Miss Becky's Blog

Five Years Later . . . September 11th

Five years ago, the hijacked airliners of September 11, 2001, gave rise to many changes in the world; the smoke from the fires signaling a break with life as we once knew it. The attacks shattered our national illusion of safety and our complacency that the United States was somehow above the violent terrorism so common in other countries. They put into motion many political changes in the U.S. and around the globe, the outcome of which is still to be decided. They left many individuals with an emtional legacy of fear and anger, and other with a renewed sense of urgency in promoting peace and reconciliation. They certainly played a role in altering the world's consciousness and spirit in ways that are, and may always be, mysterious. Can we ever fully understand the big picture?

The memories of the dear ones lost that day live on in our hearts, next to the ache that has replaced their vibrant presence there. Those who did not lose a beloved person may have lost a jobor a home or a familiar way of life. Perhaps they were shaken by the loss of an inner security they'd always felt. Perhaps some senseof universal order fell away. But whatever each individual experienced, no one was left untouched.

Here, five years later, are some stories from some individuals who worked for one company, whose offices were in the World Trade Center that day and it's aftermath:

* For five years, Howard Lutnick and his brokerage firm (deals with buying and selling stock investments), Cantor Fitzgerald, have been fighting back from the horror and heartache of 9/11. The company's offices occupied Floors 101 through 105 in Tower One of the World Trade Centers. The worst terror attacks in American's history killed every one of the 658 employees (brokers, traders, technology specialists, and secretaries) who were at their desks that morning, including Lutnick's brothers. It was the single greatest loss suffered by any company or organization. After three moves and countless business crises, the firm's future is secure again, and it now has more employees than before the attacks.

Lutnick, who lived because he was taking his son to his first day of kindergarten, calls the recovery "miraculous" and credits those who lives were spared and stayed with Cantor. "The normal course of events is you have a crisis, and you go for weeks sorting it out. But in the fall of 2001, we'd have a crisis at nine and another at eleven and then another at one. We were in crisis mode for basically a year."

Survivors are quick to share storeis of 90-hour work weeks (the usual is 40 hours), of adrenaline-fueled problem-solving, and of an unshakable belief in one another. Work was not just a distraction; most say it healed them.

For a long time, it was tough to talk with anyone outside of Cantor about what they'd been through. "The only place where I felt like myself was work. I needed to be around other people who'd been where I'd been." report some of Cantor's employees.

* Harry Waizer, Cantor's tax specialist, was out to dinner recently with his wife, Karen, and someone he hadn't met before. "It came out that I'd been in the building on 9/11, and she asked if I minded telling my story and for the first time ever, I turned to Karen and said, 'Why don't you tell it?' I've though about why I did that. For one thing, my children where there. I don't think I've ever told the story of that day to my children. But I also think it was part of ... just putting it behind you. I went through a period in which I told the story multiple times because everyone who visited wanted to hear it. But that has stopped. I don't particularl want to go back to that time."

Waizer was in an elevator high in the North Tower when the plan struck. Flames ignited inside the elevator and he was badly burned on his body and face and in his throat. Now he's back at the firm working three days a week. He says he wished he'd been with his colleagues from day one. "While they were burning the midnight oil, I was, for two months, lying in an induced coma, and for months more I was in a hospital bed, and then I was going through rehabilitation. So I never had the chance to deal with it in a group way, day in and day out. What I dealt with was the personal impact of 9/11."

What triggers his memory of "The Day"? "It's elevators. For a very long time, I couldn't get on an elevator without thinking back, and every time something our of the ordinary happens on an elevator, I get taken back and I remember that day.

* Frank Walczak, a life-long surfer, had taken the day off on September 11 to catch the waves. Sitting on his surf-board in the water, just south of New Jersey, Walczak saw smoke pouring out of the Trade Center. He began calling the office and the homes of his colleagues. No one on the foreign exchange desk where he worked survived. Walczak had to reinvent himself as an equities trader.

"I still feel a tremendous sense of loss. You start to think of how much time you spent with these people. More time than with your own family." Walczak says he has been able to honor his friends through work. "I needed to do this. I can't imagine going somewhere else. I feel like what we're doing comes from within. We're rebuilding the company and rebuilding ourselves. It gies you a sense of completion."

Overall, though, he feels happy. He feels happy. He now works in Cantor's Shrewsbury, New Jersey office, eight minutes away from home. He can surf nearly every summer evening if he wants.

* Cantor Partner David Kravette, a childhood friend of Lutnick and one of only two Cantor survivors who had been in the office that morning and left before the plane hit . . . He lived because a customer had forgotten his photo ID and Kravette needed to clear him through lobby security. He had considered sending his secretary but decided to go himself because she was seven and a half months pregnant. After the initial explosion, he saw an elevator free-fall to the ground and a fireball of jet fuel rage through the lobby straight at him before "it just stopped and sucked back in on itself."

In the firm's post 9/11 rebuilding, Kravettte was forced to switch jobs and become an equities trader after a dozen years trading bonds. He's progressed quickly and is more successful than he's ever been.

For a year after the attacks, he woke up ofent in the night, short of breath and full of panic. He found the only thing that helped was work. He thinks often about the friends he lost.

* LaChanze Fordjour was in her ninth month of pregnancy on September 11th when her husband, Calvin Gooding, a Cantor employee died in the attacks. She was one of 38 wives of Cantor Fitzgerald victims who were pregnant. At the birth of her baby she told friends that she could never imagine remarrying and she was irritated with those who suggested it.

In December after the attacks, an author heard about LaChanze's loss, called her and told her she needed to get out of the house and start working. She then offered LaChanze an opportunity to try out for a role in an Off Broadway theater near Times Square. It changed everything. "I really was spiraling down," she says. "I was an unemployed actress with two children, a husband who had died. My prospects were slim. I got that job, and I saw that I could be productive. That I had things I could bring to people."

Her children were instrumental in her healing. "I call them my earth angels because they forced me out of myself. It was important to be able to take care of someone else." She says she thinks of Calvin every day when she puts her children to bed. Her older daughter, six-year-old Celia, shares Calvin's features and his boisterous personality. Zaya is more introspective, thought just as smart. She's four and reading at a second-grade level. Two years ago she met the artist Derek Fordjour and she has married him.

* "For a good six months my life was a black hole," says Phil Marber, the popular head of Cantor Fitzgerald Equities. "For a long time I couldn't really figure out why I wasn't there with everybody else. And then you ask, what's my purpose in life? Things like that. All I wanted was to get the company back to where it was, to the level we were at in 2000."

Marber says he can't imagine wht life would be life if the firm had gone under. He has too much of himself invested in it. Now that his division is doing better than ever, he's beginning to let himself relax and spend more time with his two teenage daughters. And he takes great pride in the fact that the firm has paid out more than $180 million of its profits to the families of their employees who died that day. "We've survived, and we've lived up to our promises, and I feel very good about that."

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These stories are great examples of individuals over coming great loss in a very difficult situation. I salute those who have worked so hard to overcome these challenges and move happily forward in their lives! A great example of the strength of the human spirit, the power of work and helping one another, the things that really make "miracles" happened.