Original subtitles

...:::: SiliconChip ::::...

Out Of The Clear Blue Sky [2012]

If you came in early, on certain days,

the clouds would sit below the top of the building.

And I would describe it as a Jack in the Beanstalk moment.

It would simply be perfectly blue sky,

white puffy, pillowy clouds below,

and the tip of the Empire State Building sticking up.

Like Jack in the Beanstalk.

Extraordinary.

I once called my wife from the office,

I said: "Honey, what's the weather like?"

She goes, "Sunny, it's beautiful."

l said, "Take the kids inside."

They were BBQing, I said, "Bring everything inside,

it's gonna pour in about live minutes."

She goes, "What are you talking about?

There isn't a cloud in the sky."

We saw the weather from where we were.

And on windy days the buildings would sway.

I remember the doors would actually swing like a ship.

You'd go to the bathroom and you'd see the

water splashing around the toilet.

You heard the creaking and you felt the building move.

Some people got seasick up there.

Every day the planes would fly by,

there was always two guys in the office,

Mike Miller or Phil Mastrandrea,

that always would say, "Whoa! That was close."

They flew past.

And they flew closely enough that you would take notice.

"Look at that!"

"You could only tell it was raining because there

were rivulets running along the windows,

you know, because you would he in the clouds.

It never rained above us, it only rained below."

September 11 was the first day of my son,

Kyle's, kindergarten.

My cell phone rang and I was thinking, "You know,

what could possibly he so important to call me when

I'm at my son's first day of school."

Iran down the stairs and I got in the car.

He said, "We have to get there."

lstarted following lire trucks.

Cause they had the lights and sirens on,

I could get through traffic,

and I just tailed them going downtown.

And I just start saying,

"Let's just get there, you know maybe they got out of

there, they know how to get out of there.

Let's just get there.

Let's just get there.

And I'm calling them and I'm looking up.

And he keeps saying, "It's really had."

He keeps just saying "It's really had,

it's really had."

A person who answered the phone on the trading

floor at Cantor Fitzgerald located near the top of

the World Trade Center said,

"We're blanking dying" when asked what was happening

and hung up.

There was screaming and yelling in the background

and a follow-up call was not answered.

First, the immediate thing that I did was count

because I knew what floor that they were on,

they were on, Mark and Steven were on the 104th floor.

I remember looking at the clock and seeing 9:00,

it turns to 9:01.

I dialed Steven on his cell phone,

and he picks up.

And I go, "Steve, it's Greg."

And he's like, "Greg?"

And I go, "Yeah, I can hear you,

Steve are you OK?"

And he goes, "Greg, I'm..."

And as soon as that, everyone watched the

second plane hang in.

And the second plane hit and exploded.

And I was listening to his reaction as the plane hit,

and he just said, "Oh my God, look at that."

And the phone went dead.

Now I'm at the building,

so I just start grabbing people.

"What floor were you on?

What floor were you on?

What floor were you on?"

I grabbed someone, "What floor are you on?"

I shake them.

They said they were on the 92nd floor and that's when

we started hearing this huge creaking sound,

and that coupled with a jet engine.

And someone screamed out, "Here comes another one!"

And I assumed that, that it was a third jet

coming in low to wipe us out on the ground.

I look hack over my shoulder,

and there's a tornado coming towards me.

It's as high as the sky, and it's a black tornado

rolling towards me.

I'm bailed up and I'm waiting for impact.

And I'm just waiting to die.

I'm waiting, I'm saying "When's it gonna come,

when's it gonna come?"

And I'm thinking, "Shit, I was uptown,

I was line, I was alive, and now I'm gonna die.

Son of a bitch I'm gonna die I can't believe I'm

gonna die. Son of a bitch. I'm gonna die."

Everything went silent, and the building just

came down, and everybody stopped.

Everybody stopped in their tracks and just turned around.

Everybody was quiet.

It was so eerie, I mean it was just,

really I felt like the world stopped.

And down came the building.

Came walking hack down along the corridor to my

desk and I was just looking into people's eyes

and I could say, "How could this hare head thing

get worse right now?"

And I just looked over to my desk and I go,

"Where's the South Tower?"

And they go, "It collapsed."

And then I just said, I looked at my clock,

and I said, "10 o'clock, 9:46."

And then I just was staring at the building,

I just, you know, then, then time was like this,

like that second thing, click, click.

I mean I could hear it in my ear just pounding.

And I'm watching, and I'm watching.

I started thinking, "Maybe I'm dead."

Maybe I'm already dead.

Like, you know, I don't know.

So I, it's black, I can't see my hand.

So I take my lingers to see ill can see and I

poke myself in the eye.

I'm like, "Well, I must he alive because I just

jammed my lingers into my eyes and it hurts."

So I figured, "OK, I must he alive.

I'm blind."

And it got silent.

Not quiet, hut absolute silence.

I guess all the particulate matter in the

air absorbs all the sound or something because I

thought I was deal too.

I could feel the air around you, it's thick,

it's not air.

And I'm thinking, "Don't breathe,

just don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe."

Then I go (inhale noise) "Gotta breathe,

gotta breathe."

One of the times that I opened my eyes,

it wasn't black anymore, it was dark grey,

I couldn't really see anything.

But it wasn't black.

I could see now that our building was still there.

Whoever was in that building,

couldn't have any air left.

And I thought I was going to die outside.

You know that's one of the things I was thinking.

I could've suffocated to death outside,

I don't understand, how could the world he black?

I'm outside.

I'm outside.

I'm outside.

So I just knew they were all dead.

I just knew everyone was dead.

You know Steve was there in '93 they walked

down 104,105 stories in an hour.

And that's why I like, kind of marked my clock.

I just kept thinking, "They're gonna, you know,

walk down the stairs, I think it takes like an

hour, they'll he out in an hour."

You know, it would he OK.

They had enough time to get out, you know,

there was 45 minutes or something in there,

they must've gotten out, I'm sure they got out.

And you know, now it's just we have to wait.

Jimmy gets me to, just aims me and says,

"Come on just walk, just walk."

So we start walking and we're just walking uptown.

Our building collapses.

You hear the huge roar and rumble.

Jimmy and I just look at each other and (shakes head).

You know, we didn't like turn around and look at it

and sort of gasp and say "Oh my God."

They had already died.

So the building had no connection to me anymore.

So when the building collapsed, just, just shrugged.

They were dead.

So I kept walking.

(sigh) I kept walking.

I don't think I thought about my brother yet.

I mean I thought about him,

but I was trying not to, I was trying not to

put his name down.

We took out lawn chairs and sat in the driveway

waiting for Danny to pull up and we sat there,

and people, people brought us Valiums and stuff

because, you know, we were just like (shocked lace).

And I kept looking for him On TV saying, "Oh,

he's gonna come out, I'm gonna see him with ashes

all over, but he's going to survive,

he'll he out there."

Gabriel's cleaning the room downstairs,

goes "Steven's going to need a place to recover

because he's gonna he..."

You know, so she's just scrubbing,

you know like rubbing the skin off her hands,

just scrubbing.

People were just in denial.

Anything you did, didn't work.

But you couldn't sit still.

You know I came in, I hugged my wile.

She was crying hysterically.

So I told her everyone was dead.

I thought everyone was dead.

She said, "No Steven was alive."

Howard was in, in serious shock

and really lost it over his brother.

Um, really.

'Cause when it hit him it was like a, it was,

it was like someone punched him hard.

I was like, "Alright, Steve.

Everybody's dead.

What are we going to do?

We have to liquidate the company.

I mean, I, (stuttering) I don't know,

so maybe we can sell the patents, we can...

All these people's money and it's all probably gone."

And, had.

Bad.

And we have to go to a thousand funerals, and,

so that's what I was telling him,

and he was like, "Well {mumbling} before we

liquidate the company we should talk to Lee."

And I'm like, "Lee?"

