Surviving September 11th

Today, the St. Louis Fire Dept and other first responders were conducting their annual parade, and this year, I was invited to walk and carry a picture of one of the 343 fallen NYFD firefighters who died on 9/11/01.  It was such an honor for me to carry one of their faces.

On Sept 11th, when I was urging the woman on the stairs to walk down, she insisted on staying and waiting for help.  I did not believe that help was coming.  Who was going to save her?  In that moment, I thought it was her responsibility to save herself.  Then when I reached the 4th floor, firefighters were ascending my stairwell.  They were in full gear and walking up the stairs.  I stood in amazement for a moment and watched as they passed me.  I could not believe that they were walking up, and I was surprised to see them.  I entered 2WTC plaza and the firefighters were directing the traffic and collapsing the revolving doors.  I was mesmerized by the way they were taking control and keeping order as we evacuated.  There was such a stark contrast between us, the evacuees, and them.  We were scared and fearful, and they were determined and resolute. 

In the days immediately following, you knew that the hardest hit were the FDNY.  I decided on Saturday, Sept 22 that I was going to wallow in my pity by shopping for some shoes so I grabbed some cash from the ATM and was walking on the Upper West Side to take the subway downtown to SoHo.  On my way, I saw lit candles, flowers, and pictures lining a side street, so I followed this detour to take a look.  As I followed the trail, it led to a firehouse around the corner.  The door was open, and they were displaying pictures of seven of their fallen brothers from their firehouse.  They had a book you could sign to express your condolences.  I signed my name Angela Brock, 2WTC, 61st Fl.  It was the first time I acknowledged that this was my new identity.  I then gave them the couple of hundred that I was going to spend on shoes.  I couldn’t move for quite some time, and I sat there and cried with the firehouse.  The firefighters came up to me crying, giving me hugs, and patting me on my shoulders.  They were just as broken as I was, and without saying anything, we sat there for some time just comforting each other without words. 

     Today in the parade, I carried the face of Michael Boyle from Engine 33.  He was 37 years old when he died, which is how old I am now.  I have so much of my life to still live, and his is gone.  Engine 33 is located at 42 Great Jones St., which is 3rd street in the NoHo/NYU neighborhood.  10 of the 14 firemen from this engine died on 9/11/01.  Michael was off duty and jumped on a rig while still in his civilian clothes.  His body was found intact approximately 5 months after the attacks, and he was laid to rest on April 19, 2002. 

It was a privilege to honor his memory today.  I wish I could honor all 343 firefighters who died.  On 9/11, their bravery and duty was just another day at work.  All firefighters and policemen/women do this everyday.  God bless our fallen heroes.  They are braver than I could ever be.

FDNY 343 refers to the 343 firefighters that died that day.  It does not represent the number that worked at Ground Zero for the months and years that followed and who have since developed health issues due to the toxicity of the site.

Last week, I met up with a former co-worker to relive 9/11 for a forum the local paper had put together.  This was the first time I had seen Kevin since 2002.  After I quit, I wanted to be left alone and needed a break from the Morgan folks.

But getting together with Kevin again was therapeutic.  One thing we talked about was the Morgan culture, which was liberating to finally talk about the life we lived.  So, let me start from the beginning.

I was already a Morgan employee when I got my job in NY.  I was hired for a newly created position, basically to run a program that I was already executing in the St. Louis offices.  So, they moved me to NY and gave me a new job title.  I was entering the National Sales team, a group of about 25 people that created and managed the programs that trained all Financial Advisors, Branch Managers, Regional staff, sales assistants, and Sales Managers.  Basically, anyone involved in sales within nationwide offices.  There were a group of Management Training Associate (MTAs) who were solely responsible for the Financial Advisor trainees.  About 300 trainees arrived every month for their three-week long training.  The MTAs were in charge of the schedule and babysitting.  They didn’t actually create the program or do any of the training.  Their sole purpose was to oversee the training and learn the company in hopes that a Regional Director would offer them a Branch Manager position.  To get one of these coveted positions, the MTAs schmoozed and dined with the Managers and Directors when they would come to town.

The MTAs set the tone for the office.  They barely scratched a 6-figure income, which they talked about constantly and were always comparing their lifestyles to each other.  When I arrived, I didn’t have a classic job description– I wasn’t support staff and I wasn’t one of them– so they became obsessed with defining me.  Was I going to be one of them?  Let’s see:  live in a doorman hi-rise in the Financial District?  Nope- I went for a walk-up on the Upper West Side (not even the socially appropriate Upper East Side).  Get custom-made shirts at the office?  Nope- I relied on Brooks Brothers and J. Crew for my business attire (another strike against me).  Shoes shined at the office and the golf putting game in my office?  Check.  Ok, I did this.  It was a highly shallow and superficial crowd, and my fiancee sent me The Great Gatsby to reread to get by and keep things in perspective.

