On 9/11.

Just to show you what kind of a weird day it was, a day full of contradictions in the ether of the unreal, the tragic and the absurd: my sales team was looking to close a $1.2M technology deal with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter that morning at 9:30am at their offices on 50th and 8^th Avenue.  Myself, my regional and national sales VPs and 2 partners from an allied technology in from Baltimore had gathered in New York City to make this happen.  We stayed overnight at the Sheraton on Broadway to finalize our close strategy and button up our final presentation. Early that morning, we were having breakfast in the lobby restaurant when Andy got a call on his cell phone from his wife about an airplane that hit the World Trade Center.  In our minds it was a weird event, maybe a Piper Cub that got lost (“didn’t something like that happen with the Empire State Building back in the ‘30s”?), but we were engrossed in the discussion of the upcoming meeting.  Suddenly, around us, other phones were ringing and looks of concern grew on the faces that answered them.  Neither the restaurant nor lobby had TVs mounted.  We paid the bill and were getting ready to walk over to the offices when utterances, phrases and words started to erupt from diners about “explosion”, “huge fireball”, “terror”. Then my wife called, watching it all on TV and relating it over my phone, which in those days, was just a phone.  She was upset and scared and worried.

We’re standing in the lobby of the Sheraton by the revolving door and it looks like any other day in the life of New York City: people making mad dashes, tipping doormen, catching cabs, conversing in groups, paying the bill, laughing, etc.  We realize something of importance and tragic significance has happened downtown but we have no idea what, there is no TV, no newsfeeds, but we’re all on phones getting different stories from the other end.  It’s around 9:15 and it’s a 5 minute walk and another 5 through the building to the 37th floor and a signed contract and time started to move very slow as we stood there, each of us pondering the same question in our minds as we felt the pressure of the tick of the clock and the enervating pulse of the conversations, growing looks of panic and increasingly rapid movements of those around us.  We paused briefly, which was an odd thing to do for 5 sales guys on the way to close a deal.  Finally, Kevin, our national sales VP, broke the silence, turns to me and asks the worst question possible: “Robin, it’s your deal.  What do we do?”

Snapped out of my own paralysis I suddenly realized what was at stake: we worked for a tiny technology startup out of Mountainview, CA, a company like many others that needed every single revenue source; I was the sole Eastern Region Account Executive and I guided this highly complex deal from its inception from a hot lead and through 3 competitors over 10 months to emerge with favored vendor status, which meant that we survived the competition and only pricing and services stood in the way of victory, two items we were clearly ready to be creative with; that this was Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and the prestige behind this win was huge beyond belief for the company; that I was about to be lauded as a superstar because of the way I brought the business in, not to mention the financial remuneration behind this for me; that I had my good friend, Andy who was my immediate boss, here with his good friend Kevin, who we all reported to and who ran sales for the company; that he, in turn, brought in the 2 partner guys from Baltimore as our aces in the hole; that I had just lost another large deal a few months before that hurt me and the company; that we all needed this win. 

“We’re going”, I said, and we took our briefcases, suits and ties through the revolving door, out into the clear, warm and bright sunny morning of September 11, 2001 and crossed Broadway towards Eighth Avenue to do business.

In the crosswalk over the avenue, one of the partners from Baltimore, increasingly agitated about being out in the streets, was asking me, “what are we going to say, what are we going to do there”?  Everyone listened in and I stopped.  “I don’t know what we’re going to say, I don’t know what we’re going to do; we’re just going to go there.”  Andy jumped in: “We have no idea what their state of mind is, what their expectations are.  We know we have a plan, we’re going to go in with that”.  And that broke open the silence and then the plans started to emerge as we walked, the strategies and tactics and contingencies and all the reasons why this deal should go through, and we pumped ourselves with confidence.  Traffic coming down 7^th Avenue was heavy as usual with Yellow Cabs, thousands of people crossing the street, clogging the sidewalk, vendors with their kiosks and carts gabbing with customers.  It was suddenly normal, another day as we rode up the elevator to meet our Morgan Stanley contact, Stephen.

