Danny Nolan was the first man to swing a wrecking ball in Manhattan in 25 years. Wrecking balls hadn't been allowed on the island for a very simple reason: The buildings are much too close together to allow a huge ball to swing back and forth.An exception was made for Nolan because he, and the other construction workers of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14, were "working the pile" — hauling away what was left in the World Trade Center towers after the Sept. 11 attacks.What no one had anticipated at the time was that their demolition job would become something more: a recovery mission.Nolan and hundreds of construction workers like him found themselves stopping work and stepping down from their rigs when they caught sight of bodies in the rubble."It's never easy; it's devastating," he told NPR in 2001. "You see people coming out, whole bodies found, just encased in concrete powder, and they're not deteriorated. They're coming out in one piece, a lot of them. It's
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