Memorial.
He will.
He just wants to bring his wife and make a nice trip out of it.
"It's a special thing," Eisenbarth said Friday of returning to Lower Manhattan, where 15 years ago he survived the collapses while a guest in the Marriott Hotel underneath the towers.
Roger Eisenbarth holds the card key to his room at Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center shortly after returning to his home in Colorado in 2001. (Denver Post photo by Hyoung Chang)On 9/11, Eisenbarth, then of Denver, was the only patient who arrived at a Trenton hospital.
As the towers burned that morning - before they fell - hospitals in Trenton prepared for a possible overflow of patients from North Jersey.
But the twin towers toppled, and the patients never came.
Except Eisenbarth.
The company he worked for then had an office in Princeton.
And after escaping the crushed Marriott by crawling through crevices and finally rappelling down massive piles rubble with others using drapery from the ballroom, he made his way to a fireboat, which took him to Jersey City.
There, a colleague from the Princeton office found him and drove him south, and another employee drove him to St. Francis Medical Center.
After nurses and doctors cleaned the caked debris from his eyes, and evaluated him, he allowed a Times of Trenton reporter to interview him. Despite his ordeal, he volunteered his story of survival.
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''I could not believe these two buildings could come down . . . it felt like an earthquake, '' Eisenbarth said from his hospital bed at St. Francis' emergency room 15 years ago. "I still don't know how I got out alive.''
And he's still telling his story today, although not as much as he did in Denver, when he arrived home from Trenton.
Eisenbarth, for a while, was the Denver resident who was most affected by 9/11. He talked of his experiences at a church and school, and was interviewed on local television.
He displayed his Marriott room card key too, which he still has.
Several years later, Eisenbarth and his family moved to Atlanta, and he's currently living in Phoenix, where he hopes to retire.
Life moves forward, and he's doing well, he said. His kids are in the college and career phase now.
But the horror of 9/11 is always there, just under the surface, he said.
"I feel it quite often," he said.
"The one things that reminds me on a constant basis is a thunderstorm, it puts goose bumps on my arms," he said.
Weather has been a constant reminder. On the first anniversary of the attacks, Eisenbarth said the sound of storms reminded him of the sounds he heard on 9/11.
They still do.
"When I hear thunder it reminds me of the buildings coming down," he said Friday.
And at any minute, he can put himself on those piles of rubble as sirens wailed and ash was everywhere - as he scaled slabs of debris while still carrying his computer bag slung on his shoulder.
He says now he recalls throwing the bag down the rubble, then using the drapery to maneuver to safety, picking up his computer bag and walking to safety.
"That's something I can live every day," he said.
Eisenbarth describes his survival while at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton on Sept. 11, 2001. (Times of Trenton file photo)Although he considers himself healthy, Eisenbarth has suffered long-term hearing loss - about 30 percent in both ears - which he traces to 9/11, as well as a persistent cough.
Headlines about 9/11-related illnesses and cancers make him nervous. "It's just another worry," he said.
He did go back to what was then Ground Zero, before the first anniversary, to walk the site and retrace his steps, which he said was a good healing moment.
And he's been back to the World Trade Center two more times, but he has not yet planned enough time to visit the memorial.
He's obviously eager to see the Marriott Hotel's portion of the memorial, which he has heard about from a network of hotel survivors he keeps in touch with.
While Eisenbarth is willing to talk of his 9/11 experiences, he hasn't appeared in several of the 9/11 documentaries that have sought to interview him on camera.
It's partly because he lives on the west coast, but also it's just not his thing, and he does not begrudge anyone who does. He did contribute to an upcoming book specifically about Marriott survivors, he said.
Eisenbarth said his message to anyone about that day is simple: it's the one most synonymous with September 11, 2001.
"Never forget," he said. "Just never forget."
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.