In the upstairs lobby we saw Eddie the guard, with whom we had fashioned a casual friendship during our many visits to the office.  Eddie looked at us, stone faced and asked “what can I do for you?” in a stone dead voice. The first sense of dread started to flow.  “We’re here to see Stephen, we have a 9:30”.  We never had to go through this formality before, it was weird and awkward.  I used to show up, Eddie would smile or at least recognize me and just say ‘have a seat, I’ll call him”; sometimes we would pass the moments with idle chat and there was always a smile with the goodbye as I left after a meeting. “Does he know you’re coming”?  “Well, yes…we have a 9:30.”  And with that, he disappeared through the door as we stood rooted into the carpet, unable to move, unable to talk.  Over the ceiling and around the walls a darkness began to creep over me; it filmed over my eyes, it ran down my head into my mouth and dried out my throat and began to burn my stomach.  We stood silent, unmoving, stone-like in our own personal sense of right and wrong as Stephen came out to meet us.

“What are you doing here?”, he asked and with that the world started to change in ways I wasn’t yet sure of, but the look on his face and the tone of his voice told me that nothing would ever be the same again.  “I…don’t know, we were all here…for the meeting…and…we felt we should just come over… .”   “Do you know what just happened?” he asked incredulously and as I stammered out a response he blurted out, “the Tower got hit.  The World Trade Center was hit by an airplane and our affiliate Dean Witter has the 2^nd largest trading floor in the building and all our people were in it and the building’s been hit, it got hit by an airplane…it was terrorists…”   I started to respond, then we all chorused our shock, dismay, sadness, how sorry we were.  We offered help, assistance, support, we vomited words out into the lobby as a pathetic balm and because we were all businessmen, because we were all salesmen, because we were trained to kill and never lose sight of the win, we put together the shell of “next steps” as a way to navigate our minds through the dark fire of this most horrible reality.  Stephen disappeared back behind the door to the inner office and as we rode the elevator back downstairs to a new reality.

Still ignorant of the information that millions of others were witnessing live on television, we got back to the hotel and stood at the lobby doors, talking on mobile phones to loved ones and listening with the other ear to the flood of comments from those nearby: the 2^nd tower had been hit, they were both on fire, they were large airliners, passenger planes, terrorists were on board.  We’re in a panic, figuring out an exit, how to get home, where would the next planes hit.  If this was a terrorist attack, then it still might still be going on and considering we’re in midtown, only one thing crossed my mind: the Empire State Building, which during the dark days of the Cold War and the Nuclear Watch of the Reagan era always stood out to me as Ground Zero in an attack, a spot where not only would the most damage be done but would stand as the most symbolic of targets.

We all heard the next piece of news at the same time: a plane has struck the Pentagon.  Kevin dropped his cell phone down and looked up: “Fuck, we’re under attack.  We’re at war”.  Not knowing what to think or where to go, not knowing if we should panic or proceed calmly somewhere – we still had not seen a TV – I guessed that if that were the case, they’re going to lock Manhattan down by closing the bridges and tunnels.  Before breakfast, we all checked out of our rooms, left our luggage with the bellmen.  Now we had to check back in indefinitely so that we’d at least have a place to stay to ride this out, even if we were just blocks away from a possible next strike.  We extended our stay at the front desk where the agents exhibited a strange, otherworldly calm about the entire proceeding, as if none of this were happening.  On the other side of their desk the world was all still about hospitality and efficiency and the number of keys you’d like to your room.

We decided to use my room as our base and on the way across the lobby to the elevators I dialed up my friend Keith who I knew had an office in Tribeca near the attack and whether or not he knew something.  I had one of those Nextel walky-talky phones and he was on speaker, standing on the roof of his building looking straight at the twin towers, flaming, smoldering, smoking.  He’s telling me people were jumping out of the windows, the constant sound of sirens in the back against the angst and terror in his voice. We’re all standing around my phone looking at each other trying to process this and just as the elevator door closed behind us he started screaming “they’re falling, the World Trade Center is falling, its falling” over and over and over “its falling”, then “I gotta go, I gotta go, gotta get home, get home, you get home, you hear me? Get home” and he went silent.

Back in my room, 90 minutes after it all began, we saw what the world had been watching from the beginning: the close-up of the remaining tower, burning alone on a clear blue background, not a cloud anywhere except from the smoke; the replay, over and over of the North tower falling, crumbling, belching smoke at it collapsed.  The endless replay of footage of the first plane, now available on newsfeed, crashing into the first tower, scenes of panicked people on the ground, covered in dust, moving aimlessly in every direction. 

