The Voice of New Rochelle: 10 Years Later—9/11

On Friday, Sept. 7, 2001, I walked out of Merrill Lynch & Co. for what I was certain would be my last day in the position I held at that time, if not my last day ever with that firm. I was going on medical leave to have two surgeries to correct severe sinus and breathing problems that were placing my overall health in great risk.  

I choose this particular time because I was on the losing end of a corporate political battle that rendered my life and my career unlivable and untenable, respectively. I wasn’t sure how it would all end, but I knew my work life—such as it was—was over. 

I still find it difficult to talk about my own experiences during that time. In the light of so many lost lives and the damage to our country, personal accounts seem self-centered. Mine is no less so, but, then again, our own stories about that time and what the event meant to us is all we have to tell. 

For 32 years my life had been spent in and around what would come to be Ground Zero. Twenty years alone were spent in One Liberty Plaza, the large black building that everyone thought would fall right after Tower 7 collapsed. At the time the towers fell I had an office in the World Financial Center, which was damaged in the attacks, and frequently took the underground tunnels through the World Trade Center back to the building we simply called One Liberty. I took the subway in the World Trade Center, taught on the 17th floor of the South Tower, did my Christmas shopping there and attended many meals and parties in the establishments there.  

The story of 9/11 is also a tale of many “what ifs.” On that day I was scheduled to teach in that 17th-floor classroom, an assignment I gave to someone else when I departed for the aforementioned medical leave. No one was hurt.

Barely a year before, I was the speechwriter for one of the presenters scheduled to talk at the 104th floor of the North Tower that morning.  All of the people who were at the meeting on time perished when the building collapsed. Fortunately, the woman who replaced me and the man we both wrote for were late. All in all, since that time, I have honestly not given much thought to those little “what ifs.” But for others, their “what ifs” were life and death. 

Two teammates in my hockey clubs in 2001 were cases in point. Port Authority Police Officer Ken Teigten lost his life when the towers went down. Another player, who is the type who would prefer his name not be mentioned, survived the annihilation of his trading desk at Euro Brokers because he was having his cable TV service put in that day.  We wore Kenny’s number on our jerseys for years. As for the other player, few knew his story, and he preferred it that way. 

When my daughter called with the news that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, I originally thought it was one of the commuter planes that flew straight up the east side of the Hudson. My company’s executive dining room on the 34th floor of the World Financial Center was situated thus that those aircraft looked like they were coming right at the windows if they did not complete their turn around the Statue of Liberty.

But when I turned on my TV and saw the second plane hit, I realized that these were airliners and that we were being attacked.  

When the towers fell, at this awkward point in my life, it was hard to separate the collapse of the buildings, the destruction of the train station and the classrooms where I taught, the damage of the buildings where I worked and the deaths of people I most likely knew from the career I knew had just likely ended. It was selfish and overly sentimental, but the two linked themselves in my heart in a way I still have trouble separating. 

Three surgeries and many months later, I made my first trip to downtown Manhattan for a radio conference. The disciples of the same people that later destroyed that great firm characteristically informed me that I would have no job when I returned from medical leave; so I was off to further my new career. 

What I found was heart-breaking and other worldly. The posted missing persons’ fliers were everywhere. Lit candles, even during the day time, were erected at various points along the streets to commemorate those lost or to express hope that the missing would be found.  

And then there was Ground Zero. It was the saddest sight of all.  

Of course the real full story of that day must be the everyday people going to work on a sunny Tuesday unaware that they would meet such a violent end to their lives. It is also the story of heroic cops and firefighters who, doing their jobs, were to selflessly give their lives to save others. 

Mine is just one story. Theirs will go on perpetually in the monuments downtown and the in hearts of all Americans