………….that the world changed.
There are very, very few life-defining “where were you when you heard the news” events that a generation experiences. For the “Greatest Generation” events like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK come to mind. As a tail-end baby boomer the JFK assassination was the first big event I can recall, but barely. My main takeaway was no cartoons to watch on TV on Saturday morning the day after the assassination. As a college student I was watching a Monday Night Football game when Howard Cosell announced the assassination of John Lennon. Shattering, heartbreaking, frozen in time, but certainly not the sort of nation-defining moment that Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination had been. But, still, the most gut-wrenching freeze-frame moment that my generation experienced until……twenty years ago today.
September 11, 2001. Almost seems like yesterday. Time flies but, in another sense, stands still. Unlike Pearl Harbor, which marked the U.S. entry into a war that would be over within four years, the war on terrorism endures. Sure, Pearl Harbor was a trigger event that led to US entry into a war that we won and that eventually led to global consequences that reshaped the post-war era (e.g. Cold War, globalization, etc….). But at least with the end of hostilities in 1945 the “good guys” clearly won. The war on terrorism, however, is not your standard warfare. It is an even more asymmetrical type of war than what our nation endured in Vietnam and Iraq. It is not fighting against a particular nation or tribe. Albeit certain nations, which have hosted terrorists, have paid the consequences in order to be stabilized (e.g. Afghanistan). Recent events also show that this will be an ongoing, open-ended struggle, with its ebbs and flows, ups and downs (capturing OBL, the rise of ISIS, terrorist attacks in cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Nice, the recapturing of ISIS-held territories, the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan). So, in a very real sense, we are all still living the direct consequences of September 11, 2001 today. It is part of our everyday reality, be it higher security screenings at airports, more heavily fortified U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, and, most importantly, the changes it has had on the psyche of the United States over the years.
“Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.” — George W. Bush
I am curious to hear “your” September 11 story. Where were you when you heard the news? How old were you? How did it impact you that day or after wards?
This is my story:
I had just started a new job in banking for Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany the week before after having worked for the bank in Zurich. I had an office just off of our trading floor and was meeting our head of front end business line technology when we walked out of our meeting and saw that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We thought that it was a small plane and just an accident. I went into another meeting but was called out to be informed that the second tower had also been hit by a plane. Clearly a terrorist attack, which made this an urgent business matter as markets were starting to go crazy. Our trading floor was in an office building about a five minute walk from Deutsche Bank’s global HQ at the Taunusanlage, which was Frankfurt’s mini-version of the twin towers. They evacuated our twin towers because the world seemed to be going to hell and nobody knew if there would be attacks in other cities, especially financial centers, and at that moment it was better to be safe than sorry. So next thing I know our global head of investment banking (and future long-time CEO) had appropriated my then temporary office. Then we entered into a heated discussion. We were all on edge. Wall Street was closed. Asia was hours away from opening. It was approaching 5:00 p.m. central European time, when all the European markets would be closed except for the two markets that had recently instituted “extended trading hours” until 8:00 p.m – Germany and Sweden (Remember, this was 2001, and there were not yet organized official exchanges with 24-hour trading, just some private markets). Swedish market cap and trading volume, to be frank, was negligible. But Germany was another story. Our head of trading was livid and saying that nobody knew what the hell was going on and that we could incur huge losses by being the only official market open in the world during those three hours of hell. Our head of investment banking then went to the next office to call our CEO, who also just happened to be the Chairman of the Board of the Deutsche Boerse (German Exchange). He came back and told us that we were staying open, regardless of potential losses. Our CEO said, quite bluntly, that we were not shutting down the German market due to a terrorist event and that the market needed to remain open now, more than ever. We were not about to cave in to terrorism and it was critical that we remain open as the only major exchange in the world in order to help ensure financial liquidity. And so it was decided, and to this day I credit him for making a decision that was a much bigger one than the potential P&L impact on the bank (which, when all was said and done, ended up being negligible).
Now the second, and more difficult, part of my story. Deutsche Bank lost just one employee on September 11 and he was a member of our department. And, unfortunately, due to bad communication on the part of Deutsche Bank his parents thought at first that he was alive. You see, at that time Deutsche Bank had two offices in Manhattan. Our front end offices, including our equities operations, were based in mid-town near the MOMA. However, we had a huge office tower right next to the WTC (just south of it) where we had many of our back-office employees. That office tower was safely evacuated before the WTC collapsed, which was a good thing. I spoke to our global head of cost control about a week later. He had been based there. He told me that the large antenna on top of one of the WTC towers had actually fallen on the Deutsche Bank building and sliced its way through several floors, including his office. In any event, corporate HQ at Deutsche Bank put out a release that all employees in New York had been safely evacuated. This is the notice that the parents of one of our employees, a young kid in his 20s by the name of Sebastian Gorki, heard about with a huge sigh of relief. Tragically, it was wrong.
