Tower Stories

by Damon DiMarco

  No more predictions of fate

  Swam through blue water with dolphins

  Kissed a stingray on the lips

  Sailed a boat straight through the ocean

  Tried to just get one more kiss

  You make me happy

  You make me happy

  You make me happy …

  UPDATE

  The Bogmen came together as recently as late December of 2006 to play performances at Webster Hall and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City to benefit Kristy’s Smile, a non-profit association dedicated to charitable giving. In 2010, the group released its fifth album, the studio EP Looking for Heaven in the Barrio. Adding to their slate of well-received holiday shows, the Bogmen played a benefit show at the Paramount in their hometown of Huntington, Long Island, in December 2015.

  Brendan Ryan and his brother, Bill, have kept busy composing and producing music for films and television commercials. They have reunited in the band Mad Larry, which, according to their website, “takes influences from a wide range of artists such as Tom Waits, Talking Heads, the Platters, and Neil Young.” The website also mentions that, “In a Samuel Beckett kind of way, Mad Larry often sings about finding hope and serenity in the midst of the absurdities and tribulations of the wayward world. Confessing flaws, compulsions, indulgences, and failed relationships, Mad Larry writes and plays about the frailties of artists and all of us.”

  87 Brendan notes that, thankfully. Tom O’Neill had business on the West Coast on the eleventh of September.

  88 HRA stands for the Human Resources Administration, a city agency.

  MARK LESCOEZEC

  Mark Lescoezec, thirty-two. A placid guy you’d probably miss in a crowd, but someone who can keep a company afloat in the middle of a catastrophe by letting his deft fingers work a keyboard.

  YOU KNOW, it’s funny. People who work in technology? Nobody really knows about us until something goes wrong. Then we’re the most important people in the world.

  When the Towers went down, the destruction wasn’t limited to the physical devastation of the Trade Center buildings. Massive stores of information were annihilated. To me, that’s an interesting [historical] footnote: that in this age of technology, people and equipment are often replaceable. Information, however, is priceless.

  Everybody lost people. Cantor Fitzgerald, you’ve heard about them? They were huge into bonds. Seven hundred people out of a thousand were lost. I can’t fathom that. There were actually concerns over the liquidity of the entire bond market because of one company’s sudden destruction. Imagine that.

  You may have heard that Sandler O’Neill was a company pretty seriously affected by the attack. They were up on the 104th floor of Tower 2. Their offices were … well … pretty heavily hit.

  My boss is Stan Druckamiller, who founded the company I work for, Duchesne Capital. And Stan just asked the folks at Sandler outright, “How can we help you?” See, he knew the guys in upper management at Sandler. I assume they were good friends because our industry is like any other—people get to know one another. One big happy banking family.

  Sandler wasn’t in a position to refuse. And this is the solution we came up with:

  Just before September 11, Duchesne Capital was all set to open a branch office in San Francisco. I’d already staged and prepped all the necessary equipment at our New York office. It was all set to ship out to San Fran, so the guys out there could take the stuff out of the boxes, plug it in, and boom. Ready to go.

  When we heard about the attack, we just … well. We basically gave all that equipment to Sandler O’Neill.

  My company only has, like, twenty-five people in New York, so we only have two technology people here. We do the networking, the servers, the T-1s, all that. We work with market data. It sounds dry, but imagine a bank without client information. Imagine a broker who loses all his transaction information. The banking industry rides on the back of electronics. State-of-the-art electronics—the faster, the better. Understanding this, our attitude quickly became: “Whatever you need.”

  For instance, I go over to Sandler after work every day and put in a few hours to get them moving. My time’s been donated by my firm. Temporarily, Sandler O’Neill’s working out of the Bank of America on 57th Street. Bank of America loaned them space until they get back on their feet and find something long-term. It may take two or three months, it might take longer, no one knows. Believe me when I say it’s the least of everyone’s worries.89

  So my company gave Sandler all the equipment we’d intended for our San Francisco project, and I set up a sequel server for their accounting system. They have a portfolio management system, of course, and I spent a few years in source fund management, so I’ve worked with those systems in my previous job life. It’s all foreign for them, but it’s simple for me to come in and do it.

