Lost 9/11 (Ebel Watch) memento recovered by Mahopac relative

17 february 2006

February 15, 2005

To Glenn Winuk, an elegant Swiss-made watch was a prized possession. To his family, it is priceless, and they are glad it is finally back in their hands.

The Ebel watch was the only piece of jewelry Winuk, a 40-year-old volunteer firefighter from Long Island, wore every day. It was on his wrist Sept. 11, 2001, as he helped evacuate workers from his lower Manhattan law office before dying when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

Earlier this month, his brother Jay, of Mahopac, found a photocopy of the warranty and could thus prove ownership of the treasured timepiece. It is among 135,000 personal items recovered from Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills landfill that police have been trying to match up with victims.

"This is a memento of my brother's heroic actions of that day," said Jay Winuk, 47, while holding the black-faced watch with a stainless steel and gold band. The crystal over the enameled face is intact, with only a tiny smudge of soot near the band's clip.

Its frozen hands are pointing to the cabochon markers, jeweled dots that mark the time, at 12:55. The date is Sept. 12.

The watch has an automatic movement prized by connoisseurs, an Ebel spokesman said, explaining that the self-winding mechanism gains kinetic energy from the movement of being worn.

Typically, there is a power reserve of one or two days once motion stops.

"It was very heartening for us at Ebel to find out that one of our watches was able to bring some solace to a family who experienced such a difficult loss," said Steven Cohen, president of the Americas, Ebel. The company has offered to restore the watch to working order.

The family has decided instead to leave the watch as is and preserve it in a boxed frame.

"We didn't have anything back from that day until this," Winuk said.

The family held a memorial service for Glenn Winuk in October 2001 and a funeral service a year later once his remains were recovered in March 2002.

"In some ways, this is a relief. So many families don't have anything," the older brother said.

He helps direct the Glenn J. Winuk Humanitarian Fund, which provides grants to educational institutions and community service initiatives. He also is active in One Day's Pay, an annual day of remembrance that encourages people to volunteer in their community on Sept. 11 to honor victims of the terror attacks.

Glenn Winuk was an attorney for 14 years and a partner with Holland & McKnight, focusing on construction projects. He had been a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician for 20 years in Jericho, where he grew up and where his parents still live.

The watch was purchased in 1995 when he was on a weekend trip to Las Vegas with friends.

Winuk was in his Manhattan apartment on Sept. 11, 2001, and heard of the attacks as he was getting dressed. With training in building-collapse rescue, he reportedly dashed to the scene with his medic pack, just as he had done when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. Jay Winuk said his brother helped evacuate his own office building nearly a block from Ground Zero, then headed to the south tower.

Police said officers have been combing through personal items for four years. A total of 113,400 items have been returned to families. Of those, about 1,779 pieces were jewelry — mostly watches, wedding rings and necklaces. Close to 430 items remain unclaimed. The New York Police Department had an Internet link to help identify items but closed the site in May. It now is taking written requests.

"It is a bittersweet experience for the person claiming, as well as the police," said Paul Browne, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of public information. "It was a horrifying event, and this has become more than a job for the officers."

The Winuk watch surfaced in 2004. But it took last month's snowstorm and a power outage to put Jay Winuk in front of a box of paperwork from his brother's apartment that had been overlooked. In it, he found a warranty card for the Ebel Sport Classic and an identification number, which was crucial to identification. The manufacturer said Winuk's watch cost $1,800, and a similar timepiece now sells for $2,950.

The hardest part, said NYPD's Browne, is to make sure belongings are correctly identified.

"People send personal descriptions of why they are important," he said. "We need to make clear matches, and it's not easy."