As I began my 20 minute drive to the Princeton Junction train station from my home in Pennington, NJ on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful blue sky on what I thought would be just another busy Tuesday in my typical work week.
It was a welcome change from my normal routine of driving in total darkness to catch the 5:35am Amtrak train to NYC. I decided to take the later 7:20am Amtrak train that day because I was extremely tired from attending a long client dinner the night before and had not arrived back in Pennington until after midnight. The train arrived on time at Penn Station at 8:30am and as I walked up the escalator to 7th Avenue for my 12 minute walk to Credit Suisse First Boston where I worked, I can still vividly recall looking up at that blue sky again and getting excited about what would be another long day ahead of meetings but also by the specter of taking an 8 mile run during my lunch break as I was in the final stages of training for my first NYC Marathon in early November.
I arrived at my 6th floor corner office on Madison Avenue by 8.45am and settled into my chair answering a ton of emails while sipping the first of the many cups of coffee I would consume that day. All of a sudden, my colleague John Hervey, ran into my office shouting “Jack, the WTC has been hit by a plane”. He then pointed toward my window, yelling “Look, you can see the black smoke in the distance”. Soon enough, our entire floor was in a state of panic as word spread quickly throughout the building. Colleagues kept running in and out of my office and phones were ringing off the hook with everyone on our floor and the other 35 floors of the building looking frantically for any piece of news. This was long before the age of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook but fortunately we did have a couple of TVs on the floor and many of us initially stood transfixed by the headlines that were coming out of CNN. We watched in horror as the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46am followed by the second plane at the South Tower at 9:03am. Word soon spread that 2 other planes had been hijacked and then came the news that the planes had crashed — one into the Pentagon building and the other into an open field in PA. Meanwhile, all flights in the US were grounded and all tunnels and bridges into and out of NYC were closed.
By 9:45am, I was called to an emergency meeting with our CEO and the other senior executives on the 36th floor. I managed the US Equity Research Department back then and had responsibility with two of my colleagues for more than 400 analysts, research assistants, and staff and our number one concern as it was for the other Divisional Heads of the firm was whether we would be able to get our people out of the building and safely back home. So we made arrangements to get an appropriate number of cots and sleeping bags just in case the city remained in lockdown mode. As that meeting was ending, we saw the South Tower crumble to the ground and then watched in horror shortly thereafter when the North Tower collapsed. It was now apparent that our country was under attack and that the world we had grown up in was forever changed.
As I look back on that awful day, we were consumed with the basic task of locating and establishing contact with each of our Division’s employees. Many of our analysts were traveling that day visiting clients across the country as well as globally in Asia and Europe. We needed a strict accounting of everyone as quickly as possible as well as a gameplan for where they would stay and ultimately how we could get them back to NY. Some of the stories were really touching and highly personal because of my relationship with them and having known their families. One of our analysts was stranded in Tokyo and wanted to make sure his wife knew he was ok. Our boss — Al Jackson — was in London that day and wouldn’t be able to get a flight back home for another 8 days. Another analyst — Gary Yablon — was stuck in Kansas City visiting one of the railroad companies he followed and after several days of finding no realistic way to get back home, he came up with a masterful creative stroke — he persuaded the company to let him ride on one of the company’s freight trains back to NYC so he could be with his wife and young children, my favorite story of true perseverance.
In the end, we succeeded in locating everyone in our Department and much to our surprise, the ban that had been placed on incoming and outgoing transit at tunnels and bridges in NYC was lifted by the end of the day, allowing all of our NY employees to return home. I too made it home in time for an evening candle light service that was organized by one of our neighbors. It was the first of what would become many special candlelight services and funerals I would attend that fall. When my wife and I had finally put our three young children to bed that night, I went into my home office and was amazed at how many people had left me a voicemail just wanting to know if I was ok. Hearing those soothing voices from family members and from lifelong friends allowed the tears to finally rain like buckets for everything that had happened but to also give me the energy and the will to get back up again on Wednesday morning and all the mornings after and begin the difficult journey of trying to comprehend and make some sense out of what had just happened.
Over the past 23 years people always ask me where God can be found in moments of such sheer terror as 9/11 or in other tragedies that are all too common today. Answering that question really tests your faith but in my view, I saw God that day in the way our firefighters, our police, our security people, our brave first responders, and literally hundreds of everyday people doing whatever they could to save lives and to help their fellow brothers and sisters on that awful Tuesday morning. I can still see God in the comfort and care they offered then and continue to offer the surviving family members in the years that followed. On 9/11, it didn’t matter what color your skin was, or your ethnicity, or whether you were rich or poor, or old or young — the goodness of people responded in profound ways that connect with our basic humanity and the love we have for our fellow brothers and sisters. Life will never be the same again for any of us that lived through that experience and the scars remain especially deep for the thousands of families who lost a loved one that day.
So today we say our prayers for the 3,000 heroic souls we lost that day and for their families along with the hope that they will see their loved ones again. And, we say a prayer that our country can come together once again like we surely did 23 years ago and in doing so, we can honor those immortal words from our Founding Fathers in 1782 of “E Pluribus Unum, out of many, we are one”. If not now, when?