On April 14, 2001, our small office got turned upside down.  I had an office in the hallway all by myself, and next to me were 3 empty offices reserved for training purposes.  This day, a group of people that I have never seen before set up shop in the office next to me.  One of the girls walked passed my office, the door shut, and I could hear a little yelling.  ”What’s going on in there?” I wondered.  Then came another person, and the same thing happened.  Hmm.  Then I heard the comment, “That went easy.”  After the third person passed, and from their reactions, I learned that we were having lay-offs.  Then I watched person after person pass by my office.  After the person got the news, they were escorted back to their desk by security to grab their purse/wallet/keys and were immediately stripped of their badges.  They were not allowed to take any other personal belongings like pictures and were told that they would be mailed to them.  I lost track of the count, but in the end, 9 of the 25 were terminated.  After the deed was done, the management staff opened their unusually closed doors and informed us that one more person was terminated but they were going to wait until she was done with Branch Manager training in San Francisco.  They did not factor in someone calling her telling her that she didn’t have a job when she came back, so they were forced to tell her at the hotel and sent her home.  Classy.  But it got worse.  Within the next week, a large sign was placed on an easel in the bottom of 2WTC announcing that Morgan was looking for new, great employees!  I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for my job anymore.  It just didn’t taste good.

Then, one day, a familiar face from the Chesterfield, MO office, a former MTA so he knew the office and culture well.  I looked surprised to see him and asked what he was doing in town.  He holds out his hand for me to shake it then states his name and his title, Director of National Sales.  Well, that title is held by my other boss, good-old Rich sitting over there in the window office.  I smiled, shook his hand, and asked if he needed me to do anything for him.  He gave me a long list of data to collect and reports to compile.  ”No problem,” I say.  ”Tomorrow at 7am for a breakfast meeting?  You bet.  Anything for you, Mike.”  I knew exactly what was going on, and I sat back and watched the drama unfold.  This drama went on for a couple of months.  I helped Mike while also reporting to Rich and then began to be pulled by another Director, Jolie, who also saw the transition taking place and knew to gather her team to build strength.  Fortunately, I had my projects that were monitored by KPMG, so they were like a fourth boss for me.  However, keeping them happy was a more visible responsibility within the firm because these projects were monitored by the CEOs because they were firm initiatives.  Needless to say, I was working 80 hours by Thursday to keep everyone happy and had several occasions where I only went home in the early hours of the morning to change my suit.  This really bothered the MTAs because, in their minds, they were the most important position in our group.  What is she doing?  I really rattled their feathers, especially when I would get called to the 66th floor.  Getting a call to the 66th floor was a BIG deal.  I bought a new suit when I had  a planned meeting up there.  All the Dean Witter CEOs/Presidents were housed on this floor, and the place was decked out in cherry wood and marble everything.  Every office was magnificent with a wall of windows, a dining table, office area, and a sitting area.  Rumor had it that their special dining roof offered lobster every day.  I was too busy to do anything other than the work on my desk and enjoyed not getting sucked into the lifestyle comparisons that the MTAs lived for.  This was my life right up to the point when the first plane hit.  I was focused, intense, and driven, and then the plane hit tower 1.  Everything changed.

In post 9/11, we immediately entered crisis mode.  All the projects were gone, and the focus was rebuilding.  I had learned that my buddy Kevin was in NY working under Mike on a secret project so I didn’t even know he was in town.  But he was one of the few people that I trusted enough to talk about 9/11.  He was comforting and once told me to never feel bad and that it was ok.  This was a very unique position and completely unlike the Morgan culture.  After 9/11, no one ever talked about what happened.  I would scour the NY Times to find out who died because it took months to know who lived.  We were all scattered across Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Queens.  It was taboo to talk about it.  There was one ceremony at St. Patrick’s shortly afterwards, and that was our one shot to express our sorrow, and after that, everyone went forward.  My friend Elizabeth believed that they were going to want to get rid of all of us survivors because we were baggage.  This was just her opinion, but it was her opinion.  She believed this.  And on another note, everyone had a story.  One of the girls in our office told me the story about how she jumped into an abandoned NY City bus and drove it out of lower Manhattan.  She also struggled with leaving because she thought if she evacuated, she would lose her job.  I knew exactly what she was talking about and could see how the support staff would fear for their jobs after the April 14th episode.  After all, we were suppose to have more cuts in September, but those were canceled after the attacks.

