story29.xml

story29.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-01-31

Thanks for your message and your concern. We are alright...just. That means we?re doing well physically. The emotional side is a different story. Each of us experienced this horror in different ways:

I was under 1 WTC 20 minutes before the first attack enroute (via the PATH) to Jersey City for a class that was originally to have taken place in that complex (but was moved at last minute for space reasons) Most of my seminar attendees had their offices over at 1 WTC; so -- at 8:50 am -- one of them received a cell phone call from his wife asking if he was OK, as there was a reported fire in his building. We were in a windowless room...so, as a group, we left the classroom and walked to the (33rd story) windows of our riverside building , which afforded a panoramic view -- 1000 unobstructed yards away -- of the WTC complex.

It was a gruesome sight. Someone who occupied one of the nearby desks handed me his binoculars (he uses them to watch ships in the harbor) and I watched the flames shooting from the upper tiers and then began to see people jumping from the windows. That was particularly difficult. Since that building housed some of my students' offices, they were in a panic. We immediately called a halt to our activities and started to pack up. Just then, I SAW the second airplane (huge) ram into Tower Two and explode into flames. At this point someone said..."Holy Christ...this is no accident. They?re terrorists!"

The building we were in is the tallest on the Jersey side of the river...and someone said "Let's get the hell out of here before they take this one!" I had all my baggage for London with me..(I was to have had a limo pick me up at 6 PM to take me to the airport)...so I schlepped all my teaching materials, (baggage, wrapped gifts, handouts
-- four bags worth) downstairs to Exchange Place -- which looks right out over the water across New York Harbor to the World Trade Center.

There we are...thousands of us in the street...with this unbelievable view of the carnage...completely and totally helpless to do anything but stare in utter horror. Police were pushing us back, for fear that there may be nearby terrorist activity. No one knew anything!

At that point? about 20 minutes later...the second tower imploded...sending debris flying into the River and all over the surrounding areas. A work associate of mine had been on the ferry to New York from the Jersey side when she saw the second plane blast. The ferry turned around and I ran into her; and both us -- dazed and panic stricken -- grabbed each other, did a bit of crying and held on to the air. It was like watching a war movie or an 007 drama unfold before you and you are an ?extra? player. It was surreal. People just stood there...unable to utter real words, much less sounds.

My friend, Angela, told me that she lived about 8 blocks back in Jersey City and would I like to go there? So...with the tonnage of my stuff, off we took by foot...arriving in time to turn on the TV and see the second building implode. I couldn't reach Sandy. No oper-ational phones. Angela's husband called her on his car phone and I asked him to leave a message for Sandy on either our home phone or her office phone that I was all right. A co-instructor whom I was to meet in England for tomorrow's (now cancelled) seminar reached Sandy who asked if she would call me at the number that Angela?s husband had left on the machine. So, by third party coincidences, we found out about one another's safety by around noon. This was a huge relief!

Sandy had had her own experiences. Having voted in the primary, she was headed up out of the subway on Canal Street to her college -- which is four blocks from the WTC. She heard (first),then saw, an extremely low-flying jet -- obviously in trouble-- crash into the first tower...leaving a gaping hole in the shape of a plane....followed by smoke, then flames.and, as she describes it, paper fluttering down from the sky like snow ...the remnants of the work space on the upper floors. Equally surreal!

The college closed (now being used as a receiving morgue and staging area) and she walked the over 100 blocks back home...as the destruction continued behind her. It was a two-hour trek back to West 8lst Street. She then spent the next several hours fretting about me, since she knows my work is often in the World Trade Center.

We've lost friends (the flight attendant on the AA crash into the Pentagon...my sister's closest friend and next door neighbor.) I've probably lost a few associates from Morgan Stanley (it housed 2500 workers on the upper stories of Tower Two). I'm not sure about my Lehman clients, but I am an executive coach to three vice presidents who work(ed) on the 38th floor of One WTC. In these past 15 years, my primary business has been in the financial services industry, teaching interviewing techniques to thousands of executives in the Wall Street community. As the days unfold, there will be more stories and more
grief. We wait. Our hearts break a little. We pray.

As I write these thoughts, 5 WTC has just collapsed and One Liberty Plaza ? where I designed a training and development center for Merrill Lynch 25 years ago is about to implode. Sic transit gloria mundi!

I'm grateful to be here. I haven't felt this stunned since the JFK assassination...and they're not that many folks around who remember that, as do we. It was an equally hopeless moment in which we all felt to powerless, hurt and angry.

I was unable to get back to the city. so my friend's husband drove me to Hoboken last night where I slept at my niece and nephew's apartment. The ferries started letting people cross this afternoon...and, as I chugged across the Hudson toward the Chelsea Piers, there was the massive gap in the skyline...something was no longer there..a familiar landmark, part of my heart and a lot of my identity. We will never be quite the same again, will we?

So there is the longer version of how we are....but we ARE here. I'm going to get a little counselling later this week...just to help me put some of this together.

Stay in touch and keep us in your thoughts and prayers.


September 12, 200l