This past Tuesday morning he had reported to work earlier than usual to continue the logistical reorganization of his firm's operations within the World Trade Center complex. He was overseeing the rearranging of employees, computers and desks.

Bob is the eldest among the five boys in the family. He is the First Son. And, after my father died, Bob did things that I only truly understood years later. He quietly, generously, kept my mother afloat and he kept my educational goals moving forward. He even arranged jobs for me all over lower Manhattan.

One year I reported every morning to federal offices in the World Trade Center where I was given my orders for the day. I was working for a U.S. "feeding program" and I had to supervise the delivery of free food to poor children in Harlem and the South Bronx.

Over the years, though, as I established my own career and family, the oldest brother and the youngest brother (me) descended into impossibly histrionic, intense and sometimes scary arguments.

Like many family arguments, they are almost impossible to define. And like most arguments they were, in retrospect, never worth the time. In a nutshell, they descended into accusations about who was doing the more important work, whose career was actually more meaningful ... as if something like that can, should, ever be measured.

A few years ago, when he was coming to Dallas for business, he arranged to have dinner with me – his treat – at The Mansion. Things went exactly as they always seemed to: pleasantries, funny stuff, some rootsy Italian-American schmoozing ... and then verbal warfare.

At the subsequent holidays we talked, exchanged gifts, passed the food platters and filled each other's wine glasses. But there was a strain, like a smudge in the sky, that lingered so much you could almost reach out and touch it with your fingertips.

It became, over the last year, so palpable that it even extended to other members of the family. For lengthy periods of time, he simply would disappear – and my mother and the rest of us were left to wonder when he would ever call or visit.

This past Tuesday morning, my brother certainly wasn't on my mind at 7:30 a.m.

I was thinking of my daughter.

I don't let my 8-year-old listen to the news or read the newspaper until I read it first. Tuesday morning was no exception as we followed our usual routine.

I like to drive her to school in the morning; it's the time when we have our best conversations – the bonding kind where I marvel at how lucky I am to be blessed by the presence of such a wonderful, caring, inquisitive child.

After I dropped her off, I did the thing I always do: I flipped on the all-news radio station and, like millions, was stunned to hear the terror from New York City – my hometown. And I was doubly stunned because the news was about the World Trade Center, where I had worked many years ago and where I knew my oldest brother had offices.

I raced home, turned on the TV and reached for the phone. "All circuits are busy" was the message every time I tried to call to New York. The numbing moments played out on the screen, each slow-motion replay welling up like a slowly rising river, like a painful and predictable sorrow.

Close to noon, the phone rang. Another brother, John, was on the line, on his cell phone because nothing else was working. There was no direct word from Bob, but a co-worker had told Bob's girlfriend that he had been seen "away" from the crumbled towers.

Late that day, still no confirmation or word from my brother.

By Wednesday morning, still no direct confirmation or word.

The lines were still clogged to New York. I managed to reach my mother on Long Island. She is 84 and in an assisted-living facility. She hadn't heard from her first son. "This is serious, very serious," she simply said, and her voice was chilling. In the background, I could hear the mixed voices of elderly, infirm people sobbing as they watched TV.

By late Wednesday, through yet another one of my brothers, Tom, there was another report: No one had talked to Bob yet, but he had relayed a message that he was OK to his girlfriend.

By Thursday morning, the picture was more clear. My steady brothers Tom and John had been diligently pursuing leads. When the first plane hit, Bob was on the 41st floor. He apparently scrambled, as did thousands, through an infinitely impossible first few seconds – trying to save himself, his employees and the paperwork that binds the million-dollar global interests of his firm.

With his employees, he ran to the stairwell and began the nightmare journey downward. There were bodies, debris, darkness and the first waves of firefighters moving up and into the tide of fleeing, panicked people. My brother Tom, who pieced this scenario together from my brother Bob's girlfriend, says that Bob fought to get everyone out who could get out. That sounds like Bob.

And, apparently, at some point he helped to carry someone out. That also sounds like Bob. He is proud, strong, in better shape than anyone in the family. He is the First Son, the one who became the father of my family when my real father died.

Either during the initial blast from the plane or in the mad escape, he was injured on his arm and elbow. To what degree remains unclear. He was near the towers when they collapsed, and he fled, running uptown. From there, he disappeared down a rabbit hole for a while, taking care of his injury and apparently already desperately trying to figure out what happened to the people he is responsible for.

Somehow, he made his way across the Hudson River to New Jersey, where many people tried to flee. As of Thursday night he was in a makeshift "emergency" office in a motel, feverishly trying to account for his staff and to coordinate messages for hundreds of their family members.

As of Thursday none of his brothers or his mother had yet talked directly to him. Our only information trickled in from his girlfriend. And, as of Thursday, his name began to appear on "official" survivor lists.

By then, I finally allowed my daughter some access to the news. There are some things so evil that even utter innocence needs to be alerted to their presence – even at the risk of the thing I've always dreaded ... that my child, perfect in the way that all children in the world are perfect, was going to begin confronting the fact that there are troubled, malevolent souls moving among us.

I told her about my lucky brother – her lucky uncle.

"I haven't seen him much. I'd like to see more of him," she told me.

I hugged her, almost as if I was trying to embrace her wisdom, and told her that I felt the same way.