In the final minutes of his life, former Saltus student Robert Higley ensured that others escaped from the World Trade Center's South Tower moments before it collapsed.Two young trainees from New York, who had been under his guidance on the morning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, were running clear of the tower when it crashed to the ground. Former Bermuda resident Robert, 29, had shown the two women the stairwell to use to evacuate the tower after an emergency had been declared that morning. He had been looking after five trainees and, following the evacuation order, took them to the stairwell and sent them on their way down to the ground floor and out of the doomed building.However, Robert perished when the tower collapsed. It is believed the young manager was fulfilling his duty as a senior staff member and had returned to the offices of Aon Risk Management Service to check that colleagues in the various conference rooms had heard and heeded the instruction to leave.Two hijacked passenger airliners were crashed into the upper floors of the landmark twin towers of the World Trade Center that morning. The North Tower was hit first, but it was the South Tower, where Robert worked, that was the first to fall.That fateful morning Robert's mother Judi was more than 1,000 miles away in Florida. She was at the dental practice where she worked as a receptionist when she received a call from her son's wife Vycki. Robert had called Vycki on his cell phone and told her a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, but that he was in the other tower and was safe and they had been told to evacuate. After having the message relayed to her, Judi went to watch the events unfold on the television in the reception area.“I saw the second plane hit the tower and I knew immediately that he had gone,” she said. “I felt disbelief. Within half-an-hour the second tower came down.”Judi sat watching the television at work until noon. In her heart she felt her son had gone, but she clung to a hope that he may have escaped. Her boss asked her if she wanted to go home.Judi, who was divorced from Robert's father, said: “I did not want to because my elderly father was living at home and my mother was in a nursing home. I did not want to alarm them.” She initially went to a friend's house before she went home.Back in New York, Robert's wife Vycki kept calling his cell phone and getting a voicemail message. She took that as hope that he had escaped the total destruction. Also, Robert always carried his wallet in his case rather than in his pocket. So if he had been taken to a hospital there was a chance that he would not have had any ID with him.“His wife thought maybe he was one of the unidentified people in the hospitals. She went to hospital after hospital looking for him, but they did not find him,” said Judi.The Highley family's connection with Bermuda came in the late 1970s after Robert's father Douglas landed a job on the Island with an insurance firm. The family moved to Bermuda for a number of years. Robert became a student at Saltus, while his older brother Todd went to Mount Saint Agnes Academy.Robert proved himself in a number of areas, including sports. He played soccer and was one of the best triple jump athletes in his school year. He passed his Grade 1 theory in music and also played the lead in the stage production ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors'.The family lived near the home of future Premier Sir John Swan, and Robert was good friends with Sir John's son Nicholas, who was about the same age.Judi particularly remembers a birthday party they held for Robert. Nicholas and other school friends from Saltus were among the guests.“Rob was very social and outgoing, and he was so into sports. He wanted to make this birthday a sporting event, so that was the theme of the party. There were games like tossing the horseshoe and races,” said Judi. Ribbons of different colours were awarded to those who placed in the various events, and the young Robert made sure that everyone who attended went away with some sporting recognition. “He was insistent that every one of the kids was going to have a ribbon that day,” explained Judi.“The main thing is, he loved school. And he loved sports — soccer, lacrosse and basketball at the military base.”The family lived in Bermuda for around four years. Judi said: “Robert met many, many friends there. We'd go out on a boat and tie-up with others. The kids would snorkel and swim. It was a very, very happy time for us. We loved kite day on Horseshoe Beach.”After Bermuda, the family moved to New Orleans. Robert continued to excel as a student and was in a ‘gifted' programme at school. He went to the University of Connecticut on a baseball scholarship. An injury ended his baseball aspirations but his studies went well. While at the university he met his future wife Vycki.Judi was by this time living in Florida. She saw Robert once or twice each year. He was working in the insurance industry. In the early part of 2001 she visited her son and his wife, and their young daughter Amanda in Massachusetts. She also remembers the call she got from Robert that summer when he told her he had landed a job with Aon in New York.“He called me and was so excited. He was happy. He loved his [previous] job, but it did not pay a lot of money and wasn't even what he really wanted. So he had put his resume out on the internet. Aon called him for an interview. He said to me, ‘It's the best job. It's the job of a lifetime. It's going to pay double what I'm earning now and I'm going to be working in the area I want to be — training new employees'.“Every time he called me he was so happy. He felt it was a great opportunity for him. But three short months later he was gone.”Robert's second daughter, named Robyn in memory of her father, was born in November 2001. Last year, on September 10, Robert's eldest brother Todd was diagnosed with a cancer and died seven weeks later. He had graduated from Mount Saint Agnes Academy when the family lived in Bermuda during the early 1980s, and returned to the Island for a spell to work in the insurance sector.Robert's eldest daughter Amanda was 14 this year — her birthday fell on the same day that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan.For Judi, the anniversary of 9/11, and the build-up towards it, is an emotional time.“I feel the tension building in the last week of August. Once we get past the anniversary there is a sense of gratefulness that it has passed again.”She was amazed how many people turned up to a memorial event for Robert in late 2001. It was there that she met the two Aon trainees who had managed to escape from the South Tower before it fell, having been guided to the emergency stairwell by her son. They told her their story. The other three trainees who had been with them did not survive.Ten years later, Judi is still coming to terms with what occurred on 9/11, and some questions remain.“You can understand that you get up in the morning and drive to work and you can get in an accident and might die. You know that people can get sick and die. We realise that these things can happen in our lives,” said Judi.“But when a person goes to work — with no political involvement — to put food on the table for their family and to further their career, and then they get killed in a terrorist attack. I ask myself why? It was not an attack on a military base. It was a building where average people were going to work at their jobs to make a living and they were hit by terrorists.”At the University of Connecticut there is a media room named after Robert Higley, donated by his wife Vycki. Reflecting his love of baseball, the media room has a door, representing a baseball, which leads to the campus baseball court.* For more 9/11 pictures click here