He's like, "Yeah Lee he's in London."

I was like, "OM London.

Oh London, yeah we have, that's right we got people who live..."

I mean I think when he said it,

I think it was news.

Like as in, "Oh, Lee in London."

I guess it was a couple hours and Steve Merkel called.

I said, "Thank God.

Are you OK?"

l said, "What's going outliers?"

And he said, "It's, it's not good at all."

And I said, "Howard?"

And he said, "He's with me."

And I said, "Anybody else?"

And he said, "We don't know."

And I'm telling Lee, "Alright look,

so we're going to have to liquidate the company..."

And Lee's like, "Hell no,

we're not liquidating this company."

He's in crisis mode.

We went, we went into immediate survival mode.

So we have a business conversation.

So like, half the business conversation I'm helpful,

and half the business conversation I start crying.

Someone would call and say,

"I'm trying to find out about my husband,

or I'm trying to find out about my son,

or my brother, or sister, or whatever it was."

We would just literally he going from call to call

to call to call to call.

We started what we called a sale list,

which was who's alive, you know,

who do we know who's alive.

Trying to figure out who was alive,

in and of itself, was a huge job.

I mean, we were calling family members,

family members were calling us.

I started calling everyone I worked with, their wives.

"Have "you heard from so and so,

have "you heard from your husband,

{stuttering} have you heard from your wife, you heard?"

The answers were no. no. no. no. no.

You know, I sai-, alter then I started calling

people from other departments and the

answers were no, no, no.

And I stopped calling alter about twenty calls,

because it was just, you know, because like,

the answers were consistent.

I remember the phone ringing at 3 o'clock in

the morning and I'm like "My GOG,

maybe it's Steven calling."

I just reach, down (mumbling),

grabbed the phone, "Steven!"

And there's , and there's a crying,

Elizabeth Jordan, "Jordo", worked right next to Steven.

She's just, "Did Steve say anything about Rob

on the phone?

Did Stu did he say he was OK?

" I mean, we didn't, no one knew then,

I mean people suspected, but we were still

hoping upon hope.

2 o'clock in the morning I start dialing

hospitals, just one alter the other, saying,

"There has to he a mistake,

he has to he in there."

I remember being so afraid.

We were at Tina's, I went to bed,

like midnight, 12:30, and I woke up at 1:30

literally screaming, heart wrenching,

like as soon as I woke up, and saw that I was in

Johnny's house, I re-..., it was real.

And I wanted to go hack to sleep because I was

afraid to wake up again.

So I went outside on the deck and I smoked probably

like, four packs of cigarettes all the time.

I remember calling my mother then.

And crying, like, it's so cold, it was cold,

it was damp, and I remember calling her like,

"It's so cold, if they're alive, you know,

they're wet, they're freezing.

I just stayed on the deck all night long and I heard

a helicopter and my brother Timmy could do

anything from anywhere.

I looked at the helicopter and like, "That's him!

It's Timmy and Johnny, they're going to land here.

OI course they're going to come to Johnny's house.

Where else are they gonna go?

OI course Timmy can get a helicopter.

Timmy can do anything."

So I'm just watching it, watching it,

hoping to God that it would just land soon,

and they'd come home.

Obviously it never landed.

I bargained all night with God, I'm like,

earlier that year I had medical pro-u.

A medical catastrophe that ended up in my having a

colostomy hag, which was then the worst thing

that's ever happened to me, and I said,

"I'll wear the colostomy for the rest of my life,

just bring them hack."

Then I thought I was being greedy.

Then I said, "Alright just bring one hack,

I don't care which one, just bring one."

And then I felt guilty for Tina, like, "Well,

what if it's Timmy and you're wishing for one?"

And I'm like, "Just whichever one."

And then I said, "Alright, if they can't,

if one comes back and they have the survivor guilt

and it'll never he normal, then take them both."

Just all night, making all these bargains,

like "I'll do anything."

But it didn't work.

It was like [our in the morning, just dazed o",

and I had a nightmare.

Watching a spider make a web.

I'm just laying, I can't move,

and I'm just watching.

Just making a web.

It's getting thicker, and thicker, and thicker,

and like it's really, really, really thick,

it completes itself.

And it's lull so there's no more holes,

sort of like a blanket.

Comes down on my lace and I wake up, "UM"

It was like, well, OK, I'm not doing that again.

Sleep?

Nah, that's not somewhere we're going any time again soon.

That wasn't it, so that was it.

And then, uh, I woke up and that's when Allison

thought we needed a place to get together.

And I think I went to sleep at 2 and I got a

phone call at 4, uh, and it was Howard saying,

"Look, you know, we're gonna,

Allison has this idea, let's set up a crisis center.

I want you to set up the crisis center.

I want you to go to the Pierre Hotel

and have it set up."

And I remember waking up the next morning and

just hoping that it was not going to he real.

I was hoping I was going to turn on the TV and

"It's going to he another beautiful September day."

I turn on the TV and they still got the cloud,

and I say, "Ugh".

1010 WINS reporter Steve Kastenhaum.

Steve?

Steve Kastenhaum: Well, Ralph, all over our area,

people are asking, "What has become of their

unaccounted for loved ones and friends?"

Myself included.

When I returned to my apartment building last

night alter spending 10 hours in a disaster zone I

learned that the woman who lives beneath me

never returned home.

This morning another neighbor told me she

called that woman's cellphone immediately

after the plane crashed into one of the towers,

someone on the 105th floor,

at Cantor and Fitzgerald, answered the call.

Woman: I called her cellphone to see that she

was OK, because I thought that she hadn't yet gotten

to work, and the cellphone,

someone you know opened the line,

didn't say hello, I just heard a lot of screaming,

people screaming, "Please help us, please help us,

we're stuck here“

We're on the hundred and fifth floor,

we can't get out."

Steve Kastenhaum: Then the line went dead.

She watched moments later in disbelief as one by

one, the Twin Towers collapsed to the ground.

We have no idea what has become of our

neighbor and friend.

We wonder, "Is she buried alive beneath the rubble?

Did she get out of the building before the

collapse?"

Or did she perish in this horrible tragedy...

The time is now 8:30am.

Welcome to the Bond Market Association Conference call.

The call will now begin.

Now joining the call is Lehman Brothers.

Now joining the call is JP Morgan Chase.

Morgan Stanley.

Now joining the call is Bear Stearns.

Now joining is Merrill Lynch.

When I entered the phone call,

the operator announced, "Howard Lutnick,

from Cantor Fitzgerald, joins the call."

And I, I had really expected a much more

personal response from everyone.

I don't think anybody, I don't think anybody even

said, "I'm sorry."

I think they just went right into business.

I just remember very well one of the guys from

Morgan Stanley being much more concerned about our

competitor, BrokerTech, than, than us.

And, and I remember that no one really said much to us.

You know, maybe one person said anything to us.

I mean, these guys all knew our guys.

They were in the midst of a business discussion.

There was already an agenda about opening the

market and it had been set without regard for our

ability to open or not.

They just made a decision, they said, "Ola,

BrokerTech can open," which was our main

competitor, we should open the bond markets,

which was on the 13th.

They could've easily have opened it another day later.

It was crazy, the city was frozen.

They could've opened on a Monday,

it wouldn't make any difference.

I don't think there was any reason to open on

Thursday as opposed to Monday,

other than the tremendous push by our competitor who

saw this as a great opportunity to profit from

the events of September 11th.

It was a pretty tough call.

You know, and then Howard got on the phone with me

afterwards, and said, "What do you think?"

l said, "Well, what do I think?

There's only one thing we can do, we gotta do it,

we gotta he ready, we gotta he open."

We weren't up and running and I guess we'd

be out of business.

And that would he that.

You kept getting signs of hope.

Their names appeared on the survivor list.

And then I called up Cantor,

and I'm like basically arguing with Cantor, like,

"But his name is on the list."

