9-11 Conversations, 10 years of memories

Edward's cousin worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. I would hear about his cousin's death when Edward came into Barnes & Noble in Westport, where I began working in October, 2001 after my job in New York came to an end that August.

Edward was very depressed. He just wanted something of his brother's, wanted to go back, touch the site. I believe he got a sweater of the cousin's.

Then there was the time I was wrapping a child's gift. I smiled, "Who's it for?"

The patron, stonefaced, told me "her father died in the attacks."

***
Moving to New York in 2001, I had a choice of either living in the city or moving farther out into the 'burbs. I chose the latter, but commuted into Midtown Manhattan, where I worked as a real estate writer for Rubenstein Associates. This PR firm happened to have represented, and still does, Larry Silverstein Properties.

I had no idea who Silverstein was, but I knew this was all pretty fancy. I also knew that New York was a mystery, from its east side to its west side, Chelsea to lower Manhattan and the buzz of Midtown.

When I left that job, just a few weeks shy of 9-11, I didn't realize how lucky I was. I remember jumping into a cab and heading out to Battery Park and staring out at the Statue of Liberty across the river. I'll succeed here, I thought, even though it was not yet clear to me how. I knew PR was not really for me.

***
After 9-11, I felt compelled to head back to the city and connect. I went to Cornelia St. to read poems. That was the first night at Cornelia, the first of many nights where I'd share my poems. There, the Wall Street Poet shared his beautiful and eloquent prose -- so sharply contrasted to the wandering, bohemian offerings of us. Eugene Schlanger, a.k.a. the WSP, knew intimately the streets around the New York Stock Exchange, Battery, Wall, Front.

That Friday night in September, 2001 a collection of women got together in the Village to support one another, share phone numbers we'd never call, and then stumble out into the still grey night of New York. The ashes still deep in the air just a few blocks south of us, I remember one woman telling me about a coworker she'd lost that day. It was an everyday commment in those early days after the attack.

I went to board my train home from Grand Central, passing the hundreds of faces of the "missing" tacked to makeshift placards as I walked. I took a couple pictures of people looking at the names. Instinctively I knew none of these people was actually missing.

***
At Bridges, a mental health facility in Milford, Conn. I temped for a couple weeks right after 9-11.

While there, I was tasked with filing, making appointments and greeting visitors. I noticed that one particular counselor, Mary Fetchett, wasn't taking appointments. "Why isn't Mary booking?" I asked.

A voice told me then about her son, Bradley.

Mary Fetchett later became a very vocal and nationally-known activist, a beacon for the 9-11 families as they took those precarious steps toward the new reality. For although we were all grieving the loss of our innocence, the loss of a world without 27 security checks and bomb-sniffing dogs at airports, people like Mary Fetchett, my patron Edward McManus, and later, families of my coworkers from Incisive Media in SoHo, who lost 10 workers at Windows on the World would be knowing something deeper.

And for them, for David Rivers of Incisive Media, Bradley Fetchett, Edward's cousin, the poet's coworker and all the hundreds more I shed a tear.

No, it didn't change the world that day. And other countries have experienced even more abominable horrors, but this will always stand uniquely as a great American tragedy. And today, more than ever, I am very proud to be an American.

Synchronicity--my move to NY shortly before 9-11

Those who believe in Fate know it comes in all types: good, bad, and somewhere in between. Yet, fortunes are made on the advice of sages who predict nothing but starlight and roses, a yellow-brick-road of riches and romance into perpetuity--she shows equanimity, and it’s up to all of us to read the signs.

Moving eastWhen my regular freelance job came to a screeching halt in the spring of 2001, I didn’t want to give up my dream of moving to the east coast. I’d been writing articles each month for a CBS/Winstar startup, and had been having a ball. My producers were grooming me to come out and try my luck at a promotion. Yet thanks to Ch. 11, that dissipated somewhere between a check that was never cut and my resolve to trade bikinis for parkas.

I was leaving Ventura, California.

A contact at a top PR company in Manhattan, Rubenstein Associates, told me I was one of the most pleasant journalists he knew. He was so sorry I’d lost the freelance gig, so perhaps he could connect me with his boss and maybe there was a writing job for me. I was thrilled that he’d suggest this, and before I knew this was being lined up faster than I could book my ticket.

Within a handful of months, I’d met the boss, been offered a position they created for me in the real estate division, and was packing my bags for the drive east.

June, 2001“You need to familiarize yourself with New York,” my new boss said. He wanted me to go out to visit all the properties, from apartments in the Chelsea to a post office development on Murray Hill.

I had one in mind, too, that was especially significant: the World Trade Center.
My freelance boss Andy had told me to go up to the top. “The Statue of Liberty looks like a green Barbie Doll from up there,” he said.

That was April, when I’d come out for the interview at Rubenstein, and when I was a tourist. But now I was a bigshot PR writer and I needed to go visit the Twin Towers because our company represented the owner. His name was Larry Silverstein – a name as unfamiliar to me at the time as the comment my boss made about not pining over Murray Hill. “It’s not what New Yorkers would consider an idyllic location.”

