Twenty-five years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people after taking control of four passenger planes and crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
In that time, some communities have recovered and others still bear the scars; a generation has come of age that understands 9/11 as a historical event. As a New Yorker who lived through that day and felt our city and nation rally after the attacks, I find the anniversary is a moment when all of us can reflect on how things changed and how we united in our collective loss.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a junior salesperson at a Wall Street bank. I worked on the bank’s trading floor, a football-field-sized room crammed with desks, giant television screens and people. I was constantly surrounded by dozens of people, most of them talking, sometimes shouting, very loudly.
When the first plane hit the North Tower on 9/11, the trading floor went silent. Wall Street is a community, and the traders at our firm worked with brokers who had offices at the World Trade Center. It wasn’t that each of us knew someone in those buildings — we all knew dozens.
The traders I worked with had direct phone lines to the brokers and used them to find out what was happening there. But it turned out, my coworkers had to tell the brokers what they were seeing on TV. It still chills me that so many people in the towers didn’t know.
My coworkers had to tell the brokers what they were seeing on TV. It still chills me that so many people in the towers didn’t know.
After the second plane hit the South Tower, our concern turned to panic. Conversations changed from “Isn’t this crazy?” to: How are you going to get out of there?
When the bank sent all of us home that day, I rushed block after block to wait for my fiancé (now my husband). He had run, too. Earlier that morning, he had gotten off the subway near the World Trade Center and saw the chaos. After he called his parents from his office nearby to tell them he was OK, he fled downtown.
Like so many New Yorkers, I was frantic to do something to try to help or make sense of what was happening. I made a list of everyone I knew who worked in those buildings. I began to call friends, family and hospitals, anyone I could think of, until eventually there was no one left to call — but there were still names left on my list.
As a city, New York was grieving. As a financial center, New York was reeling. The U.S. stock market closed for four trading days. If you included the weekend, it was the New York Stock Exchange’s longest closure since 1933. But Wall Street keeps moving forward, and on Sept. 17, it reopened and trading resumed.
“The market is ready, the country is ready,” NYSE Chair Richard Grasso told CNBC. “We’re back to business. Don’t bet against America because you’ll be wrong.”
Ringing that bell to signal the return of Wall Street was a statement of determination and patriotism: Those who attacked us would never win. America will stand strong together.
But missing that day and every day after were so many people thousands of us did business with.
Twenty-five years ago, Lower Manhattan was the Financial District, and the World Trade Center was its center. That has changed over time as companies moved to other parts of the city or to other cities entirely. What was once “the pit” and “Ground Zero” is now a memorial, with reflecting pools, offices, a performing arts center, even a mall. All around the footprint of our national tragedy — a place where people wondered if anyone would ever return — is now a vibrant neighborhood.
Yet the memories of those who worked there, who lived there and who were on those planes 25 years ago live on. The buildings are gone, but we remember those colleagues and neighbors every year by saying their names aloud. We see their faces in the children of those who died that day, many of whom now work alongside people who once worked with their parents.
For me, the memory of how New Yorkers came together in those early dark hours still resonates. It gives me hope when crises erupt that in the face of unexpected horror, we know instinctively how to come together, to put aside our differences and to focus on what matters most. I hope that we will continue to remember that.
Charlie Herman contributed to this story.
The post I worked at a Wall Street bank on 9/11. I still remember how New Yorkers united. appeared first on MS NOW.
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