Breakfast speeches in hotel ballrooms aren't always memorable. However, this one was at the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel, and the date was 9/11. We were among the lucky ones.
I was attending the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Business Economics. This was the last day, and we were listening to a speech by the president of Morgan Stanley. The first thing I noticed were the lights flickering. I looked up at them- the banquet room's lights had hundreds of glass prisms hanging down below the lights, and they were swaying back and forth. I had time to think "Earthquake" and then I heard the booms from the explosion. It was then that I thought "I'm at the World Trade Center- this is a bomb and not an earthquake."
There were probably 200 of us in the banquet room, maybe 50 yards from the base of the North Tower, which was the first one hit. Some people were yelling "Get out, Get out" but there was no real panic, although we were moving fast. I remember grabbing my briefcase, and hugging the wall as I left. The room emptied out into a foyer, which in turn emptied out to the main hotel lobby, which faced west out to West Street. Hotel staffers were not letting us out onto West Street, where we could see debris raining down. At this point, I didn't know what it was- another bomb in the parking garage, a truck bomb, or what. Most of us headed south through a hotel restaurant that had an exterior door south onto Liberty Street. Once out, I headed west across the street to a plaza. There were already sirens everywhere.
As I exited the hotel, my first thoughts were on how to find my wife and 13 year old daughter, who were also at the meeting. They were going to be sight-seeing in the morning, and I wasn't sure where they were. As soon as I got across the street, I used my cell phone to call my wife's cell phone. According to cell phone records, the first call was at 8:49- I only got her voice mail. It was only then that I turned around to look at the hotel and WTC, and that is when I saw the hole and smoke in the North Tower. Since I was standing at the opposite side from where the plane hit, the hole was small, and the flames at this time weren't bad.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Thanks Bruce, absolutely chilling - I don't think it's reasonable for anyone to expect people who went through something like this - and especially those who lost loved ones - to "get over it" just like that. Thanks for sharing your experience.