It's the hope of those who knew and worked alongside Rick Rescorla that the former security chief of Morgan Stanley be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Come to think of it, it's difficult to imagine where Morgan Stanley might be today had Rescorla not safely evacuated the financial giant's 2,700 men and women from the South Tower of the World Trade Center - only to perish himself when, heading in one last time, the New York skyscraper came crashing down.

Wednesday night, at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, top officials of Morgan Stanley were to join Rescorla's widow, Susan, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author James B. Stewart - who recounts Rescorla's heroism from the Vietnam War to Sept. 11 in the book "Heart of a Soldier" - in recognizing the Rick Rescorla Foundation, which promotes everything from patriotism to a scholarship fund for children of fallen members of the armed forces.

Sean Patrick Kemple, a financial adviser in Morgan Stanley's Alexandria office, had worked in the South Tower from 1996 to 2000. During those years, he tells The Beltway Beat, Rescorla "was drilling the heck out of us."

"The fire alarms seemed to be going off day after day, month after month," he says. "I vividly remember yelling for someone to shut the darn thing off, as we were trading in the midst of the stock market bubble. Rescorla timed the drills and was very insistent that everyone participate."

And for good reason. Rescorla had issued a report just prior to the 1993 terrorist bombing at the World Trade Center that the building complex was vulnerable. Then came the morning of Sept. 11, when Rescorla let it be known that he wasn't conducting another one of his drills.

"He caught everyone's attention by threatening to pull his pants down," Kemple was told by colleagues working in the doomed building. "Then he said please exit the building at a slow and calm pace. . . .

"At one point, he was on the 10th floor and (Morgan Stanley) Executive Vice President John Olson Sr. said, 'Rick, you need to get out, too.' Rescorla's reply was, 'I will leave once everyone else has exited the building,' and then proceeded to walk back up the stairs, never to be seen again."

Olson will be among those in attendance tomorrow.

Kemple said Morgan Stanley lost 13 employees on Sept. 11, out of the firm's 3,400 who worked in the World Trade Center complex.

SPOOKY TOWN

Next time you see a suspicious person standing at a mailbox without any mail in his or her hand, you might consider notifying the FBI.

You're living in the spy capital of the world, after all.