Like, "Well, the list isn't accurate."

"But isn't it better to be on than off?"

Like, just give me something.

One of my friends who was a firefighter says he

saw the name "Hellman" somewhere,

and they saw Steven alive, on a stretcher.

Michael's name appeared on a sale list.

People called us and his name was on a sale list.

Somebody who I had met through the whole first

day said that they found my husband's name on some

list of somebody who survived.

I mean it was just so crazy, it was just, it wa-...

and your emotions, you were going like,

“Whoom" “Bam”

You know, just like hack, it was like you're getting

thrown back and forth.

Your husband's name I know is Donald...

[simultaneously] Donald Gavagan.

Two of the people that supposedly are in Jersey

Hospitals, Mark and Steven Colaio,

you know they were really close all three of them,

so I'm hoping my husband didn't have a wallet on

him and he is with Mark and Steven.

One of our friends had heard that Mark and Steven

Colaio were, uh, in a hospital in New Jersey and

that 90 Cantor people were in the burn unit in New Jersey.

So this went on like Channel 7 News.

One was up as critically, critically injured and the

other was up as, um, you know just injured,

so we thought they were alive.

My sister-in-law and I completely hugged each other.

I remember us rollin-...

rolling on the floor, like we couldn't believe they

were alive you know?

They were alive, it's OK, my mom was,

my mom was so upset that Mark, I think,

was in critical condition.

I was like, "He'll he line.

They're alive, they're alive, it's OK, it's OK."

I just remember sitting at the desk.

We were all in d-..., had a suite,

so it was all different rooms,

we were all just sitting at desks, calling.

I just thought that they were alive, you know?

We had all these people, all our friends and family

just dialing hospitals for hours.

I remember going over to help open up the crisis

center, not really thinking that a whole lot

of people would be there.

The crowds just sorta grew, and grew, and grew.

And then the place was just mobbed.

It started as a trickle,

a trickle became into a flood of people.

We had 3000 people there? At least.

I was making the announcements.

We're trying to find out who's at the hospitals,

we're trying to find out who's still alive,

those missing persons reports need to be filled out.

We need DNA, so you need to get a comb or

a brush or toothbrush.

Originally people, you know,

sort of showed up hoping that there would be some

indication that their loved one was alive.

People would ask you, "Well, you worked there,

were you there that day?"

And then all of a sudden you're telling your story

over and over and then, you know, they,

they get a glimmer of hope, and they'd think,

"Oh, you were upstairs, so you made it down."

And I go, (stuttering) yeah I go, "No,

I didn't make it down, I was down already."

You know, so, I had actually to modify my

story, actually, you know, white lie so that way they

wouldn't get that glimmer of hope in their eyes.

You'd see it everytime.

"You were upstairs?

Maybe some people did make it."

People were getting angry.

The crowd had gotten upset.

They were like, "Why aren't we hiring forklifts

and and cranes to go down and lilt up the..."

And I'm trying to answer the questions,

which you know, it's the, "The authorities

are doing that."

Someone wanted some information and

nobody had the information.

He just started yelling at us saying, you know,

"You people, you don't know what you're doing,

nobody can give me any information."

He just got really, really hostile and angry.

So I get a call from Kent about 4 o'clock,

he says, "You gotta come hack here, they're,

uh, it's like a riot.

You gotta come over, you gotta come over."

We were trying to, to get all the information

and people were like, "Well how many exits were

there in the building and I'm like, "Well,

I think there were three exits."

And, "Why aren't you doing more?

Why aren't you down there."

It was so loud in the room.

Then I spoke.

They were able to hear me and I could hear them.

I could talk to the people in that room because of Gary.

I knew it was Gary, but I'm just me.

I didn't have anything I could give them.

I didn't have any information I could tell them.

I didn't have any news, no

one had told me anything in the hospital.

So I talked.

I didn't, I didn't have anything to say.

It's just unthinkable that all these people

together could he gone.

And what makes us carry on?

What makes us carry on is to help them.

What else can we do?

What else can I do?

Danny from the, from our equity group.

Great trader.

Big Carl.

Carl was a big guy.

Big Frank.

Big Frank, Frank knew everybody.

Frank knew everybody.

So many people.

So many people.

[sobbing] Hi, Jeff, Jeff Levine from our equity group.

I really think I'm getting dizzy.

Michael Ford. Hi Mike.

So many people missing from this, too.

Timmy Coughlin, Steven Roach.

700 people.

I got all the stage.

A thousand people hugged me, talked to me.

I left with more energy if that's what's going to

help me carry through till tomorrow.

It wasn't a matter of can I,

it was more of a matter of I have to save the business.

You know?

What the hell else was I going do?

I had to give it all I had.

You know, for, for everybody.

You really had an incentive to work,

just the opposite, I wanted to work.

You know?

I mean, it was my choice.

You know, I can sit home and, you know and, and,

and, and you know, just rot in this,

in this horrible thought, or l can be productive.

You know, it does no one good, myself or you know,

anyone else, you know, who's going to count on us

to just keep them going, to he home.

You know, what choice did you have?

The whole concept of, "If we don't get this up

and running , you know, we can't do anything good,

we can't help anybody," was,

was really gaining momentum.

If you're going to help the families of your

friends that you lost, you have to have a business.

If the firm goes under, how are we going to help them?

Sitting at my dining room table, "Alright,

let's, let's see what we've got."

You know, "What's the plan?

What are we going to do?"

It's totally insane.

We sat down at Howard's house with, you know,

with a number of his surviving executives.

First thing we did was we went over each department.

You know, who's with us still?

It was bizarre.

There were departments that were cleaned out.

Everyone was on the desk that day,

everyone cleaned out.

25 people worked on a desk,

24 of them were killed, and one guy happened to be

lucky because he was at a Monday night football game

in Denver the night before.

Out of the trading desk, we lost 135 of 140.

I'm the only one who's out of the equity department office.

The department of 60, 70 guys and you have three

or four names left, and unfortunately, you know,

you're sitting there, "What do we do?"

You know, like, it was just,

it's a conversation no one would ever have in their life.

And no one should, you know?

OK, go down the list.

First time I'm really going down the list

with my eyes open.

You know, just division alter division alter division.

Mortgage hacks, everybody's dead.

You know, business after business,

you got no choice, you just have no choice.

We needed to borrow at the end of Wednesday,

September 12th.

$70 billion dollars.

So the bank requests of me that I sign over control

of the company in exchange for their stepping in and

lending us $70 billion dollars.

Steven's there and he discusses with them some

of the terms of this document,

and so he brings me the document and he goes,

"You know this is the worst document I've ever

seen in my life.

You sign your name on the bottom of this,

they own the company, you have no rights."

"What do you think?"

He goes, "I think you should sign 'cause,

'cause it's that way anyway."

I remember trying to put together a business

care package with the fundamentals,

pens and paper, and staplers.

John said to Bill Long, he says, "OK,

we got to put together a, uh, balance sheet."

And I remember Bill Long took this big piece of oak

tag and he writes down, you know,

"Cantor Fitzgerald".

He puts down "Assets" and "Liabilities".

And he's sitting there and he's looking at this piece

of paper, and he's kinda like, "Well,

what do you write down?

Who knew?

"We had no accounting.

We had no operations.

We had no Human Resource.

We had no legal stall.

We had, we had no nothing.

We had no, we had no anything.

We had a crash course in teaching people how to

clear US Treasuries.

In London.

At night.

When you have 25,30 British guys trying to

figure out the US Treasury market,

when they've never even touched the US Treasury

market, in their whole lives, of how it works,

and how it evolves, and how the payment structures are.

We put up a couple of whiteboards on the wall.

Um, we got a whiteboard, a whiteboard marker and we

started writing down everything we knew about

the US business.

Most of those guys had a piece of knowledge.

We got more and more Whiteboards.

