Remembering 9/11: Lessons in Life and Investing

Yet another anniversary of the 9/11 attacks have come and gone.  

Listening to some of the newscasts this Tuesday, I was struck by commentators talking about how people remember where they were when they heard the news about the attacks, much as those of us who are old enough to remember JFK’s assassination remember where we were on November 22, 1963.

Remembering the 9/11 attacks took me back to that fateful day.  This past Tuesday was much like 9/11/01:  it was a gorgeous day with a bright blue sky and few if any clouds, with a temperature in the 70’s.  The morning of 9/11, I sat at the kitchen table as I usually did in those days (before I bought my office property), reading The Wall Street Journal.  In a departure from my normal habit of turning the television on, with CNBC blaring in the background and distracting me from focusing on the newspaper, I decided to turn off the noise and enjoy a peaceful, quiet morning.  All of my attention would be focused on the newspaper, with my yellow Labrador retriever, Sunshine, lying at my feet.

That quiet morning was suddenly interrupted by a phone call.  My father phoned from San Antonio to announce that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  Being a professional skeptic, I told him that the story was probably a hoax.  He said, “It’s no hoax, turn on the TV!”  And there it was, WTC Tower 1, its top few floors lost in a black, billowing cloud.   My thoughts immediately turned to those souls in the upper floors who were either trapped or had died on impact or shortly thereafter.  I wondered if there was a possibility of a rooftop rescue for the living, and how scary that would be.

Windows on the World, a restaurant that was frequently used for business meetings and conferences, was located on those top floors.  In January 1999, my husband and I had attended an investment conference hosted at Windows on the World.  I shuddered to think about having actually been in that very restaurant just a couple of years before this tragedy.

About 15 minutes later, all of a sudden, Tower 2 burst into flames about mid way down from the top of the building.  I thought it might have been a bomb, since it was not obvious from the CNBC studio’s vantage point in New Jersey that a second plane had crashed into the second tower.  This was a lot worse, since there would be many more people trapped above the impact site, unless they had evacuated the building after the first plane hit.

I thought about how many people might be working in those buildings – 50,000 perhaps?  How would they get out?  How many thousands would die trying to escape?

After that, it was announced that President Bush had ordered all commercial airplanes to land immediately.  I asked myself if this was an overreaction.  Surely the WTC was the only target!  But no, the Pentagon was next.  At that point, I can’t tell you what was going through my mind.   It is unprintable.

Moreover, my husband was in New York City on 9/11, attending an industry conference.  Having been to New York City just a month prior, I knew where he would be, and it was several miles from the Twin Towers.  He had suggested that I might want to go along and be a tourist.   But my instincts told me to stay home.  Obviously, it was a good decision, for more than one reason.

As I thought whether or not to travel with Bob, I had pondered seeing the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Observation Deck at the WTC!   In August 2001, I had attended a reunion of friends in New York City, and some of them had gone to the Observation Deck on the top of one of the WTC towers.  It was a highlight of their trip.

Back in the 1980’s I had visited the Observation Deck in the express elevator.  Just for fun, I decided to time the journey on the elevator to see if it took the same amount of time to ascend as to descend.  It took about a minute for the elevator to rise to the top floor, but three seconds less to descend back down to the base of the tower.  I thought about going back just for fun to see if the times to ascend and descend had changed.

In any event, Bob’s mother phoned to ask if I had heard from him.  I told her with confidence, “No, but I am sure that he is safe, since his conference is in Midtown and the World Trade Center is Downtown”.  Of course, I knew that Bob was going to meet a salesperson from Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, and there was a small possibility that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But surely, he would be at the conference in Midtown….

About 10 minutes later, Bob phoned.  He said that he could only get through to our toll-free number that we had at our house.  Phone calls to non-toll-free numbers would not go through.  I told him that his mother had just phoned me, and that I would let her know that he was fine.  

