Wayland resident recalls brother’s escape on 9/11

William Hanna was preparing to drive to New Jersey to help arrange his younger brother’s funeral when he heard his wife cry out from another room. “Mak, Mak, you’re alive!” It was the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. For hours, William had believed that his brother, Mak Hanna, a Port Authority engineer whose office was on the 88th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, probably died when the building collapsed. Instead, Mak had escaped. But only after spending much of the morning helping other people get out. Twenty-five years later, the story has a connection to Wayland through William Hanna, now a Wayland resident, and through the Coptic Orthodox community that has grown in town. William Hanna recounted his brother’s survival in a first-person column published by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers on Sept. 9, 2011. He wrote that he was at work in Connecticut when news of the first attack arrived. His mother called from Egypt, desperate for information about Mak. As the towers fell and telephone service…