Then, as the Baltimore guys made panicked calls on the room phone, talking to family; as I made plans with my wife to pick up our daughter from school and where I would meet them when I got back, assuring her I was alright, we saw the TV image of the 2^nd tower, following the first, evaporating in mid-air; the stunned, panicked voice of the news announcer trying to maintain composure as he presided over an event more tragic and horrifying than one can imagine.  All 5 of us were yelling, shocked and horrified, with the one Baltimore guy pleading with his wife to stay calm as his face got redder with fear and frustration.  We were trapped in the false security of a hotel room, 7 miles away from Armageddon, one part real, one part a simple TV image and no one knew how to act.  Like the rest of the world, we were frozen in time, trying to understand and comprehend.

We were 5 adult men in suits and briefcases in a small hotel room, and the anxiety was so thick we were smothering each other, exacerbated by the panicky call the Baltimore guy was making. Finally, Andy pulled me into the bathroom and said, “look, I don’t know if this is my last moment on this earth or not, but those (Baltimore) guys are driving me fucking crazy and I’m not going out like this. We have to get out of here. We have to eat something, no matter what happens, we have to eat something.” And in a dumb haze over all that was going on, I instinctively said, “the Carnegie Deli is up the street, let’s go there.” And so we pulled the Baltimore guys away from the TV and the phone, got in the elevator and out into the street. 

Broadway at that point was blocked from traffic, empty, eerie, the bright sun overhead. Now, the first of the “walkers”, the eye-witnesses at the site, covered in dust and ash, were making a slow, zombie-like shuffle up from their origin point downtown, miles away. Men and women with jackets off or around their arms, holding shoes and pocketbooks and briefcases, heads down, exhausted and beaten, moving north up an empty street.

Here’s what a lot of people don’t know about New York City: at any given moment, it exists on several different geometric/time planes, it’s so dense and so massive that multiple events occur and overlap each other with a juxtaposition that can be sometimes unnerving and jarring, other times amusing and surreal.  The stream of workers passed by a sidewalk café next to our hotel and there sat a young couple, oblivious to what was going on, smoking cigarettes and drinking mimosas.  So when we opened the door of the Carnegie Deli, coming from the sunlit, empty fearfulness and panic of Broadway there was no way of knowing we would enter a darkened, lively, noisy and buzzing environment. Deli workers were cutting and serving meats behind the counter; waitresses and busboys cutting in between tables with arms full of platters and water tumblers. People were talking, there was some mild, personal laughter between some, waitresses were calling “honey” this and “sweetie” that, taking orders, cutting sandwiches, wrapping the rest, asking for more Coke, clearing tables, all the sounds and feelings of another day in pastrami paradise surrounded by TVs mounted on walls that showed a smoking ruin where tall buildings once stood. No one was really sure of exactly how many people died, we had no way to assess what we now know as the cruelty of that day. I actually was very hungry and I finished that corned beef. It may have been the best sandwich I had ever eaten.

How surreal, the tiny crumb of normalcy that everyone in that restaurant forged with each other out of a pure human need to make a small connection in the face of enormous fear and tragedy. Both the WTC and Carnegie were world famous icons; the towers gone now for 20 years, and the Carnegie now empty for 2. I can get a good pastrami in a lot of places, but I don’t think many can deliver what that deli did that afternoon.

We made a new plan: get across the river to New Jersey. Andy and I lived there; Kevin, from California, could stay with Andy and the Baltimore guys could rent a car to get back. We would go back to the hotel, grab a cab and, hearing that the Hudson River bridges and tunnels were closed, would steer over to the Bronx and head north until one of the other upstate bridges were open. We would cross over and come back south to New Jersey to get our cars, and where the Baltimore guys could get the rental.  On our way back to the hotel, we saw a limo sitting at the curb, and in another one of those two different planes of reality moments, the driver was purchasing black socks from a corner street vendor.  In the middle of this disaster, one needs to be well dressed.  One of the Baltimore guys approaches him, they talk for a moment and he turns to us to say, “get in”.  He struck a deal: $500 in cash up front and $1000 on his American Express for a ride back to Baltimore, dropping us off in Teaneck for our cars.

We headed uptown and over to the FDR with the intent of crossing the Willis Avenue bridge to the Bronx over the East River.  But the driver heard on the radio that the George Washington Bridge had just reopened, so we kept going to the east side approach to the bridge.  This would be easier than we thought, and I made a quick phone call to my wife to let her know I was coming home soon.  As we spoke, we crossed over the upper level span of the bridge. I looked south and dropped the phone down.  On this bright, blue, beautiful, late summer day, at the tip of Manhattan in a view I took for granted just the day before, the twin World Trade Centers were gone, replaced by two white clouds that were being pulled by the wind over Brooklyn.

May we never forget.

Robin Robinson
September 11, 2XXX