We ended up with lots of whiteboards and lots of lists.

All through that there

were bouts of complete breakdown.

I could be arguing with the best of the best in

terms of the clearing process and tell them

they're all crazy, and [stuttering] our money's

sale and this and this and this,

and I would he in tears maybe live minutes later,

you know just bawling my eyes out.

I mean it was survival mode.

Everyone just went into overdrive.

The energy was intense.

It was makeshift desks, makeshift workstations,

whatever PCs we could find,

whatever workstations we could get from various

places and we, we kinda just slapped them all

together so we could get people working.

Nothing was up.

That was all black.

I mean, it was turned off, no computers inside of it.

And it was like rolling out everything all

at the same day.

Hard to believe but it's been just about 48

hours now since the world

as we know it basically fell apart.

1010WINS reporter Al Jones is hack at the scene

of the wreckage.

It literally takes your breath away.

Al Jones: They're digging inside,

still hoping to find survivors,

they're getting what they call...

This morning after a moment of silence

commemorating those who died,

the US financial markets started trading bonds again.

When the markets opened, on Thursday,

September the 13th, the screens in every bank flicker.

And then come on.

You know, one of the things is if you talk to

people in Wall St., you'd say,

it was one of the happiest things they'd ever seen.

You know, how could Cantor,

which they all knew was destroyed.

You know, when they saw that flicker,

and then it came on.

They were like, "Son of a gun!"

You know, and, they were rooting for you.

They pulled it off

They pulled it o", it's a miracle.

I mean literally to get connected to keep the

trades in the order of flow.

I don't think there was a person around that thought

that we would turn the switch on September the 13th.

I remember the emotion, the emotion in

that room was enormous.

I mean, some people were pretty tired and upset hut

it was a big plus for us to see the trades start ticking.

There was a cheer and then it...

the cheer was all in like B seconds because then,

then it was total silence, and everybody realized

that it's not the time and the place to he cheering.

Some of the first people I saw on the

trading floor this morning were the Cantor Fitz

futures guys, Steve Loren and Wes Trainer just to

name a few, uh, very, it's just unbelievably

courageous that these were some of the first people

on this trading floor.

Every morning I threw up when I woke up and

started feeling the day and, um,

so I was like physically ill from it.

I couldn't take a shower by my...you know, by myself.

Like I would have my sister stand outside the

door because I just couldn't he alone with my

thoughts for a second.

CNN was on, in my room, 24 hours a day.

That was the last time I saw my husband or had any

connection to him was on this news channel.

And it was just something that I felt like if,

when I turn it o" I'm going to he turning him all.

You go through all the motions, you witness it,

and you sort of say, "This really can't be though,

this is so ridiculous, this is so far fetched.

It cannot he.

It is too removed, it is too unreal, to really he."

I remember Thursday I was like getting

into a panic attack.

I was like, had a lix, I needed, I needed to have,

I mean the pictures, I was like, I threw them,

I rememher just throwing them down on the table.

I needed to watch him move,

I was just going through video tapes,

putting them in.

Video tape: "Where are you going?"

"We're going to Disney World!"

"We're going to turn up the volume boys and girls

(yells)" I needed to hear him, I needed to see him.

I needed 3-D.

I didn't need two dimensions,

I needed lull blown, you know,

lull metal jacket Steve. You know,

screaming and yelling and moving and doing all that

stuff that he does.

I remember thinking, "I do not know a day of my

life without my brothers in it.

I'm the baby, I was born into two brothers.

I don't have a life before Timmy and Johnny."

They knew more about me than my Mom does.

They knew secrets my Mom doesn't know.

And nobody else knows what they know.

My whole life history was in them.

On the 13th I saw a diagram of the building.

I went through timelines, about how long it would

take to get down.

I went through that over and over again.

I refined it.

I tried to he realistic about it,

and every time I did, I came to the conclusion

that it was possible for them to have gotten down.

But they had no way to get out.

And they had no way for anyone to get to

them to get them out.

And that's unforgiveable.

This is an ABC News Special Report.

There is no company to the best of my knowledge

which has been more profoundly affected than a

company called Cantor Fitzgerald,

which does a huge amount of the bond trading in the

United States.

A huge number of its employees have been lost

and are still, have been lost and or are still missing.

And earlier today, ABC's Connie Chung sat down and

talked to the CEO of that company.

Peter to some on Wall St., Cantor Fitzgerald

sort of symbolizes the devastation of the

terrorist attack.

It's going to be a different kind of drive

then I have ever had before.

It's not about my family, I get to kiss my kids.

I get to kiss my kids tonight.

But other people don't get to kiss their kids and I

just have to help them.

There's only one reason to he in business,

is because we have to make our company be able to

take care of my 700 families.

700 families, I have 700 families.

I just, I can't say it, I can't say it without crying.

Howard Lutnick.

A personality, from Cantor Fitzgerald, the CEO,

a man with 700 families and a much, uh,

expanded family I would think now that we have

seen him and shared his tragedy with him.

Howard Lutnick, a personality this country

will not forget.

Period.

That's how Howard was thrust into the nation's

spotlight and consciousness,

in the worst of ways, just the worst of ways.

I'm just one hut they're all 700,

there are so many of them.

I'm missing 700 families, 700 people.

The picture of me crying became omnipresent.

I had not intended to cry.

But I couldn't think about all those laces without crying.

So, I hadn't intended to cry hut, uh,

it wasn't up to me.

I wasn't in control.

He became the face of this tragedy.

He made it very real.

That this was, that this was a faceless corporate

tragedy and he made it human.

And it now, it now had a lace.

And that lace was his.

Everyone knew who he was, all across the nation.

The letters came pouring in,

people would stop him on the street and thank him.

I was devastated this morning before we came on

I was sitting downstairs watching a tape of um,

and you may have seen it, the uhm,

president of Cantor Fitzgerald, the CEO...

I saw it...

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, I saw it.

Oh my goodness.

I saw it.

His entire firm, everybody who worked in

his office, every single one who worked in his

office on the four floors, from 101 to 105...

Right...

Every single individual with his firm...

Gone.

Is gone.

Gone.

Yeah...

His entire office, everybody, everybody.

I mean, I watched this guy tell his story and it

just, it just ripped me up, I couldn't handle it,

couldn't handle it.

The chartered papers for the Cantor Fitzgerald

Relief Fund went in on the 14th of September.

It was emergency aid and assistance on every level

we could think of.

First and foremost, financial.

Second, second, and equally as important

emotional support.

The overwhelming mission was to create a sense of

community for our families.

And so that's where we focused,

and we pulled everybody in and said,

"You are now our family."

l thought maybe I would, uhm,

tell you a little story.

Maybe a little personal.

When I was 16 my mother passed away of cancer.

And so I started Haverford college as Tom said on the

advice of my father who was a professor of history.

It so happens, that uhm, and I didn't know it at

the time, but when I started Haverford,

my lather had lung cancer.

But he hadn't, he hadn't told me.

And so I entered college and for my first week,

and uhm, through complications through his

chemotherapy which was experimental at the time,

uhm, he went in for his second chemotherapy shot

and uhm, he died on the table that day.

Our parents died very young.

The three of us had nobody but each other from the

time that, you know, I was 19.

My extended family pulled out,

you got these teenage children,

you know sorta you get involved, they get sticky.

You know they might not leave.

And so they all sort of stepped back.

My uncle says to me at my father's funeral on

September the 14th, "What are you doing for

Thanksgiving".

I'm like, (counts with lingers), October,

"Oh this guy's asking me for dinner in two

and a hall months."

You gotta he kidding me!

Like he didn't even ask a question,

"What are you doing tonight?

How about tomorrow?

What are you going to do with the house?

How are you going to eat dinner?"

You know, I had been in the worst moment ever,

this sort of orphan, uh, no family to rely on,

14 year old brother who then moves in with me at

college while I'm a freshman.