  The guys in Sandler’s accounting office know how to use sequel servers—packages like Solomon database and Nextiva and all that. They just don’t know shit about setting them up. Funny, really, what becomes life or death for a company. You follow a question tree of very simple, but very important questions. Were their backup systems good? Were they tested? Did they keep the backups on-site or off-site? Fortunately, Sandler was very compliant with all of this.

  I’m sure a lot of companies from the Trade Center didn’t follow the procedures that Sandler did. And now their business is gone. Completely wiped out.

  That first week after the tragedy, the first week I was helping out, these people—the survivors—they were walking around the office with these … eyes. They were lost in a daze.

  It was an epidemic of white-collar shock. I found one of their portfolio managers working with the computers, actually making things worse. She had no idea what she was doing. It boiled down to advising her and the other people who were there: “Please don’t think. Let us do the thinking. There’s only one goal now—just get your networks up and running.”

  I work with these people every day, and it’s really wild to see them like that. Burnt out. Stumbling around. Broken. I go outside to have a cigarette and see the rest of the city scrambling as well, scrambling to get things moving again.

  Business has to exist. It has to move on. You have to go back to work, keep things running. Client accounts are still open, deals are still up in the air for trading firms. And underlying this all is the void of so many lost friends. Faces, once familiar, that no one will ever see again. The disorientation is incalculable.

  I go back inside the building and people glance up at me, so thankful. They’re so happy we’re there to do whatever we can for them.

  This past week I went into Sandler, and you could feel the relief. Their network was finally up and the primary server was running smoothly. Given the circumstances, it all happened pretty fast.

  Like I said, Sandler had their tapes. Every company backs up their servers; it’s something most people don’t even think about. Very critical data gets backed up on those tapes. A lot of companies store them off-site, and Sandler was no different. They kept theirs in a vault at HSBC downtown. One little hitch: HSBC was close enough to the disaster so that no one could get into the vaults—the power was cut off.

  But somehow, Sandler retrieved those tapes. For one second, would you just imagine if they hadn’t?

  Here’s what the scene would look like. You’ve got all the hardware. You’ve got rows of talented people sitting in front of dark screens, waiting. But all the data you’ve been collecting for the past thirteen years—spreadsheets, documents, emails, portfolios, memos, protocols, payrolls, Christmas card lists—it’s gone. All gone.

  We recovered the data from the tapes last Saturday night at 2:00 A.M. You can’t imagine the huge sigh of relief.

  Yeah, Duchesne Capital still plans on opening our San Francisco branch. But for right now, we’re just helping out at Sandler O’Neill. That’s the focus.

  I was thinking of volunteering downtown at Ground Zero, but it sounds like they have
a lot of people there already. And data is what I do; this is what I can do. So I do it. I could dig for bodies, I guess. I could prepare food. But I honestly feel that I’m making a contribution here. Everyone helps in their own way.

  Sandler’s not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. I want to get them up to where they can make their own decisions, function independently. They’re gonna have to staff up, bring in new people, good people. It’s like they’re starting all over again.

  At least they get the chance.

  Let me end with this little story. Because, for me? This is how September 11 affected me in both a small and a large way at once.

  There’s a company Duchesne Capital uses for marketing services. I called them the other day, looking for one of their technicians I like. We’re converting to a T-1 line from the system we’re using right now, and this guy of theirs is very cool. He knows his stuff, he’s easy to work with, and he solves a lot of problems. I’ve known him for years. His name is Wade.

  The other day I was having difficulties, so I called up the marketing service and talked to the woman who answered the phone. I said, “Look, can you send Wade over? I’ve got a glitch over here I can’t figure out, and I need to finish this conversion.”