We were displaced for a while and were in the hotel for a couple of weeks, in conference rooms in a 7th Ave building in Times Sq for weeks, settled into 1585 Broadway for a couple more months after they laid off 200 investment bankers, then moved to semi-stable offices on 3rd Ave in February 2002.  1585 was an interesting building to work.  It was THE HEADQUARTERS of the entire company, whereas WTC was just for the Dean Witter side of the business.  The politics set in immediately in the 7th Ave building, just weeks after the attack.  And in the 1585 building, there were only a handful of offices so none of the MTAs were offered one and had to sit in a cube for the first time in their careers at Morgan.  However, the Director, Rich was also put in a cube.  Mike, Kevin, me, and some others got offices as we worked on the future of Financial Advisor training and Rich was sitting out in the cubes without any responsibilities.  It was difficult to watch as former Directors were literally losing their self control as their careers slipped away from them.  The pre-9/11 tug-of-war picked right back up, but I was being pulled by people who weren’t in the towers that day.  Jolie sat at home in Battery Park City as she watched the horror unfold because she had a doctor’s appt that day.  Todd, everyone’s boss, was uptown in the meeting and conveniently at command central when the planes hit instead of the 66th floor.  Rich didn’t even try to pull because he didn’t have any projects.  Unfortunately or fortunately, I was changed by that day.  I appreciate that some of these people weren’t there and cared deeply about their jobs, but I didn’t care anymore.  I didn’t understand what all the fuss and psychotic energy was about.  I sat back and watched these people lose their minds as they grasped for the tiniest bit of responsibility.  It all seemed pointless to me, and I lost my heart for the work.

I never know what possesses me to I watch the reports on 9/11.  Tonight, we channeled surfed for about 20 minutes, avoiding the National Geographic channel, and finally, I give up and tell my husband to turn it on.  They have three hours of 9/11-related shows on tonight.  The truth is, I want to watch it.

For the most part, I am watching what the world saw that day, not my perspective.  You don’t see the people close up, you don’t see the horror, you don’t see any of the details of that day.  You just see a high-level timeline of the events from a very far away, safe distance.  A safe distance– this is a key.  Not feeling the sense of urgency, the panic, the fight to survive.  None of this can be expressed through words or images.  It is a fear like no other.   Sorrow overcomes me, and I feel for those other people as they speak of their experience.   Tears  stream down my face.

Then they show the cloud of smoke as it tunnels up Broadway, and I was one of those people running.  This is a slice of my reality, and I am immediately transported back to that moment.  I am filled with so much sadness and sorrow, and I can’t shake it, even after we decide to put in a movie.  My heart is heavy, and I spend the rest of the evening feeling sorrow for myself.  And once I realize that I am feeling sorry for myself, I accept that this is just the way it is.  It happened, it was awful, and life goes on.

I had the privilege of having John Bosko as my grandfather.  I wasn’t allowed to call him grandpa, only Pope, and I didn’t even dare test him on that.  He wasn’t the kind of guy you tested. 

In WWII, he was in the Merchant Marines and circumvented the globe two times.  He had great stories of going to port, and he knew how to tell a story.  After the war, he opened a machine shop and was the first person to use titanium, in which he designed the landing gear and hinges for the Gemini space shuttle.  NASA referenced him in text books and sent him Christmas cards.

He was dynamic and charismatic, and he could take command of any crowd at a party.  He was always the life of a party and always hosted the best parties.  Before my time, my mother would tell me stories about Julian Javier and other Cardinal players who would drop by his house for fun in the 1960s, but I’ll never forget watching my 65-year old grandfather party with Terry Pendleton, the Cardinal’s 3rd baseman who docked a boat at the marina next to him in the 80s.   My favorite memory though was at our pool-filling parties.  We had to drain the pool every year because we never put a cover on it.  It was concrete, and we would paint it every other year.  Then we would put a slip-n-slide on the bottom and have a water slide as we filled it up.  My grandfather would join in the fun and go down the slip-n-slide with a glass of Budweiser in his hand. 

It was so much fun to be a part of his life.  It was completely defined by the things he loved: My grandmother, God, country, his art collection, his boats, and his Budweiser.  I think I got the order right.  He put all he was into these things that he loved, and you could see his passion.  He was completely alive. 

