Mount Pleasant Magazine Documenting Covid-19

114 www.CoronavirusMag.com | www.ReadMPM.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com feature smash into a New York landmark. The date was September 11, which we all now know as 9/11. Bimonte had just watched as a few blocks from where he stood the second passenger plane hijacked by the terrorists smashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. You might not have heard of Bimonte, but you may well have heard him. A drummer by trade, he has provided percussion for many great pop, rock and R&B artists including The Platters, The Drifters and Mick Taylor, and even spent a year on the road touring with Holiday on Ice. He’s no stranger to the Lowcountry, having performed as a part of the Spoleto Festival in 1983 with rock and blues artist Diane Scanlon. He has also visited his brother Andy and wife Kim—both accomplished professional musicians themselves—at their home in Mount Pleasant. All this puts Bimonte in a unique position to compare and contrast life in New York right after the death and destruction at the World Trade Center and the medical crisis gripping the city and its people today. He recalled how his world changed moments after he saw that airliner impact the World Trade Center tower. “I got out of my apartment,” he said, “and headed south and away from the site. You couldn’t even walk in that direction. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. There was ash everywhere and I was stepping over burning human flesh in the streets. “I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to go home for almost three weeks—September 27 to be exact.” While he was banned from returning to his apartment, Bimonte camped out with a former girlfriend in Greenwich Village. Between the pets he had grabbed up from home and his host’s pets, they shared her apartment with nine cats. Photo by Ed Bimonte.