  There was this pause on the other end of the line, and she said, “Wade was in the World Trade Center.”

  See, we weren’t best friends. I just knew the guy. He was very cool and he knew his stuff. He was easy to work with.

  But now he’s gone and I mean … I mean … you know?

  89 This interview was conducted less than three weeks after the attack.

  OMAR METWALLY

  Omar Metwally, twenty-eight, lives in Brooklyn. He’s of Egyptian descent. His dark features and olive complexion could very well be mistaken for many ethnicities.

  His words come easily when he tells his tale, but once or twice they catch in his throat and he takes a deep breath before continuing.

  SEPTEMBER 11, I was working in Midtown at a temp job. They let us all out when we heard the news, but nobody really knew what to do.

  I walked around Central Park for a while. Normally I take the F train home to Brooklyn, but I couldn’t go home; they’d shut down the trains. So I walked around the park, looking at people’s faces. Lots of blank faces.

  It was … I don’t know how to describe it. I was alone. I felt lost. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t get any friends on the phone to set up a place to stay in Manhattan. I didn’t know where anyone was. It was awful.

  So I went down to the East Side and was walking down First Avenue. I stopped at a pub, just to get off the street for a bit. By that point, I’d walked around for a couple hours.

  There was a crowd of grief-stricken people watching the TV. You couldn’t really hear what was being said on the broadcast, what with everybody talking and all, but you could see the images. And also pictures and video of Osama bin Laden. It was the first I’d seen of Osama bin Laden.

  I leaned over to this guy next to me and I said, “What’s the deal? Did they pin this on the al-Qaeda? Do they know?”

  He just watched the TV and nodded. Said, “Yeah, yeah. I think it was them. I think it was bin Laden. We should bomb those fucking Arabs.”

  He was talking over his shoulder. He wasn’t looking at me.

  I didn’t know what to say. But eventually, I turned to him and I said, “You know, I’m Arab.”

  He didn’t say anything for a second. He just sort of stared at me. Frozen. Then he started stammering to apologize. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. You know, I’m … Turkish.”

  I’ve dealt with that kind of racism growing up all my life, the way the media and films portray people of Arab descent as gun-toting madmen.

  You know, there was Reagan’s war on Gaddafi. Then the Gulf War in the early ’90s. That sentiment’s been around, and you learn to deal with it. But once I’d left school, I thought I could avoid it. I guess not. It’s in there, and it’s insidious.

  How does it make me feel? Hopeless. I hold the media responsible to a large degree. For years and years, there’s been a barrage of certain images. If you recall, after the Oklahoma City bombing of the Federal building, there was so much speculation. Pictures were shown over and over again, pictures that have a very powerful effect. They have a powerful effect on me, and I’m part of the ethnic group that’s being poorly portrayed.

  When Oklahoma City happened, they showed countless images of Arab terrorists. Then, after they found out that Timothy McVeigh was responsible—a white American—no apology was extended to the Arab community. But the damage was already done.

  I saw the same thing happen in this situation. The media flooded the nation with images that weren’t put into proper context. You know, already the number of hate crimes on record has skyrocketed. There were only 250 hate crimes reported against Arab Americans last year. Well … [laughs] only 250. It’s up to four or five hundred now, less than two months after the attacks. It’s doubled and it’s growing—and it’s early.

  What do I see happening now? I’m afraid we’re going to war. I’m worried about our basic freedoms. I’m worried about our society. The Bill of Rights. The ideas that we, as a nation, were founded on. They’re good ideas. But people have been put into camps in this country, remember that?90 It’s a part of our history that lots of people tend to forget. I don’t.

  I think there are people who are going to take advantage of this situation, political advantage. And my fear is that those problems, which are really the root of what happened at the Towers, will be ignored so that the government can push the American people into a really frightening right-wing agenda.

