The Only Way To Go Is Up

"Things worked really smooth from the moment he started," said Steve (who was married three days after the climb). "George was stepping right up the side of the building. But then the cops came and they took me and Jery and Randy [George's girl friend Randy Zeidberg, 24, who had arrived moments after the ascent began] down to the Port Authority Police Station in the basement of the building." A couple of minutes later they brought down Ron Digiovanni, a friend of Willig's, who had ballooned over Manhattan last December. Digiovanni had arrived in the plaza when Willig was on the third story and had shouted, "Go, George, go!" For that he was apprehended as an accomplice.

"The Port Authority cops were running around like chickens with no heads. Not one of them knew what to do," said Steve. "Then this guy came in and said, 'You're all under arrest,' and they had us fill out this stack of forms. Then they fingerprinted us three times each—once for the city, once for the state, and once for the FBI. After that they handcuffed Jery and Ron to a safe, and Randy and I were handcuffed to a chair. Pretty soon they deduced I was George's brother, and they asked me, 'Is George sane? Is he doing this for any political purposes? Is he going to wave signs or something? Is he doing it for a commercial reason?' I told them he was doing it for his own satisfaction, no other reason, and that he was as sane as I was, which I think confused them.

"So we were sitting there chained together, kind of having a good time, but frustrated because we couldn't watch George—they didn't unchain us until after George made it—and someone came in and said George was at the 25th floor. We knew then they'd never get him."

By this time huge crowds had gathered in the plaza and surrounding streets, network television coverage had alerted the country and helicopters with cameramen on board were swarming around the building. At that point the police, too, could see George knew what he was doing. "Some of them were still being hard-nosed," says Steve, "and saying he was crazy, but one of them said, 'This guy's a genius; he's got the whole thing figured out down to the slightest detail.' "

The only hitch in Willig's climb came when he reached the 60th floor. At that point a scaffold, which had been lowered from the top down the adjoining face of the tower, met him. On it were two policemen, one from the Port Authority, the other a New York City officer trained in suicide-rescue operations. Willig was afraid they were going to rescue him against his will.

"They were coming down my way," he said later, "so I decided I'd swing over to the next channel to be out of reach." He partially uncoiled the 120-foot nylon climbing rope that he carried over his shoulder for exactly this sort of eventuality, attached it to an ascendeur, removed the two foot slings from the ascendeurs in the channel, and performed a maneuver known in climbing as a pendulum. That is, he swung out and away from the building, suspended only by the rope, to another runner, where he was out of reach of the policemen. As he swung, his shadow suddenly dropped down the side of the building and the crowd below let out a collective gasp, thinking the shadow was his falling body.

"I hooked myself in this other channel away from them," said Willig, "and I started climbing up it until they shouted to me that they really weren't there to pull me off. They told me if I was tired, I could swing over to them and get on the scaffold, but if I wanted to keep going, I could. I told them I wasn't tired and that I felt much safer where I was. Then I took the stuff out of the second channel and swung back over to the original one.

"One of the cops said, 'What are you, crazy?' But when I assured him I knew what I was doing, he joked, 'We're going to have to stop meeting like this.' After that we had a lot of fun. We joked around, we talked, we looked at the sights, we commented on them—pretty plain conversation."

At 10:05 a.m., 3� hours after he began, admittedly very excited by now, but not tired, Willig lifted himself over a ledge at the top and crawled, feet first, into an inspection hatch on the roof. He was none the worse for wear, except for blistered hands and insteps. He was greeted by policemen, who congratulated him. requested his autograph, then handcuffed him and served him with a summons for disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and scaling a building without a permit. In addition, it was announced that the city was going to sue Willig for $250,000 for the trouble and expense he had put it to. The next day Willig met with Mayor Abraham Beame, who settled for a fine of $1.10—a penny for each of the tower's 110 stories. In return, Willig readily agreed not to reveal the details of his climbing apparatus, to forestall imitators from attempting similar climbs.

Of course, Willig was asked why he did it. He responded with the expected answer, the classic and clich�d "Because it's there"—which at the time was the easiest way to reply to a simple question that in truth has such a complex answer. Another reply might have been what Louis Armstrong said when asked to define jazz, "If you don't know, I can't tell you."