Sebastian was a promising young VP on our sales team in Frankfurt. So promising that he was transferred for international experience to New York about a year before I arrived in Frankfurt. His very best friend in Frankfurt, a fellow junior salesman by the name of Robin, was transferred to our Zurich office at about the same time. I knew Robin well and worked closely with him on a few deals. As it turned out, Sebastian was called by his boss the evening of September 10. His boss had a client meeting scheduled for the next morning that he would not be able to attend as he had to bring his wife to the doctor for an appointment that was scheduled at the last minute. So he asked Sebastian to attend in his place. So Sebastian went to the early morning meeting, located near the top of one of the WTC towers. After the tower was hit he made a few calls from his cell phone, and that was it. He left behind a pregnant wife in New York.
Deutsche Bank had mistakenly released the “all employees are safe and accounted for" message despite head office having been informed of Sebastian’s situation. We were livid. My boss had to call the parents and tell them that their son had died. Sebastian’s boss in New York called his wife. They were initially in denial, in part due to the erroneous Deutsche Bank press release. It was left to me to inform Robin. They were best buddies. He had spoken to Sebastian’s wife and expected to hear the worst. He broke down in tears when I told him. Strangely enough, about five years later, after having left Deutsche Bank, I met the salesman who had missed that September 11 meeting and sent Sebastian in his stead. We met at a party. He did not know that I had worked for Deutsche Bank. He started telling me about his near-death experience and how he was fortunate for having missed a meeting in the WTC that morning. I simply responded “Well, I guess Sebastian was not so fortunate”. He looked at me with a shocked expression that I knew. Of course, it was no fault of his that Sebastian was killed that day. But I was not going to let him get away with an “oh, lucky me” story without also acknowledging that his good luck was correlated with an underling’s bad luck. In so many ways we are ALL lucky to be alive in a thriving and safer country today. And that is a great thing. But a big reason why we are where we are is due to the sacrifices of so many in the past, be it at Pearl Harbor, September 11, or all the other events where Americans (and, in Sebastian’s case, even non-Americans) have perished while in harms way. So we can count our lucky blessings, but NEVER forget all those who have sacrificed their lives to make ours all the better.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/children-dads-killed-911-tell-24773627
https://jowhoblogs.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/lost-voices-of-911/comment-page-1/
There are very, very few life-defining “where were you when you heard the news” events that a generation experiences. For the “Greatest Generation” events like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK come to mind. As a tail-end baby boomer the JFK assassination was the first big event I can recall, but barely. My main takeaway was no cartoons to watch on TV on Saturday morning the day after the assassination. As a college student I was watching a Monday Night Football game when Howard Cosell announced the assassination of John Lennon. Shattering, heartbreaking, frozen in time, but certainly not the sort of nation-defining moment that Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination had been. But, still, the most gut-wrenching freeze-frame moment that my generation experienced until……twenty years ago today.
September 11, 2001. Almost seems like yesterday. Time flies but, in another sense, stands still. Unlike Pearl Harbor, which marked the U.S. entry into a war that would be over within four years, the war on terrorism endures. Sure, Pearl Harbor was a trigger event that led to US entry into a war that we won and that eventually led to global consequences that reshaped the post-war era (e.g. Cold War, globalization, etc….). But at least with the end of hostilities in 1945 the “good guys” clearly won. The war on terrorism, however, is not your standard warfare. It is an even more asymmetrical type of war than what our nation endured in Vietnam and Iraq. It is not fighting against a particular nation or tribe. Albeit certain nations, which have hosted terrorists, have paid the consequences in order to be stabilized (e.g. Afghanistan). Recent events also show that this will be an ongoing, open-ended struggle, with its ebbs and flows, ups and downs (capturing OBL, the rise of ISIS, terrorist attacks in cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Nice, the recapturing of ISIS-held territories, the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan). So, in a very real sense, we are all still living the direct consequences of September 11, 2001 today. It is part of our everyday reality, be it higher security screenings at airports, more heavily fortified U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, and, most importantly, the changes it has had on the psyche of the United States over the years.
“Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.” — George W. Bush
I am curious to hear “your” September 11 story. Where were you when you heard the news? How old were you? How did it impact you that day or after wards?
