I took this picture on Thanksgiving Day in 1987. It was my first look at a place that would capture my attention for many years.
I bought a picture of the towers that still hangs in our office. I got it in Times Square in 1999 when my crazy boss made me visit our offices in the World Trade Center. I was supposed to impress the staff of various departments so that when we asked for special favors they would do them. I remember being on the OTC trading floor and thinking why are these guys always so curt? They had windows that looked out on the Statue of Liberty. I remember meeting all those people that had just been voices on the phone and they all, six years later, loved to tell the story of the first World Trade Center bombing. I remember vividly that it took some folks up to three hours to get out that day.
I went back later that year with a co-worker who had been there in 1993 graduating from training at Windows on the World and having to walk down all those stairs. She was a little scared and I tried to calm her by saying nothing will ever happen to this building again.
The building was a marvel to me. The elevators that went up so fast, the mall in the basement, the subway that ran under it but mostly it was the people that worked there. They were all so smart and so quick. I could barely keep up with what they were saying but even with their New Yorker attitudes they all loved that we came from Denver just to see them.
Two years later, I am nine months pregnant and very upset with my compliance officer. I decide to lie down and make sure my stomach ache is result of the previous day’s fight with the compliance officer and not contractions. At 7:00am, I think it is time to call work and tell them I will be late. The phone rings and rings and rings. Big no-no at an investment bank, so I call back and chastise the person who should have answered the phone the first time I called. She very calmly says, you need to turn on your TV and I do. I never go to work because our building in Denver is evacuated. I never leave the TV. When the towers collapse all I can think is three hours. They did not have enough time to get out. All those voices on the phone that became friends could not have made it out in time.
The next day I go to work, one of the guys I work with asks me to fax a document. It needs to be done right away. When I say I can’t, he starts to argue. When he finally stops, I say again, I can’t, that fax machine no longer exists. He shakes his head and walks away. It was stunning to us that a place we called, faxed and emailed dozens of times a day was gone. It would be weeks before we found out what happened to our co-workers and in the meantime, I developed high blood pressure and was put on bed rest. For three weeks I sat on the couch watching the coverage, sure the world was ending as I was about to bring a new life into it.
Turns out we were lucky because Morgan Stanley employees were taught to leave the buildings at the first sign of trouble and they did that day. Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center complex on September 11, 2001 and only 13 employees died because of a little luck and a lot of planning and a man named Rick Rescorla. If you would like to honor those who were lost on that terrible day, google Rick Rescorla. Even though I never had the pleasure to meet him, I am proud to say that I once worked for the same company as Rick Rescorla.
Morgan Stanley and the World Trade Center will always have a special place in my heart. So if you see me cringe when people put down Wall Street it is because those people in that building were Wall Street to me and on many days, in many ways, they were my heroes. They cancelled trades and pushed through transfers and found certificates. They saved me more times than I wish to admit.
Someday I hope to go back to New York, see the new building and the World Trade Center memorial and honor all the heroes of that terrible day.
