BY ALICIA COLON
September 10, 2004
Just as everyone of a certain age remembers what
they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated,
so, too, does every New Yorker remember what happened
three years ago on September 11.
Memorial observances of the last two anniversaries
have been somewhat subdued because the rawness of
grief was still sharp, but we are in danger of forgetting
the horror that visited our city that late summer
day.
Every so often, I catch a glimpse of a car's bumper
sticker with an image of the stricken Twin Towers
that reads, "Never forget." As long as
I have the opportunity to remind New Yorkers about
9/11, I'll do just that.
I went to the office of Drum Associates at 150
Broadway to interview Brian Drum, a unique entrepreneur
whose commitment to the revival of downtown Manhattan
is inspiring. Not only did Mr. Drum return his business
to its same location just 300 yards from the former
World Trade Center, but he kept his staff on salary
even while he was unable to conduct any business.
Drum Associates is an executive search firm and
is much more portable than many companies. Mr. Drum
could have relocated anywhere and still retained
his clientele. I asked him why he returned and he
said, "You can't cave in to that stuff. Abandoning
downtown would have meant that the terrorists won."
Mr. Drum was in his office that Tuesday and knew
pretty quickly we were being attacked. Remembering
the chaos that followed the 1993 WTC attack, he
evacuated his office before the towers fell. He
then managed to take the no. 6 train uptown to meet
his son in Midtown. "When my son told me, 'they're
gone' I was in total disbelief. I never thought
they would collapse."
The question we all ask one another when discussing
September 11 is, "Did you know anyone who died
that day?" Inevitably, the answer is in the
affirmative when it's posed to someone who works
so close to ground zero.
Mr. Drum remembers several acquaintances but the
one individual he recalls in particular is Freddy
Hoffmann, a Cantor Fitzgerald executive. On September
11, Mr. Drum had traveled in from New Jersey with
Hofmann on the Path train and as they rode up that
long escalator to the WTC, Hoffmann talked of having
only two years until retirement.
"Freddy and I had a lot in common. We both
lived in New Jersey. I had a second home in Pennsylvania.
Freddy had a second home there, too," Mr. Drum
recalled.
"We'd meet and just make small talk about
that but the thing that haunts me most about Freddy
is that we both have daughters about the same age.
I brought my daughter Carly into the business and
he brought his to Cantor Fitzgerald. I think they
were one of only two families that lost more than
one member on 9/11.I see his wife occasionally socially
and this still haunts me."
Haunting is a good word to describe the impact
of those attacks on many New Yorkers. As the years
go by, our tears for those lost are being replaced
by a clenching of teeth and narrowing of the eyes
whenever we near that empty acreage in Lower Manhattan.
Brian Drum suspects that many of the buildings
in the area will be turned into residential properties,
but he hopes that when the towers are rebuilt that
businesses will come back. "Where did all the
companies who were in the World Trade Center go?"
he asked. "Where are they now? Certainly many
of the businesses are gone forever but that's why
the Towers must be rebuilt. It shouldn't just be
a memorial."
Mr. Drum said that much more is needed to revitalize
Lower Manhattan - and he isn't talking about money
as much as he is about attitude.
It also takes guts and compassion, which Brian
Drum certainly had to keep his workers from joining
the thousands of New Yorkers left unemployed by
the murderous attacks. He kept his business afloat
by pouring money into it for the lean years of 2002
and 2003. Now the economy is on the rebound and
one can't help but wish that the city had a thousand
Brian Drums as committed to its recovery.
After I left Drum Associates, I took a walk down
to the area around ground zero. Many businesses
are still shuttered. The old coffee shop on the
corner of Rector and Greenwich Street is gone, as
is the entire building in which it was housed.
Yet streets are crowded with tourists and workers
from the financial district catching express buses
and ferries to their homes. Battery Park City is
booming with new environmentally advanced structures
sprouting up one after another. Century 21 is always
crowded; "Law and Order" is filming in
the area. The place is jumping.
We must never forget that 9/11 was not only a day
of infamy, but also a day of miracles. Twenty-eight
hundred innocents were murdered that day, but more
than 25,000 escaped from the Twin Towers. Beautiful
historic buildings surrounding the WTC were remarkably
untouched.
Somebody up there likes us.