  Fear can be used to such great effect. The problems that need to be addressed in the world are problems that need to be addressed in this country. Problems of social justice, problems of poverty, problems of racial equality, problems of class. But we push it aside, we push it aside, we push it aside.

  We only reconsider our actions when it’s already too late.

  UPDATE

  Omar Metwally’s career as a professional actor took off not long after the attacks of September 11. Among many other credits and awards, he received the 2008 Chopard Trophy, presented at the Cannes Film Festival, for playing the role of Anwar El-Ibrahimi in Gavin Hood’s Rendition, which also starred Meryl Streep, Jake Gyllenhaal, Alan Arkin, and Reese Witherspoon. He played Dr. Vik Ullah between 2015 and 2019 on Showtime’s series The Affair. And he won an Obie Award for his performance in the Atlantic Theater’s production of Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj.

  90 Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress passed certain laws and the executive branch issued certain exclusion orders meant to protect the West Coast military areas from sabotage. As a result, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were required to report to internment camps, regardless of evidence of their loyalty or disloyalty to the U.S. At the time, there was little protest from Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the internment camps did not violate the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans (in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 1942).

  KEN LONGERT and FRED HORNE

  Ken Longert is the owner and operator of Ken Longert Lighting, a New York City theatrical lighting business. He’s been lighting films, television programs, commercials, Broadway and off-Broadway theater productions, tradeshows, and special events since the 1970s.

  But all of his skills were put to the test when September 11 unexpectedly turned the Chelsea Piers into the mayor’s emergency management nerve center.

  Ken and his partner, Fred Horne, review their experiences.

  Ken: TALK ABOUT weird luck. The OEM was training cadets at Pier 92 on September 11.91 Two or three hundred cadets were there, learning the proper procedures in case some kind of disaster hit New York. Total coincidence. We were booked four or five days before the attack happened, since we’re the normal special events lighting subcontractors for the Pier. So we got there about seven o’clock in the morning to set up.<
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  We were doing our job and everything was routine until we looked off the south side of Pier 92 and saw smoke coming from the first Tower. Everyone assumed a plane had hit the Trade Center, that it must’ve been an accident. Nobody thought much of it until a few minutes later, when we witnessed the second plane’s impact. I should qualify that. The plane came from the south and we were standing at a northerly position. So we didn’t actually see the impact, but we sure as hell saw the flames gushing out the building’s exit wound.

  Within seconds, all the people from OEM disappeared. That’s when we knew something big was going on. This was at 8:45 in the morning.

  We took a coffee break about 9:15 and made a decision not to continue setting up because we didn’t think the OEM guys would be back. I had fifteen or twenty guys floating around the Pier—electricians, carpenters, and soundmen. I went up to the roof of Pier 92 to see what was going on, and witnessed the buildings come down. Couldn’t believe my eyes.

  So the job was halfway finished. We were in limbo. Around noon, we called it quits and dispersed.

  I’m a bike rider. I train every morning in Central Park. I rode my bike from the Pier back up to my home on the Upper West Side. Let me tell you what I saw: there was this peculiar feeling in the air. People were in a daze. Thousands of people walking uptown, like some sort of catharsis had happened and people were in a trance.

  Ken: OEM had opened its new Emergency Operations Center in February of ’99, this state-of-the-art facility designed to operate as a stand-alone center from which New York City government would operate in a time of crisis. The EOC was in 7 World Trade, within walking distance of City Hall and most city agencies. It was an engineering marvel. The EOC facility is powered by three 500-KVA generators that act as emergency power sources totally independent of the building’s backup generators. In addition to a 6,000-gallon fuel tank, there’s an 11,000-gallon potable water supply for sanitary and domestic water needs, plus a backup system for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Computers, phone systems, and radios are all individually set, with uninterrupted power supplies. The EOC can withstand winds up to, like, 200 mph, and in the event of a hurricane, the exterior walls are constructed with steel framing, plus numerous layers of drywall and Kevlar.