You know I had a 24 years and 364 day rally.

$0 I knew.

It smelled like it.

It felt like it.

It tasted like it.

I mean I was just hack there, wham.

I never thought that I was responsible for their

deaths, but I was-u.

Being responsible means being responsible to help.

I had a responsibility to help.

Maybe it was because nobody helped us,

that I wanted to help.

That I wanted to do what I thought,

what I thought was right.

What I would've wanted done for me.

Good morning and welcome hack to greatest

market on the face of the Earth.

Today America goes hack to business.

Our heroes will now open the marketplace.

The green button.

And they're up in the distance.

Goodbye Halo...

Have you ever been to a horse race?

Gates open and [pew!]

They all run out at the same time?

That's what it was like.

Sway now takes the lead...

We were just hired 35 people over the weekend

they come in on Monday, it's the first day,

we're not in our offices, we're not having our

systems, everything is handwritten.

We're writing everything by hand,

we didn't have electronic communications to the

Stock Exchange floor, the phones were going out,

people were on cellphones with floor brokers.

People write it down, they write on a napkin,

you bought 150,000 shares of XYZ,

then what are they going to do with the napkin?

So they call someone up who just joined the firm

and they say, "Here".

The person takes the napkin and does what with it?

Lay on his third...

I had some stressful moments on the trading

desk in my life, but never like, where I'm like,

"Oh my God, it's just so much I can't handle it."

Clients would call up and say, "Hi,

we want to help you, we're doing all our business

with you today.

The stock market is opening and we're

doing it all with you."

And we're like, "No, no, no, we can't handle it,

we don't...nol"

I think it was a woman who called client that

Phil's had said, "But you don't understand,

I have to do this.

I'm being told to do this.

We're doing our business with you.

Everything."

Throwing it at us because they want to help.

What they really almost did was almost killed us

because we were so undermanned.

So I called Lee up, I said, "Look, hail luster!

The water's pouring in!

We're gonna sink!

Bail luster, luster!"

Amazing amounts of business,

more business than we had ever done in a given day

pre-9/11, we were doing on the day right alter 9/11.

You know the equity department lost 145

people, everybody except for the boss in New York,

virtually everybody was killed and it just...they

did what they could.

So I went home that night, having made it all the way

through to Monday now, still surviving.

And Allison said, "How'd it go?"

And I said, "We're done."

But not "We're done", you know, with frustration,

with exasperation, just, "We're done."

You know we've been killed with kindness.

You know, we announced that we were starving,

and everyone in the world stuck a piece of

bread in our mouth.

We couldn't possibly process it,

it's just not possible.

The feeling we had for the first week was that

while we were going through the motions the

fact was that the patient was lost.

You know, the events were clearly too much.

The business couldn't survive.

Families of those who worked at the World Trade

Center refused to give up hope.

One man, George Katsimatides,

has told me that he will never give up.

He's hanging on to a thread of a report that a

pregnant woman worked with a man named "John" who was

George's brother, that that man had a long last

name and somehow George believes this will lead

him to his brother.

George Katsimatides: I've gone to the crisis center

that Cantor Fitzgerald has set up,

I plan on going hack again today.

Uhm, you know, I can't, I can't give up.

Well, it's been a week.

Some week.

I keep expecting this to he something like the

Wizard of Oz, where I'll wake up,

I'll wake up and it's uh, and it's a dream.

It's a terrible dream.

It's a tough dream, hut it's one that'll go away.

I can tell you what's new.

Uhm, I've heard the lire department say that there

still remain caverns beneath the Trade Center

so there is still a possibility of hope for

those of you who want to consider that a

possibility.

Someone asked, "Will we get a paycheck?"

The answer is, "ll they're not alive, on the 30th,

I doubt we'll be able to pay them."

The question was could we survive and pay them any longer?

And I didn't think we could.

People were still holding out hope that,

you know, somebody, that their loved one might he

alive and it was for the deliverance of the message

that, you know, your loved one's dead.

And someone stood up and said how dare you say that.

A lot of people felt hurt and upset because

they weren't ready to hear that.

You know, "You're saying our family member is dead

before anyone else has said that.

We don't have a body, we don't have confirmation.

How could you say that?

And how could you act on it by cutting off the pay?"

But Howard made the decision to save the

company so they would have a company left.

Wednesday, I'm at the hank,

waiting for the computer to collect all of the

pieces of Center's exposure and bring it all

hack together and say what it is.

It was shocking. The company was going to stand.

The hank was going to sign the company hack to me and

the partners of Cantor Fitzgerald.

We had made it.

So then I went hack to my house and we decided we're

going to give 25% of our profits to the families

for the next 5 years and cover their healthcare

for 10 years.

And then I went to Joe Shea's funeral.

There was a picture of Joe,

and right above it was his brother, Danny.

So I started crying.

I couldn't stop crying.

I started hyperventilating.

Walked out of the church, sat on the stairs,

I'm sitting there crying and heaving,

just water's pouring down my lace.

Amy comes up to me and pats me on the shoulder

and says, "Howard, come on we've got to go,

I've arranged for you to be on Larry King to talk

about what we're doing for the families.

In 15 minutes."

This is CNN.

How's your firm going to deal with all these

families and the like?

Can Americans help you in any way?

Well, I'll tell you how we've decided to deal with

it, uhm, my partners and I we talked about it,

and we've decided that what we're going to do is

we're going to give 25% of the profits of the company

to the families of the victims to try to take

care of them so they stay part of our family and

that we can try to take care of them with our company.

Because you see they call me and say,

"How come you can't pay my salary?

Why can't you pay my husband's salary?

Other companies pay their salary, why can't you?"

But you see I lost, I lost everybody in the company

so I can't pay their salary,

so they think we're doing something wrong.

I can't pay their salaries,

I don't have any money to pay their salaries.

Can America help at all, can people help Howard?

Well I guess, the victims, all the families,

they're going to stay in the Cantor family,

and they're going to stay our partners,

and so every business that we do,

they're going to get 25% of whatever we do.

Howard, I know how difficult this has been,

I thank you, you have the condolences of all of the

CNN family, and everybody in the world.

Thank you.

Hang tough Howard.

Thanks.

God bless, you'll he saying kaddish a longtime.

Forever I think.

I remember calling the Monsignor of my Parish.

You know, uh, and saying, look Monsignor,

cause my Mom, you know, was that old school German.

We gotta have a service, we can't just wait,

we gotta do something.

And I'm like, "Well, what are we going to do?

We don't have anything to have a service with.

What do we do, have a service?"

And I called the-m

I go, Monsignor you know we're a Roman Catholic

family, we don't have a body,

we don't know if we ever will get a body back.

What can we do?

It was really hard, because they had found

Steven but they hadn't found Mark.

You know we wanted to do it together.

But it was also hard for my in-laws because they

didn't want to do anything.

I mean they wanted to have a memorial for Mark but

they also wanted to try to wait for you know

them to find him.

But I said, you know, "It could never happen,

you don't know."

The sheer number of the memorials was unbelievable.

The fact that there were so many going on each day,

and that you actually had to choose which memorials

you went to versus other memorials.

You can't go to all the funerals.

It's not humanly possible because that means there

would be ten a day, everyday, for 65 days.

There's only so many hours in a day.

So people wanted to know what time was available.

They wanted everyone to he at their service.

And I remember going on the website and looking.

It might've been 16 all at 10am.

Some at 10:30.

It was heartbreaking.

Stu Fraser's brother-in-law died.

And his memorial was the same time as my roommate

in college's brother.

One was in Westchester.

One was in Manhattan.

It was a real conflict.

I mean, I had two guys who worked with me who were

being buried at the same time.

Jersey and Long Island.

And you know, you had to choose.

I mean the wives totally understood, and it's,

you know, surreal I mean you had to choose funerals?

I mean...

