Twenty-three years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, the editorial team of Restaurant Business gathered in a conference room to figure out how we could get everyone home safely—and whom of our industry contacts had likely already died. We were, after all, journalists obliged to cover the attacks. But, like everyone else in New York City, we were scared, heartbroken and struggling to come to grips with what had just happened.
RB was based back then in the East Village of Manhattan, roughly a mile from the World Trade Center, so we’d had a bird’s eye view of the world getting turned upside down. We’d watched the towers fall and the sky fill with smoke, and thousands of people were marching past our windows from the Financial District, all covered in ash. None of them said a word as they grimly plodded toward what they hoped would be safety, though no one knew what was literally ahead.
Phone service was sporadic at best because of the call volume, and the attacks had knocked out the antennas that delivered TV service to our area, so we didn’t have the whole picture. The few news tidbits we’d gleaned from calls to family and friends held that more planes were still in the air. There was also a report that the U.S. Department of Justice had been bombed.
It was a day that’s seared into our memories. Even two decades later, seeing “September 11” on a calendar brings back vivid and devastating recollections of that day. As my small contribution to ensuring that the darkness of that day is never forgotten, I promised myself to write about it every Sept. 11 afterward. It’s a pledge I’ve admittedly not always kept, but I hope you’ll indulge me a recount this year of what RB experienced that day.
My first exposure to the unimaginable had come that morning, when I’d climbed out of my subway stop at 8th Street. The sky to the south was one massive cloud of smoke, and it seemed to be hovering over my alma mater, New York University, which I knew had a nuclear accelerator. They must’ve had some sort of accident, I thought.
I was set right by the person inside the coffee cart outside our building, my usual stop for an eye-opener. “I seen it,” the Afghani immigrant excitedly offered after seeing me gawking. “A plane hit the building.” I figured some Cessna had gone adrift and hit the skyscraper.
By the time I’d taken the elevator to RB’s floor, the second plane had struck. We weren’t sure exactly what was happening, but knew it had to be terrorism, and that it had to be something on a scale we’d never seen before.
The team came together, unsure what to do or even what exactly we were witnessing. The brother of one colleague, Katherine Bryant, now a publicist, lived within blocks of the World Trade Center, and the co-worker couldn’t reach him or his spouse. The wife turned up days later in a hospital, having been struck by debris while walking her dog. A piece of flying metal had simultaneously lodged in the dog’s scalp, but bystanders had made sure both human and canine victims were rushed to aid.
By then, we’d also gleaned that Manhattan had been locked down. All of us lived off the island, meaning we were stuck there.
Meanwhile, reports continued to surface of more planes possibly heading for buildings. We'd learned the Pentagon had also been struck, and the crash in Pennsylvania lent credence to the reports.
One of the possible targets mentioned was Madison Square Garden. My wife worked across the street from it. I convinced her to get out of there and meet me on the street midway between our offices. Reluctantly, she agreed.
So I joined the parade of soot-covered people who were walking up from the southern tip of Manhattan. Suddenly, everyone froze; we’d all heard the sound of a plane flying overhead. Was this the next attack?
“It’s a fighter!” someone yelled in obvious relief and delight. The fear that’d gripped all of us instantly lifted as we appreciated that the craft wasn’t an airliner heading for yet another building.
“Yeah, but is it one of ours?” someone else shouted. Some of the walkers actually raised briefcases or purses over their heads, as if those blocks would provide protection, and hastened their pace.
I did indeed rendezvous with my wife, in the landmark Union Square Park. We decided to seek refuge in Heartbeat, the restaurant of the nearby W Hotel. But we were turned away by the hostess, who explained that the property was being closed to everyone but guests.
So on we plodded to my wife’s office near the Garden, since any train home would leave from Penn Station, the complex underneath the sports facility. My wife, Holly, worked for what was then Thompson Media, which also had an office across the street from World Trade. Her office had been unable to reach anyone at the downtown facility. No one knew if those colleagues were alive or dead. Only later would some show up at the uptown office, the first indication that they’d survived. Each arrived to outstretched arms and an ocean of tears.
Others never made it. The company would lose dozens of employees, including two who’d been on one of the commandeered planes. A newsletter that competed directly with one of Thompson’s publications—one that my wife served as a salesperson—was holding a conference that day atop one of the towers. The hosts and attendees all perished.
Peering across the street to Penn Station, we suddenly saw the throngs on the sidewalk charge inside the facility. Clearly train service was resuming. But before we’d even left Thompson’s offices, the crowd stampeded back out; there were reports of a bomb in the building.
Eventually, service was resumed, and we got the first train back to our home stop. Late that night, we went up to our train station to donate blood at an emergency collection center that’d been hastily set up. The parking lot was still filled with cars, the vehicles of commuters whom we realized were now gone.
RB’s offices would be closed for the next four days because we were so close to what was now an acre of rubble from collapsed buildings. Having time to watch coverage of the immediate aftermath proved a curse. On Sept. 12, hospitals throughout the city were preparing to receive any survivors whom first responders could dig out of the debris. Within hours, it was clear there would be none.
By then, friends and relatives of individuals who hadn’t come home from their offices in the World Trade Center the night of Sept. 11 were circulating in highly trafficked areas in hopes of finding someone who might know the whereabouts of the missing. They carried stacks of photocopied pictures, handing them out and beseeching passers-by, “Have you seen this person?” The portraits of the missing would remain posted on light poles and transportation centers for weeks.
That’s when we started tabulating whom the industry had lost. Remember, we were journalists, and our industry had suffered badly. We’d just run a story about the pastry chef of Windows on the World, the landmark restaurant atop one of the towers. We realized she was gone, along with the dozens of hourlies who worked there.
I glumly concluded the restaurant’s chef, Michael Lomonaco, must have been among the victims. Only later would we learn he’d stopped on his way to the elevators that morning to pick up a new pair of glasses. The chore saved his life.
The restaurant business is often knocked for being a less than hospitable community for its workers. Sept. 12 provided a different picture. Some of the biggest names in the industry converged in lower Manhattan and set up emergency feeding centers to fuel the rescue and recovery effort. There were a lot of heroes in uniform that day in New York. An army of them were in foodservice whites.
The industry paid a dear price on that morning of 23 years ago, yet time is dimming the memory for many. A good number of your employees likely weren’t even born yet, so it’s just something they only hear about.
Please make sure they do. None of us can afford to forget an event that changed everything, the restaurant business included.