|
Texans in New York Remember the Towers
In his daily commute through Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan, Ward Welke (BBA ‘00), received his first hint that something was amiss. Repeatedly, he caught snippets of conversation from his fellow commuters peppered with words like “terrorism” and “plane crash.” By the time he arrived at work at 9:10 a.m., he knew enough about the unfolding crisis that his only thought was for the safety of his roommate, Stephen, who worked at Merrill Lynch. Stephen commuted to work on a subway that ran directly beneath the two 110-story towers.
Ward just had time to email a colleague on the West Coast, asking him to call his parents to let them know he was okay, before his superiors gathered his group in a conference room at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) to explain what had happened. Some of the employees left immediately, but Ward was motionless, struck by the thought of the job offer he turned down for his present position at CSFB—a job that would have placed him between the 89th and 93rd floors of One World Trade. Later, he would discover, much to his relief, that his roommate was fine, just shaken. He had walked from the financial district to his parents’ apartment on the upper east side, some 60 or 70 blocks.
Emily Keast (BS ‘00) heard a loud explosion as she exited a subway station in SoHo, but “you hear a lot of loud bangs in Manhattan,” she explains, “and rarely do they warrant any attention.” She continued, unhurried, to the office. Once there, she realized by how very much she had underestimated the significance of that noise. The office was plagued with shock and grief.
Emily had never seen her boss so emotional, as between sobs he told his small staff that they were free to go home. Her walk home was bizarre and surreal. Since her apartment was south of the office, she found herself walking toward where the towers had stood as hoards of people, numb with disbelief, streamed uptown. “It was so evident that I was walking the wrong way,” she recalls.
On the morning of September 11, Kyle Bradford (PPA ‘99) was in Austin on a recruiting trip for Salomon Smith Barney. It wasn’t until he checked his instant email messenger that he read two messages giving him the first hint that something tragic had occurred. One message from London read: “What the hell is going on there?” and another from his mother: “Call me.”
Karen Wood (BBA ‘01) was on her way to work, an uptown commute she made from her apartment located in the financial district. It was on her usually uneventful walk to the subway that she saw what had halted hundreds in the street. She hurried back into her building to retrieve her roommate, and both ran out into the street to watch in horror as the ominous pyre engulfed the twin buildings.
While she had seen the towers on fire, Karen never estimated that they would collapse: it seemed as though it would just require a massive effort to put the fires out. So, despite the obvious catastrophe, Karen continued on to work at UBS Warburg in midtown, worried about arriving for a meeting on time. At work, she learned of the towers’ collapse and the ghastly extent of the damage. She emailed everyone in her address book one simple and telling message: “Safe.”
Amazingly, all but one (see sidebar above) UT business school alum known to be working in New York City survived the World Trade Center attacks. But what would come next?
The Fallout
Within New York-centric industries like finance and publishing, lay-offs had been rampant for a year prior to September 11. At banking behemoths like Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney and CSFB, pink slips were being handed out generously, on the heels of a market downturn spurred by the burst of the tech bubble. “Upcoming layoffs are the residual of the ‘cost-cutting’ initiatives determined by management before last September,” says Ward, who is a second-year analyst in the real estate group at CSFB. Such companies were already on the road to hellacious earnings and sales numbers. For them, the attacks on the World Trade Center only exacerbated an already dire situation. Ward says that work drastically slowed down after the bombings, and indeed, 68,000 lay-offs were announced between September 11, 2001 and January 21, 2002. The Finance/Insurance and Real Estate sector placed fifth among those worst hit by the attacks.
But for other industries, the terrorist acts marked just the beginning of their woes.
Unlike in banking, September 11 served as the initial stumbling block for the Hospitality/Entertainment and Tourism sector. Five months later, the industry is still having trouble regaining its balance, having laid off nearly 130,000 workers.
Emily can attest to the disruption in her industry as a former employee of Matthew David Events, a small events planning firm in SoHo. She was forced from full-time employment into a part-time freelance position when her firm had to cut its staff by one-third. Companies weren’t holding lavish parties any more, and many of them donated the funds reserved for their holiday parties to one of the victims’ disaster funds.
Where Texas Pride Meets New York Attitude
A proclivity toward bouncing back is a trait common to many who set their sites on New York City. Frank Sinatra knew what he was talking about when he sang: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” But New York transplants may have gotten a little more than they bargained for in 2001.
The McCombs School alumni who made it through the tragedy are beginning to experience some calm. Deal flow is gradually picking up steam for Ward. Karen, who had to live in a hotel for over a month while her financial district apartment was being repaired and tested for proper air quality, has finally settled back in, both at home and at work. Ground zero, four blocks from her home, is decidedly a different place. “Among the bomb threats at work, tourists in FDNY hats, and the hole in the ground just a few blocks away, it is tough not to be constantly reminded,” she says. “You have to just keep moving.”
Most agree that New York City will never return to what it was on September 10, but that the city has reached a new sense of normalcy. Emily says that seeing other people forging ahead with their usual routines has helped her to do the same. However, the lasting scar that she identified, along with countless other New Yorkers, is the steep decrease in available job opportunities. “The biggest barrier to our return to normalcy is all of the layoffs.”
Despite layoffs and general obstacles to everyday commutes, UT alumni seem content to stay in New York. Call it Texas pride or New York attitude; they are almost insulted when asked if they have considered leaving the city. After everything they have experienced over the past few months, they have grown more attached to the city than ever before. “It’s a pride thing,” Ward admits with a smile. New Yorkers are filled with pride and an almost “Remember the Alamo” mentality.
Urban myth claims that a person must live in New York City for ten years before inheriting the right to call oneself a New Yorker. But the survivors of the events that cast a dark shadow on September 11 have earned the right early to call themselves New Yorkers. New Yorkers from Texas, that is.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