It was bizzare, meanwhile you had to work too,

you had a job to do, so like, you know,

in the morning you'd he working and in the

afternoon you'd he going to funerals.

You know, it's crazy.

There's one in Long Island,

it was a guy who was a really good friend of

yours, and one in Connecticut at the same

time, but you can't go to both of them, you know.

So, I mean, you're sitting there,

you're sitting there trying to decide,

"Whose funeral am I going to go to?"

Going from one, to the next to the next to the

point where I was, I know the Eucharist by heart.

I knew all the memorial services - Irish Catholic,

Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish.

By the end of the next month,

I could sing every hymn at the church.

I've been to too many funerals.

You know, more...

A lifetime's worth already.

It's what we did for, you know,

two and a hall months.

I had people come up to me alter,

in various times, alter the memorial service,

"Oh you're such a strong person."

That's because they didn't see me...dissolving.

Strong?

I wasn't strong, I was falling apart.

Everything became so inconsequential.

Part of what happened that day is,

"it doesn't matter, let's face it."

How focused can you he when your raison d'etre

is, "Who cares?"

You know?

Whose mantra is that?

♪ Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of ♪

♪ the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the ♪

♪ grapes of wrath are stored; ♪

♪ He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible ♪

♪ swift sword: His truth is marching on. ♪

♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah! ♪

When Rudy Giuliani came to speak at our first

memorial, he comes up to me, he goes,

"Who are all these people, I mean they just..."

He expected he would he speaking at a memorial hut

he had no sense that what could possibly have 5000

people there, and the answer was you have 658

people who died and they all have mothers and

fathers, sisters and brothers, children,

friends, cousins, grandparents, in laws,

and the widows all have all of their friends.

And it was only just a small part of them.

You know, in these past three weeks,

we have felt more pain and sadness than I think

collectively any of us had ever thought we could bear.

I have tried to speak to as many of you as I can

and I apologize for my failings but I will try as

best I can, going forward to make sure I stay

connected with all of you.

And not just now, but for the rest of my life

because that is what matters to me and that's

what matters to all of us.

When we were at the memorial,

one of the widows, I will not say her name,

Howard's talking and she's just like, "Oh,

luck you" and "You asshole".

Just out loud screaming "Asshole!"

Because, about the paychecks.

The day of our memorial, October 1st,

the media ceases to he positive.

There's an article in the New York Times that quote

families saying, "Why aren't they paying us

salary through the end of the year?

We've not heard from them.

We don't know when he's paying us our bonuses.

Can you trust the CEO?

I think not."

Two days alter the World trade Center Attack,

Connie Chung brought you one of the most

moving interviews.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald,

sobbing on national television.

It has been almost a month since Howard

Lutnick's pain and anguish transfixed a nation.

CEO Howard Lutnick made the media rounds

and was very emotional.

Another story may he unfolding.

Was all over the media promising to take care of

his employees' families.

But now, many of those families are feeling

anything but being taken care of.

Lutnick was all over national television saying

that he that would do whatever he could for the

families of the missing employees.

Well, it was about a week later that those families

learned that all their paychecks were going

to stop immediately.

But what happened alter the cameras went all

turned into another story.

HL went on TV on this program and said that he

was going to take care of his employees' families.

How many of you feel that he has done that?

How many of you feel that he has not done that?

Three weeks alter September 11th we're

getting , you know really, our pants beaten in.

You know we were like a giant pinata.

I mean they were just swinging at us and we're

just getting pounded.

So we had this big wave that we were on

top 01,0! sympathy.

And then, and then the bad press came and we fell

down here and we got crushed,

and we got crushed, and we got crushed,

and crushed again.

I mean it became something, something from,

something that you could never imagine.

I get a list at the end of the day.

There were 75 calls from different media.

Every newspaper, every radio station,

every television station, every kind of show,

every kind of reporter.

ABC, NBC, CBS, you know, cable television.

Why would he cry, soh on television?

Are you suggesting that he just turned on the tears?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Have you heard from Mr. Lutnick.

No I haven't.

Not a word.

No I've called him and there's been no phone callback.

Why would Lutnick so publicly promise to

support the families one minute and cut them all at

the knees the next?

Wall Street watchers say, "That's the cutthroat

Howard Lutnick they know."

But I'm just the saddest person in the

world and they chose to he with me.

Not the caring and generous CEO portrayed

on television.

It was like a sound, it was like a vacuum sound,

that started with the NYT article and then sort of

this sensational news magazine journalists just

taking from us all the support that we had had as

people just ran for the hills because we

must he had people.

We were not an organization that could he

embraced with open arms alter that because it

looked like we weren't clean.

There were some women, and believe me I'm not

giving anybody a hard time because God knows what

they were going through, but you know they're going

on television saying how they're not getting any

information, they're not getting help from this and that.

You know, human resources can't call you because

they're all dead.

We don't have a human resources department.

You know, we don't have a corporate communications

department, we don't have an accounting department

to tell you what we think your husband's check was

supposed to be for the quarter.

We don't know.

You know, it was a, it was a horrible thing.

There was a lot of anger and suspicion and doubt.

People were just scared.

And they didn't know what the future held,

they didn't know if they you know count on Howard,

or count on Cantor.

People needed to locus their anger in some

direction and Howard became a great foil

for those people.

And our business started evaporating.

I was getting calls all night long from people in

Chicago saying, uhm, "You know,

my best customer is calling saying what

the heck is going on?

Are you reneging?

Has something happened?"

So you're getting the phone calls from the

customers, "Are you sure that, you know,

the money you're saying you're going to give them

what you're going to give them because I'm trying to

help out my friend's family that I did business

with for ten years.

Are you sure you're not going to screw them?"

The company was not strong enough to take that

so the company started you know,

tilting and the business started dropping.

I really was starting to lose faith that we would

actually be able to take care of the families.

We were, the tide was turning and it was turning

hard against us.

Lutnick owes the country an explanation and

until he shows up and gives it he is

questionable in my opinion.

William Hudson from Portland,

Oregon sent us this note: "The callousness of

Howard Lutnick made my blood boil."

Tiffany Towers of Los Angeles: "Bill thank you

for exposing Lutnick for what he is.

I made a significant contribution to his fund.

I will not be taken again by the likes of him.

Bill O'Reilly got people to stop giving

to the relief fund.

I mean people were calling the relief fund saying,

"Can I have my money hack.

You know, Howard Lutnick is not helping the families."

They would call up and say,

"Well I want my money hack."

And I was like, "Well that's nice,

which family would you like me to take your $50 from?"

You know because alter that the checks,

we had already sent checks out.

The hate letters started coming in to the office.

Sometimes I'd come into the hotline and there's

like 50 messages from the night before.

"Drop dead" and just nasty, horrible things.

There would he faxes that came in that were

just really awful.

Yeah like, "You should be ashamed of yourself"

and "How dare you" and "You're disgusting."

We started to get phone messages from this

answering service, "Howard, you should die in the next

terrorist attack" and then

the operator would write like,

all these little symbols for like curse words.

And then she put in parenthesis,

"Sorry but I can't write out these had words.

The man was cursing at Howard."

The way that people attacked him was

just phenomenal.

And you know it was him.

No one else, they didn't attack Lee,

they didn't attack me, they didn't attack you

know, Steven, they didn't attack any of us.

It was all Howard.

I was getting poems written that I should he killed.

That the next plane that crashes should hit my house.

People threatening to do harm to my family.

You know, lots of threats on me personally, saying,

"You're the most disgusting human

being on Earth."

l turned to Howard and I said,

"We have to change our number,

and we need to get new door locks,

and we need window guards on all the windows,

change every lock.

Child guard gates put on all of the windows

in the basement."

And I was making my house like a prison.

You know my wife was freaked out to go outside.

She was afraid, we stopped using the front

door of our home.

