Top of the heap: David Griffin builds a name for himself -- and burnishes that of the company his dad created -- at ground zero.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Building North Carolina

At the edge of a rutted, pot-holed parking lot on the outskirts of Greensboro lies a rusting 16-foot-long steel beam as wide as a picnic table. Nothing distinguishes it from the rest of the junk littering the yard surrounding D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co.'s office, some of it salvaged from buildings the 44-year-old company has demolished, some retrieved from industrial customers the company serves as a recycler.

In one corner is a pile of aluminum car and aircraft parts. Out back is a stack of seats from Fulton County Stadium, once the home of the Atlanta Braves. A skiff's fiberglass hull rests nearby, as does a clutch of claw-foot tubs. But the beam isn't scrap. It won't be cut into chunks and sent to a steel mill to be forged into joists and girders. It's a hunk of history and will stay where it is, as much a memento as a pair of bronzed baby booties or a smudged golf ball from a hole-in-one.

David Griffin Jr., vice president of the family-owned company, had it hauled from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Griffin - everyone at the company calls him David to distinguish him from his father, known as D.H. -- drove to New York City Sept. 13, 2001, and wound up staying seven months. He was drawn by the same notion that sent people flocking to blood banks after terrorists slammed two airliners into the twin towers -- he wanted to help. But he had something most people didn't: expertise. He knew how to extract debris from dangerous sites.

David, who's now 34, has been demolishing buildings since he was a teen-ager, when his father, despite teachers' grumbling, pulled him out of class to take him out on jobs. This was his chance to show people, including those in the company, how well he'd learned those lessons.

Back then, he was a guy who worked for his dad. "1 know," he still likes to joke, "who the D.H. in D.H. Griffin is." He'd been given what his father had built with a ninth-grade education and the instincts of "the best natural-born horse trader I've ever seen," says Paul Ferguson, who manages the wrecking company's Atlanta office. The World Trade Center job gave him the chance not only to prove himself but, in a way, best his old man, who wouldn't tackle it. "His daddy casts a big shadow," says Norbert Hector, president of D.H. Griffin Construction Co., another of the family's businesses, "and he's always had his dad to back him up. Then he goes to New York by himself, and he excels."

When David saw the smoldering heap of rubble from the towers on television, "I knew it was a giant demolition job." It would be the biggest ever undertaken -- 1.6 million tons of crushed concrete, mangled steel, broken glass and, hidden among the rubble, the remains of approximately 2,800 people. Few in New York had heard of D.H. Griffin Wrecking. Companies get famous for designing or constructing buildings, not knocking them down. But it is the largest wrecking company in the Southeast and, according to the Pennsylvania-based National Association of Demolition Contractors, the nation's third-largest.

In addition to it and Raleigh-based Griffin Construction, the family owns Demolition and Asbestos Removal Inc. in Greensboro. Together, they employ about 600 and have about $200 million of annual sales. They're all profitable, but the Griffins won't say how profitable. The Griffins also are partners in Kernersville-based Atlantic Scrap and Processing Co., which owns four metal-recycling plants in the state, and have a stake in a Knoxville, Tenn., junkyard.

In the early days, most of the money came from what was called salvage and today is known as recycling. D.H. learned that after starting the company almost by accident in 1959. While working on an assembly line in the Lorillard cigarette plant, he bought an old church on an acre lot with $600 he borrowed from his father-in-law. Tearing it down, he used what he salvaged to build himself a house.

A city inspector told him if he got a license he could tear down an apartment downtown. The job paid $1,700. "I saved everything out of that building," he says. "I saved the pipes...