Manhattan was closed off by the authorities.  No one could get on or off the island.   When travel was finally restored, Bob phoned to say that he was taking a taxi to Penn Station and had devised an alternative plan to get home, since all commercial flights were still grounded.  At the time, Bob did not even own a cell phone, so he had to use either his hotel’s phone or a pay phone to get in touch with me. 

Penn Station is a central train station where various railroads (including Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and the PATH trains to New Jersey) arrive and depart.  The fact that multiple railroads converged in that central location turned out to be a Godsend.

Little did Bob know when he closed the door to his hotel room that his plan was to change.  When he arrived at Penn Station, the lines at the ticket windows of Amtrak were lengthy.  He immediately knew that there would be no room for him on Amtrak.  Luckily, Bob is a train buff who knows his way around the rails.  He went to another floor where the PATH trains operated.  It was practically a ghost town.  He walked right up to the ticket window, and bought a ticket to Trenton, New Jersey. 

In Trenton, Bob hopped on a SEPTA train to Philadelphia. Before departing from Trenton, he phoned me to let me know where he was.  He told me that his plan involved trying to find a rental car in Philadelphia at the airport.  But if a rental car were unavailable, he knew friends in Philadelphia and would have a place to stay. 

Shortly after he phoned, his assistant at work phoned me to say that she had found a rental car at the Philadelphia airport, and asked if Bob still needed it.  I told her “yes” and she immediately confirmed with the rental car company to set aside the car for Bob.  Rental cars were in very short supply as stranded air passengers were forced to find other ways home.  Had I not been at home (in the right place, at the right time), Bob might well have been stranded in Philadelphia.

To complete his journey, Bob took a taxi to the Philadelphia airport, drove the rental car to the Dayton, Ohio airport, where his car was located, then drove home.  

During his journey, Bob rode in two taxis, two trains on different rail road systems and two passenger cars, one of which was a rental.

Bob and I personally knew 12 people who worked in the Towers, or in Building 7, which collapsed later that evening due to collateral damage.  Only six of those people survived.  One colleague worked in Building 7 and happened to be late to work that day.  Another friend was in Tower 1 and ran when the first plane hit.  He was lucky.  He worked on the 10^th floor.

The second colleague, who worked in Tower 2, ran when the first Tower was hit.  It took some time, but the woman finally phoned Bob about six weeks later to let him know that she had survived the attack.  She was the one with whom Bob had scheduled what turned out to be an after-work get together, and Bob was devastated when he thought that she had not survived.

This is her version of the story:  “I was at my desk.  When the first plane hit, I did not have my purse, my cell phone or my shoes on.  I just ran.”  As it turns out, she worked on one of the floors that took a direct hit from the second plane. 

As she was walking up the West Side highway in her stocking feet, she was thinking to herself, “I hope that Bob understands why I can’t make it tonight!”  Such is the work ethic of the vast majority of professionals on Wall Street.

Many of her colleagues, who worked for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, stayed at their posts and perished.  I asked Bob why they would stay at their desks when danger was near.  He said that people in our business are used to taking calculated risks, and in this case, they were on the wrong side of the bet.

According to a news account published shortly after 9/11, another colleague was trapped in one of the elevators when Tower 2 was hit, and as a result, the doors were jammed shut as the elevator shaft buckled.  There were two men and two women in the elevator.  The two men pried the doors open so that the two women could escape.  The men were too big to fit through the opening and were in the elevator when the tower collapsed.

The morals to this story:

• Trust your instincts.
• Sometimes, skepticism is unfounded.  Nevertheless, it always pays to be careful and check your facts.
• Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we can be wrong.
• When we take a calculated risk, it should be an informed decision.  But if we take a calculated risk, it should be about a subject about which we are knowledgeable.
• Sometimes, you are in the right place at the right time.  Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.
• There is more than one way to reach your destination.
• Being experienced and knowledgeable can help you (or your client) arrive at the intended destination when others might fail.
• People will do things that may not benefit themselves, but can make a meaningful difference to others.