He never talked about any of this though.  I would ask my mother and grandmother stories, and they would show me the beautiful and amazing cards from NASA.  I loved hearing the stories because he never talked about himself.  He completely lived in the present moment.  The weekend after 9/11, he came up to me and just said, “I bet you have a story to tell.”  I just responded, “You’ve seen it, you know.”  I was referring to his WWII experience and figured I would just do what he did and not talk about it.  That didn’t end up working out for me, but that’s ok too.  But what I do share with him is my love for life.  Every day, I wake up and truly have a deep appreciation for being alive.  I didn’t get this from 9/11; I always felt this way.  From being out on the soccer field or taking the subway to work, I have always loved being alive.  It’s the greatest gift to be alive, and I carry this appreciation in my heart every day.  I feel it.  I contribute surviving my childhood (in which my sister didn’t), discovering my damaged heart by a freak accident, or surviving 9/11 to the fact that I love being alive.  No matter how bad things seem at any moment in time, it’s just a moment.  Life really is great.

I saw this headline last week and thought, “Amen!”  Finally, there is some light on something that I have known for a long time! 

At the end of 2004, I actively sought counseling.  I wanted to talk about my experience, but only with a qualified individual, and I had learned after talking with a couple of “doctors” what “qualified” meant.  For me, qualified meant experience and a profound sense of understanding.  I started my therapist search and quickly learned that most therapists were not qualified to deal with the tragedy.  I heard ridiculous statements that what I experienced was like going through a death.  Or that I was experiencing survivor’s guilt.  Let me be adamant about his:  I never once felt an ounce of guilt for surviving.  As a matter of fact, what a completely moronic concept.  Who the hell is sorry that they survived?  Then I encountered the primary care physician who seriously needed her own meds (a read available under the Year 3 page). 

However, I can easily see, as the article suggests, that those who were made to tell their story too soon were actually exacerbated by the trauma.  I wasn’t able to talk about it for years, and I sheltered myself from people.  Time has been my friend in this.  Also, the naive therapists who suggested that I had survivor’s guilt or thought this compared to a death were simply unqualified to treat on the subject.  It is a specialized issue, and I applaud the American Psychology journal for acknowledging their limitations. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/therapy-can-drive-you-mad-says-study-on-911-counselling-2328665.html

Last night and today, I wrote about the details that happened on 9/11.  There is so much to get through, and I tell the story the same way that I wrote it:  short sentences.  My feelings that I had in the moment haven’t changed today.  I can go back to 9/11/01 and feel, smell, see exactly that moment as it happened, and 10 years of perspective doesn’t alter the memories.  Maybe my reaction on 9/11 is why I can keep that moment frozen in time.  I only uttered a couple of sentences from 8:46 am – 1:30 pm.  I moved with deliberate actions and soaked in everything. 

I once found an article in Time that spoke about this “hypermemory” that makes it seem like time is slowing down.  The research was performed by neuroscientist David Eagleman.  I did feel like time was moving so slow but I knew what the actual time felt like.  For instance, I knew that it took me about 40 minutes to evacuate after the 2nd plane hit, and after comparing it to the recorded events, my assessment of time was correct.  However, it seemed to move so slow because my hypermemory was recording more sensory information.  As NPR stated, “You’re getting a peek into all the pictures and smells and thoughts that usually just pass through your brain and float away, forgotten forever.” 

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/17/why-time-slows-down-in-near-death-experiences/#ixzz1TKy3XiDV

So, not only did my memory record sights, smells, and thoughts but these memories are preserved like a DVD.  They haven’t changed over the past 10 years and are replayed the same way over and over again.

As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, I received a phone call from a local reporter today who asked me what the storyline for the 10th anniversary should be.  I wasn’t prepared for this question, and I didn’t know the answer off the top of my head.  What does the 10th anniversary mean? 

To find the answer, I decided that the best approach is to take a look back at the past 10 years and how much I have grown and healed.  I feel completely healed from the tragedy, but the anniversary date still means something profound to me.  I hope to have this defined for my self through this process of going backward as the anniversary approaches.

September 11, 2001 completely changed my entire life.  For the past 10 years, this event has affected every decision I made about my life.  Six months after the attack, I quit my job that I worked so hard to get.  I worked for Morgan Stanley, and I practically lived in my office at the World Trade Center.  I loved my life, but in February 2002, I knew I was done, and I quit.  I realized that all that time I spent in the office was meaningless work, and I would end up as a lost soul if I continued.  Just like the decision I made to quit my life at that moment, 9/11 has been like a fixed constellation in the heavens guiding all major decisions in my life.   This wasn’t the only job I quit.  There are more, and we will get to that. 

I will post the events of 9/11 in a separate menu item.  Thanks for reading.