Then he’d screw his nose up at me, as if to say ‘What on earth did we hire?’ True: I kept getting lost walking out of Grand Central Station and was twice late for work because I ended up going east instead of west. The subways also confused me, as did the overwhelming noise, rat population and 27 ways to get out of and to GCS. Yet I was in love and wanted to get to know my new home in the way I knew kick-back Ventura.

August, 2001The second week of August, though, the job and I parted ways. That is all I am allowed to say, except I’d like to add that in hindsight I’d have moved to the city earlier, learned my way around as best I could, and keep my stories of getting lost to myself.

Nevertheless, by Sept. 11, 2001 I was an office temp – not a bigshot PR writer. My salary was $12/hour with no benefits vs. a stable income. I was holed out in Wilton, Conn. as a receptionist for an ad agency, where it was one of my jobs to turn on the tvs each morning. The company wanted to watch their ads play on the telly.
This is the only job I’ve ever had like that, where I got to watch TV while being paid. It was pretty cool. I guess I had a few letters to type, but mainly, I watched tv and delivered mail.

I lived in Stratford, Conn. at the time, roughly a 40-mi drive southwest. I had a big apartment, a big cat, a nice car, but no friends. I was still in the getting-to-know-you stage in my community.

So on Sept. 10 when I went to sleep – having enjoyed talking to my half-sister, who was celebrating a birthday that day – I had nothing particularly to feel bad about. I was sorry the job had ended, of course, but I was confident I’d get something else. I was eager to explore my new home, particularly getting back to Mystic, where I’d gone in June, and see the old seaport. I was also eager to explore New York and get to know it in a way that would have been valuable to Rubenstein.

Yet, I woke up so early on Sept. 11 that none of this hope was in my mind. I was anxious, restless. I couldn’t get back to sleep. So at 5:00 a.m. I got in the Nissan Sentra and drove to Wilton looking for an early-morning diner. I sat and ordered eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. A man in the booth next to me crawled in with his child and started smoking. I can’t remember if I asked him not to smoke – probably not – but remember this as jarring. Smoking was not allowed in California restaurants, but at the time it still was in Connecticut and New York.

I pulled out a journal I kept in my satchel. I wrote: “Sept. 11, 5:43 a.m. I feel restless…something in the air. What is it? Am I perhaps anxious about having to learn to drive in the snow? Something foreign to me? Or am I anxious about having to meet new friends and start this whole new life?”

I paused and sipped my coffee. The smoker in front of me turned around and acknowledged my presence. I was probably sleepy but all I can remember is being in sort of a fog.

So I drove to work.

The first tower is struckI sat in the parking lot until they would allow me to go in. Finally I did go, and once inside flipped on the tvs. It was about 8:30, and my mind was on coffee, how tired I was, and what I might write while working on the office computer.

Then NBC broke with the news:

Bryant Gumbel said: “Hello, we are just getting word that the World Trade Center has been hit by a plane…”

I am probably paraphrasing. Memory does that.

This must have been just after 8:45, when the first plane was hit…And then the announcer, still speaking, had to garishly tell us, the American morning viewer, that wait, we were now seeing another plane slice into the second tower.

These were no passenger planes mis mmunicating with the FAA.

This was war.

I picked up the phone and dialed. Mom answered groggily from Sausalito.
“Heee—lllo?”

“Mom, a plane just went into the World Trade Center.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“Mom—you don’t understand…”

She was so sleepy, I told her to get back to bed and called my dad.

He got it – immediately. “Oh my God. I’ll bet you’re glad you’re not in New York today.”

I stared at the images in front of me, still recalling how my guts sank to my bottom the second I watched the live images of United Airlines flight 175 from Boston crash into the south tower of the WTC and explode.

I breathed.

Dad and I said our quick I love-yous. And I hung up.

Sept. 11, 2011In the decade that has followed, I’ve written about real estate for a few publications and even had the pleasure of interviewing Barbara Corcoran, one of Manhattan’s biggest names in real estate.

I’ve learned how to traverse the miles of Manhattan the way ants can find their way in the long line in your bathroom after a rain. I have even made peace with my six-week, aborted stint at Rubenstein and forgiven myself for any of my own shortcomings. Good lord, how could I have possibly known New York City in a few days or even weeks? The job I took there was really designed for a New Yorker.

And through happenstance, I suddenly became one.

On Sept. 11 this year, I look back at that date ten years ago, knowing full well that if I had better understood why Murray Hill wasn’t saleable and why Silverstein properties are, I might still have the job.

And then again, I might have been at one of Silverstein’s properties on Sept. 11, which was a workday after all. I might have been traveling up to the top for a view of that Barbie Doll, as I had done in April of 2001.

On that date, an elderly gentleman who ran the overlook, explained why he’d posted a “NO VIEWING TODAY” sign.

“Zero visibility,” the old guy told me. “Come back another day.”

--the end--