You know, only go out the hack,

only have someone check to make sure no one was

outside first, I mean we were scared.

Scared.

When they had the first town meeting,

I went there and Howard was meeting people

as they came in.

Howard said 'Hi I'm Howard and I uh,

I lost my brother Gary' and I said 'I'm truly

sorry for your loss and you have my condolences,

but' I said 'I lost both my daughters and I've got

some tough questions for you'.

We went in there and it was definitely angry.

Everyone from the area wanted to hear what

Howard had to say.

They were accusational.

It was an ugly start to the meeting.

The first meeting was very raw,

very raw with emotion, people were lashing out

and a lot of them didn't make sense.

Just...

I don't know, I thought they were mad at him for living.

I wasn't welcome.

I was visiting their turf.

I was the...

you know, I was the enemy.

I remember one woman 'what are you going

to do for us?

You know, how are you going to survive this you

lost everybody how can you tell us that the firm is

going to be fine?'

Wait a minute, you said you were going to do this

and nothing's happened I haven't heard from

you so where is it?

You know, everybody's thinking you're so

wonderful but you promised us and it hasn't happened.

There was just anger, so much anger it was

unbelievable, and so l said 'you've just got to

listen to me and they were, like,

yelling at me and it's just, just listen.

The company's going to pay for 10 years of your

healthcare.

It was...

silent.

It went from boisterous to silent, like silent,

and I didn't know I thought maybe someone was

going to throw something, I had no idea whether that

was good or bad I just, I just sort of stood there

and it was silent, I was silent,

so I said it again.

And then one woman stood up and started clapping",

and, and then everybody started clapping,

and I guess it just dawned anthem at that time that

I actually wasn't out to hurt them.

And then we talked.

And I started by saying that I'm going to stay

here until there's no more questions to answer.

And when there's no more questions,

then I'll leave, but I'm not leaving until I'm

the last person standing.

They might listen to him.

I heard a man who broke down in his voice.

Who, uh was frustrated and trying to do something and

this was what he could do.

I later realized he promised too much too soon

[he was too last] he couldn't,

he didn't have time to follow through.

And I think also, I mean I don't know about the

other people but that was like October,

you're grieving, you know?

You're not thinking logically.

So then I start doing this in every town.

I go to Long Island and I have it in Manhattan and I

have it in Staten Island and I do it in North

Jersey and South Jersey and, uh,

in Queens and Connecticut, we're doing it in

churches, we're doing it in schools.

The next thing that happened was,

I said 'I'll come hack' and I don't think the

people in these towns ever thought I was coming hack.

And two weeks later I came hack again.

And we went through it again.

And then the next set of meetings and by the time

you come hack the third time you know,

you get a lot of converts, then you get people

talking to other people in the community saying 'you

know you should go' they say 'why would I go?'

'listen you know you should go!'

and so the process began and then Cantor Fitzgerald

was moving forward with these families.

"We feel like we have a family with us,

behind us" "Thank you, what can I say?"

It's my honor.

"I appreciate it.

I thank you very much for all your efforts.

Thank you so much, really appreciate it."

Thanks a lot.

This is 1010WINS it is Sunday December 30th,

I'm Brian Carey and here's what's happening.

Huge crowds wait on line for the

Ground Zero viewing platform.

People lined up for almost five city blocks to be the

first to view the World Trade Center disaster

site, the platform can hold about 400 people at a time.

From there visitors can see the crater,

they can also buy World Trade Center memorabilia

from street vendors, which offends some people who

say it makes a circus out of a sacred site

for so many people.

This could be a mailroom for all you know

if you came in off the street.

So where you can find a desk is where you work,

so there's no such thing as 'this department is in

here' there's eight departments in here.

This hall served for meeting rooms,

you might as well film these,

because these are also our meeting rooms.

We had temporary space, and when you think of our

company having the top, you know,

five floors of the World Trade Center,

and now we have...

you know, it's just, uh, a door at the end of the

hallway where someone tapes the name

Cantor Fitzgerald and that's it.

There are two desks here,

in that corner is the credit derivatives group;

these fellas are doing foreign exchange options,

not the best of conditions.

People often ask 'how are things at Cantor now

or, or what's it like?'

It's a hard question to answer,

it's not normal because the situation's just not normal.

And so while the rest of the country moves on and

we "move on", it's just always going to he there

and that's just the way it's always going to he.

Up here I lost Fred, and Doug, and Jell,

and Jonathon and Dave and Glen,

seven out of the eleven died.

Looking at them, you know, having imaginary

conversations with them, it's been very lonely,

it's been very difficult, the losses feel so fresh.

They vanished, the building crumbled,

but the people vanished.

Right?

We don't, I don't even know how many,

if we found any parts of them.

I dream about these guys sometimes.

I have to say, it comes up for me-.

It was on television all the time;

they kept just showing that plane going into the

building, you'd turn on the television set and

you'd see those planes hitting the building and

it was really like watching your brothers get

murdered, over and over again.

It was like being hit with a sledgehammer

fifty times a day.

I was sitting next to a guy, and he said to me,

something about 9/11 and I guess he didn't know the

facts about me, I said "yeah I lost my sister and

my nephew, and he turned around and he said 'wow,

how cool is that, I haven't met anyone.' and I

looked, I was mortified, I was speechless.

I just remember this one woman saying how it

looked beautiful, and whether it was the towers

being hit or the towers crumbling,

and I just remembered thinking 'doesn't she get it?'

that maybe she shouldn't he telling this to me.

It was one year ago today, September 11,2001,

we lost our husbands and wives,

brothers and sisters, we lost our children,

we lost our great friends and we lost so many of

our colleagues.

Together this group has suffered unthinkable pain

and sadness, the loss remains ever around us and

at times it certainly feels overwhelming.

This nightmare, it just can't he one year old, can it?

September 10, 2001 is really a decade ago,

our old life is a decade ago.

Hey man, how are you?

Can't believe a year huh...

everything I read about you guys. though.

We're trying our best.

You're doing the right thing.

I wasn't going to come out today,

but I came out for you, for all you did for us.

And I thank you.

You know, when we go hack to work every day,

you know, it's like you being at home, you know,

we go hack to work and then we look...

and they're not there.

And so we always think of them.

It's never...

you know, we always think of them.

We were going along in one life,

and that life stopped, and we have to change direction.

And we can't get hack to that.

We now have to begin a new life and it's,

it's a difficult thing to do.

People need to see, what's it like to he in

9/11, that's what it means,

my second life has started now, the new life,

the new life that I didn't want,

that I didn't ask for, but that I have to live.

And forgive me if I screw, if I offend you,

or ill come o" the wrong way but I'm trying to work

my way through this.

My husband said to me that he wants the

Carolee he married, hack.

And I said 'she's gone, she will never be back'.

We are not that same person we used to he.

And that to him was oh my God, you know, like,

she's messed up, I said she's never coming hack.

Tonight we are going to talk about victim

compensation; the events of September 11th killed

our loved ones, okay?

Today is not September 11th,

I'm sorry to talk about this in such stark terms,

our loved ones would've wanted,

if they had to die, God forbid they had to die,

they would've all said 'if l have to die,

I want to take care of you' We clearly

understood that the victim's compensation

fund, um, was the fundamental economic event

that would make the most difference to these families.

Here's one of Ken Feinberg's favorites: "my

job is to value life, that's a hard job valuing

life" let me tell you something about the value of life.

My brother's life was infinitely valuable,

but no more so than yours, or your husbands,

or your sons, or your sons, or your fiancés.

Each and every one were perfect and infinitely

priceless, invaluable, for their life.

The Victim's Compensation Fund was a

topic that those 658 voices could speak as one

and needed to speak as one.

It was the most important thing we were doing and

that's why it drove us...

and it drove us.