This is my story:
I had just started a new job in banking for Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany the week before after having worked for the bank in Zurich. I had an office just off of our trading floor and was meeting our head of front end business line technology when we walked out of our meeting and saw that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We thought that it was a small plane and just an accident. I went into another meeting but was called out to be informed that the second tower had also been hit by a plane. Clearly a terrorist attack, which made this an urgent business matter as markets were starting to go crazy. Our trading floor was in an office building about a five minute walk from Deutsche Bank’s global HQ at the Taunusanlage, which was Frankfurt’s mini-version of the twin towers. They evacuated our twin towers because the world seemed to be going to hell and nobody knew if there would be attacks in other cities, especially financial centers, and at that moment it was better to be safe than sorry. So next thing I know our global head of investment banking (and future long-time CEO) had appropriated my then temporary office. Then we entered into a heated discussion. We were all on edge. Wall Street was closed. Asia was hours away from opening. It was approaching 5:00 p.m. central European time, when all the European markets would be closed except for the two markets that had recently instituted “extended trading hours” until 8:00 p.m – Germany and Sweden (Remember, this was 2001, and there were not yet organized official exchanges with 24-hour trading, just some private markets). Swedish market cap and trading volume, to be frank, was negligible. But Germany was another story. Our head of trading was livid and saying that nobody knew what the hell was going on and that we could incur huge losses by being the only official market open in the world during those three hours of hell. Our head of investment banking then went to the next office to call our CEO, who also just happened to be the Chairman of the Board of the Deutsche Boerse (German Exchange). He came back and told us that we were staying open, regardless of potential losses. Our CEO said, quite bluntly, that we were not shutting down the German market due to a terrorist event and that the market needed to remain open now, more than ever. We were not about to cave in to terrorism and it was critical that we remain open as the only major exchange in the world in order to help ensure financial liquidity. And so it was decided, and to this day I credit him for making a decision that was a much bigger one than the potential P&L impact on the bank (which, when all was said and done, ended up being negligible).
Now the second, and more difficult, part of my story. Deutsche Bank lost just one employee on September 11 and he was a member of our department. And, unfortunately, due to bad communication on the part of Deutsche Bank his parents thought at first that he was alive. You see, at that time Deutsche Bank had two offices in Manhattan. Our front end offices, including our equities operations, were based in mid-town near the MOMA. However, we had a huge office tower right next to the WTC (just south of it) where we had many of our back-office employees. That office tower was safely evacuated before the WTC collapsed, which was a good thing. I spoke to our global head of cost control about a week later. He had been based there. He told me that the large antenna on top of one of the WTC towers had actually fallen on the Deutsche Bank building and sliced its way through several floors, including his office. In any event, corporate HQ at Deutsche Bank put out a release that all employees in New York had been safely evacuated. This is the notice that the parents of one of our employees, a young kid in his 20s by the name of Sebastian Gorki, heard about with a huge sigh of relief. Tragically, it was wrong.
Sebastian was a promising young VP on our sales team in Frankfurt. So promising that he was transferred for international experience to New York about a year before I arrived in Frankfurt. His very best friend in Frankfurt, a fellow junior salesman by the name of Robin, was transferred to our Zurich office at about the same time. I knew Robin well and worked closely with him on a few deals. As it turned out, Sebastian was called by his boss the evening of September 10. His boss had a client meeting scheduled for the next morning that he would not be able to attend as he had to bring his wife to the doctor for an appointment that was scheduled at the last minute. So he asked Sebastian to attend in his place. So Sebastian went to the early morning meeting, located near the top of one of the WTC towers. After the tower was hit he made a few calls from his cell phone, and that was it. He left behind a pregnant wife in New York.
Deutsche Bank had mistakenly released the “all employees are safe and accounted for" message despite head office having been informed of Sebastian’s situation. We were livid. My boss had to call the parents and tell them that their son had died. Sebastian’s boss in New York called his wife. They were initially in denial, in part due to the erroneous Deutsche Bank press release. It was left to me to inform Robin. They were best buddies. He had spoken to Sebastian’s wife and expected to hear the worst. He broke down in tears when I told him. Strangely enough, about five years later, after having left Deutsche Bank, I met the salesman who had missed that September 11 meeting and sent Sebastian in his stead. We met at a party. He did not know that I had worked for Deutsche Bank. He started telling me about his near-death experience and how he was fortunate for having missed a meeting in the WTC that morning. I simply responded “Well, I guess Sebastian was not so fortunate”. He looked at me with a shocked expression that I knew. Of course, it was no fault of his that Sebastian was killed that day. But I was not going to let him get away with an “oh, lucky me” story without also acknowledging that his good luck was correlated with an underling’s bad luck. In so many ways we are ALL lucky to be alive in a thriving and safer country today. And that is a great thing. But a big reason why we are where we are is due to the sacrifices of so many in the past, be it at Pearl Harbor, September 11, or all the other events where Americans (and, in Sebastian’s case, even non-Americans) have perished while in harms way. So we can count our lucky blessings, but NEVER forget all those who have sacrificed their lives to make ours all the better.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/children-dads-killed-911-tell-24773627
https://jowhoblogs.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/lost-voices-of-911/comment-page-1/
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