But what's important is that you guys learn the

language to push hack, 'cause when he says I'm

valuing a life, 'you're supposed to stand up and

say 'that is bull' that's not for us to do,

but we can value earnings, and now this is not a

tough thing, this is called a [our letter word "math".

This is called math.

All he's supposed to do is value the math, the math!

On September 11,2001, I was nine months pregnant

with my daughter Danielle, and now the dreaded

September 11, 2003 is here upon us.

It is strange how on one hand,

time has stood still, and on the other it forges ahead.

The way I measure time, is how last my children are

growing, but for me, time and the reality which I

clung to stopped two years ago today.

We are all part of a group,

which we would give everything not to he a

part of, yet here we stand united in our strength and

determined to go on with our lives as best we can.

We were, the families of those we lost,

and the employees of the company in one instant,

we were all forced together in the most

unnatural of circumstances and today we proudly

gather, completely united as one.

This is, some of the larger bears.

We give out bears and beanies

and stuff at every possible occasion.

Let's see, this is for a thirteen year old girl,

these were just a little bit too big to put into a bag.

Tonight this is a special night,

it's Cantor Fitzgerald night at the circus.

Five "year old girl four year old boy!

Five "year old girl, four year old boy.

Gotta love it, thank you.

Thank you very much for all you're doing.

Oh, it's our pleasure...

How are you?

Thank you for being so nice!

My concern is to fight for those things that are

fundamentally important to the families.

Did I ever think that this would turn from emotional

and financial support for my families to political

advocacy on behalf of our families?

Uh, no. Never.

I'm Edie Lutnick I'm with Cantor Fitzgerald,

the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund.

My phone rang off the hook today from family members

absolutely aghast at the concept of there being a

separate memorial for policemen and firemen who

lost their lives and I am here predominantly because

so many family members requested that

I show up tonight and say that.

The families have asked consistently and

repeatedly and have not wavered from the fact that

they do not want any vehicular traffic running across the site.

None of you have vehicular traffic across your

loved ones' grave sites.

This is where they lost their lives,

this is where the remains were found.

To these family members, this is in fact sacred

ground, so don't make it a place that

these families do not want to come.

The premise that ground zero should he about

anything but 9/11 is so absurd.

This is America's 9/11 memorial.

What are we doing?

So what happens live years later,

you have become a community in the face of

insurmountable odds, it takes a broken heart to

heal a broken heart and together we work to heal that heart.

Thank you all for being part of the Cantor family.

Somewhere over the last live years, things changed.

When I would go to the mothers' lunch,

to any of our gatherings, when I'd see a friend of

yours on the street, and they'd pat me on the

shoulder and say thank you, something changed.

You became the extraordinary team taking care of us.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

I don't think the Howard of today

is the same Howard of yesterday.

A hard-nosed businessman?

Yes.

But he had to deal with a lot of adversity,

and what he tried to do out of the adversity was

the best he could by the families,

so, what's the complaint?

He's done everything that he said he would do.

I don't have any complaints at all.

Where do I go?

That way?

Hi guys!

The original design was for the absence of

vertical structure that you wanted because you

were dealing, you were inverting the verticality

of the buildings into the void of the pools so the

waterfall became the downward motion rather

than the upward thrust of the buildings.

The design really demands, is that the water trickle

down both sides so it's to suggest tears.

So it's like this?

Just like this.

Mayor Bloomherg doesn't want to put the

floor, or the age, obviously our view would

be, we would have wanted more information about

each person to make them more human rather than

just a name as a name, you know, what,

who is Timothy O'Brien, you know?

Do you know how old he was?

Why the names aren't listed with age and why

they don't denote, uh, where they worked,

I can't understand, I don't know.

Listing these names as if they have no meaning

other than as a number is not appropriate.

Michael Arad's primary concern was that it look

nice, that it he aesthetically pleasing,

and there is nothing in the way that these names

are conveyed that tells you that one person was

different from another person.

It was like a flowing panel of names,

we didn't want that.

We wanted our stories.

So, what I'm doing is, I am attempting to arrange

the names in such a way so that the relationships,

the actual meaningful relationships between

these names is honored, that they're next to one

another, that they're adjacent.

It looks like nothing, it just looks like names laid

out but ill hit a button here, right,

these lines show up, these lines here represent relationships.

Brothers, brothers and sisters, cousins, family friends,

people who have been friends for 20 or 30 years.

This panel is incredibly interwoven,

you can kind of see this almost oats' cradle of relationships.

It was enormously important to the families,

when they point to their mother or their lather or

their child's name, that they will be able to know

that that name is carefully placed and that

everyone who surrounds that person's name

mattered to their loved one.

The city's mandate was that they should appear

random; the city doesn't want the wall to tell a story.

Each one of these panels, it tells a story.

We've actually kind of defeated what was the end game.

We haven't told one story, we've told hundreds of

stories, right, so these names" each one of these

panels is many, many stories.

Danny comes down to the bottom line,

Joe goes oven...

it must he a nightmare that we will awaken from.

That someone will come and I'll wake up and they'll

all be standing over me and I'll he like 'boy,

that was some hump on the head' but I know when that

day will he, its not yet but when I die they'll all he

there and they'll say that was one heck of a dream wasn't it?

...Edward L. Allegretto,

Joseph R. Allen,

Jane Ellen Eisler, Paul Barbara,

Mathew Burke, Thomas Burke,

Mark J. Colaio, Steven J. Colaio...

When I hear people talking about how they're

going on vacation with their family or even if

they're just going over to their brother's house for

the night, I don't show it at all but inside

something happens, my stomach, uh,

right away I just go there for a second like,

oh my God that used to he me.

Joann Cregan,

Helen. P. Crawson, Denis Edwards,

Lisa Egan, Samantha Egan...

Denial will never, ever leave you,

if you are directly affected by this.

It will never leave you because you will always in

the course of the day think that this could not

have happened.

This is not real, this could not have happened.

John Grazioso, Timmy Grazioso, Robert Hobson,

Marsha Hellman, Steven G. Hellman...

Part of me died that day.

And part of him lives with me,

and I have to honor that.

And I don't know...

it's kinda like, so now I kinda have to interwine

the two of us in me in one reality and

that's not so easy sometimes, that's the trick.

Michael P. Laport,

Steven LaManchia,

Rosanne P. Lang...

This is always going to he public,

for the rest of our lives.

Every September 11th we're going to be reminded of

this and unfortunately our children and our

grandchildren are part of history that we never

intended them to be a part of.

Gary Lutnick, Michael Edward McHugh Jr.,

John Armand Rea, Daniel Shea and Joseph Shea,

David Silver, Kenneth A. Simon,

Sushil Selenki, Rubin Solaris,

Anthony Tempesto, Stanley Temple, Karl Valvo,

Kenneth W. VanArkin,

Adam S. White, James White...

Douglas B. Gardner...

Hi.. Michael, today is September 11, 2001, what is today?

Do you know Michael?

My first day of school.

Are you excited to go to school?

Yeah!

Yeah, I am.

What is your teacher's name?

Hi Julia, and when do you start school?

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow.

And you know who else is teaching?

Michael, someone who taught "you first "year.

Zed!

You know who Zed is, Julia?

You know who Zed is, Michael?

Danielle! Danielle! You're recording the ground.

[laughs] And then we're going to go down these stairs,

so he careful.

I'm not gonna break my neck.

No, this is a good place to go- [laughing] there you go.

Danielle, do you think I need a shave?

I can't see.

What do you mean you can't see?

I can't tell.

Now I'm going to zoom on your chin,

and see if you need a shave.

Oh, yeah, now I can see it. You need a shave.

Oh, ok. [laughing]

We have to go up and look at the ocean,

and the beach.

This will he very boring to watch. It'll he very, very boring to watch.

In ten years' time it won't be so boring. though!

That's right, that's correct.

Sort of a nice day, as you can see it's cloudy.

We'll do this again so next week,

when it's less cloudy.

Come on!

♪♪